Team:KU Leuven/Practices/Ethics

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Ethics

To learn more about the ethical and regulatory problems connected to synthetic biology we invited a panel of experts to discuss the topic with us on our symposium. The panel consisted of:
Prof. Bart De Moor (KU Leuven), Prof. Johan Robben (KU Leuven), Dr. Stijn Bruers (UGent), Prof. Vera van Noort (KU Leuven) and Victor Dillard (Desktop Genetics). It was moderated by Prof. Piet Van der Meer (Ugent/VUB). This page is expands on what we learned during this debate.

What is synthetic biology?

Before delving into ethical questions and the details of regulation it is crucial to understand what we are talking about when we use the term synthetic biology. Generally when five scientists are asked to define synthetic biology the answer will be five different definitions. What we heard during the symposium was:

Debate definitions

“Synthetic biology is biology on steroids.”
“Synthetic biology is the biological analogue to what happened in the semiconductor industry its biology going from the analysis phase to the design phase.”
“Synthetic biology is a brand, which brings biologists and people from other fields together.”
“Synthetic biology is man made biology.”
“Synthetic biology is the construction of cells from the bottom up.”

On a closer look all of these definitions consider human involvement to be a part of synthetic biology. For the first definition it is of course humans, who put biology on steroids. The second definition needs humans, who design biological circuits. The third definition has people from different field working together. And finally the last two ones have humans building biology.
At this point naturally the questions arise. What should we build? What are the risks involved in the process? Which rules should guide us in the process and how should we enforce them?

How should synthetic biology be regulated?

A first opinion is that safety regulation is definitely needed. One only needs to look at the thread posed by invasive species to local biodiversity around the globe to see that releasing new species into an ecosystem can be problematic. On the other hand excessive regulation could severely impede science. Regulatior should strive to find a good compromise which protects the public while limiting research only when it is necessary. It turns out that current European regulation is highly inconsistent. Some low risk technologies are highly regulated, while at the same time high risk approaches remain unregulated. The problem originates from the fact that in Europe when it comes to regulation not the technology itself but its novelty decides the regulation level. Which can lead to absurd situations. Possibly this problem originates in the fact that the public perceives novel technologies as a bigger thread then well established ones, and thus demands more regulation on novel technologies.

What can we learn from the public?

Politicians follow the public opinion when devising the rules that scientists will have to follow. However often the public is guided by emotion instead of facts. Additionally the public debate is cognitively biased, often environmentalists are communicating fear. Therefore it is vital to inform the public better about the benefits and risks of synthetic biology. The goal must be to stimulated more evidence based thinking in the debate. It is not enough to just provide the facts. Companies and universities have to communicate emotionally and rationally. Furthermore scientist are under-represented in our parliaments. Often members of parliament are lawyers or people with a background in humanities, possibly having more scientists in parliament could lead to better science regulation.

To sum up to solve problems related to synthetic biology regulation we need to tackle the cognitive bias that deeply roots in the current European debate. To do that we devised educational tools and conducted a survey to find out how people feel about synthetic biology.