The Woodrow Wilson Center is hosting an event at 12:30PM EST today on synthetic biology. Event home.
The emerging field of synthetic biology will allow researchers to create biological systems that do not occur naturally as well as to re-engineer existing biological systems to perform novel and beneficial tasks. As the science and its applications develop, a comprehensive approach to addressing ethical and social issues of emerging technologies as a whole is called for if scarce intellectual resources are to be used optimally, according to a new report authored by Erik Parens, Josephine Johnston, and Jacob Moses of The Hastings Center. Synthetic biology promises significant advances in areas such as biofuels, specialty chemicals, agriculture, and medicine but also poses potential risks.
What follows is not merely information, but demonstration. Teme enables undergraduates to share their vision for science through many channels, including live blogging. Register and report through the menu on the right.
Dave: Should synthetic biological ethics be distinct from bioethics generally? This event exists to answer the question.
Looking for common ground between synthetic and natural bioethics. The definition of synthetic biology: 'The design structure of new biological parts and systems and also the redesign on existing systems.' One of the goals of synthetic biology is to move from evolutionary models to designed models.
Synthetic biology is not merely genetic re-engineering but potentially building new biology "from scratch." Ex. a carbon nanotubule is engineered to deliver proteins. It looks like nanotechnology, stem cell technology, and synthetic biology. These new scientific fields are interdiciplinary [especially along shared integrations with information technology].
What is needed is a general framework for ethics in emerging technologies!
We must approach synthetic bioethics fom both a proactionary and precautionary perspective. Both frameworks are valid and equally useful. As we approach synthetic bioethics, we should adopt both frames.
While some precautionary suggestions, such as "We shouldn't play God" may not carry weight wtihin a policy community, but may nonetheless be valid. These feelings often exist even in those who are not religious, and underlies a deeper, shared attitude about our relationship with technology.
"To have concerns doesn't mean we're going to go out and prohibit [any technology] or ban it."
Even without a 'handy secular language,' showing respect for the concerns of the less scientifically literate will deepen our understanding of and catalogue a framework for physical harms.
The proactionary framework is for actors, not critics. It emphasizes our role as creators.
The proactionary framework adopts assumptions often seen as "the way it is." This framework includes ethical obligations, including the obligation to engineer a better future for our world. While we must be cautious, we cannot be General McClellan's. We must attack problems like childhood disease.
The central dogma of one genetic code per biological system is breaking down. As we redefine our genetic identities, we increase the threat of physical harms.
Synthetic biology may be less risky from a continuity perspective, but it also has the potential to be less predictible, and we may create synthetic biological systems that replicate out of control. See grey goo.
Conclusion
1.We must respect every vision for nature shared by our community on spaceship earth.
2. Both precautionary and proactionary frameworks have value.
3.Given the consequences of both acting too quickly or not at all, it's important to keep both frameworks in mind.
Greg provides a roadmap for the Center's new multi-year project.
It's not seeking to provide answers. Contributors are bound to provide answers, but the project is not seeking to select answers. It will seek to organize, but not squelch, a growing community of voices, shaped by scientific leaders in synthetic biology.
The project will produce products like books, essays, presentations in synthetic bioethics and work with journalists.
Greg emphasizes that we should pay respect to all voices. The project aims to create a working group for synthetic bioethics, much in the way Teme creates a working group for undergraduates in information technology. The project will have scholarships, so we'll certainly set up integration for the project and the Teme Foundation!
'Concerns about human nature are related across topics, but that doesn't mean they don't get cashed out in specific ways. You may find concerns drop out over time.'
We must think about the policy implication of what Erik calls 'non-physical' concerns, and work to translate these concerns into workable policy language. These frameworks should be optional, that we all find ourselves attracted to both proactionary and precautionary perspectives. People are welcome to contribute to one or the other or both.
The connection between concerns and how it translates to policy are complex, and may even be irreducibly complex. The project is a 'middling' approach. It deflates all perspectives to granting each as morally valid but deeply complicated as an integrated system.
When viewing synthetic bioethics from a non-human frame, but instead a global-brain frame, memetic frames, or others, we have great tension as selection seems to take place without much regulation.
I suspect many regulatory systems have evolved in non-human frameworks, but that it is difficult to identify these structures given our generally anthropocentric frame. If we shed that frame, we may identify many existing structures for regulation in, for instance, memetics, that we can apply more generally to synthetic memetics.
Yesterday the NIH had a meeting on synthetic biology. It was poorly attended outside the bureaucratic community. There recommendation is that synthetic biological products go through the FDA, which is incredibly opaque. The project presented today is much more transparent, and also encourages dialogue. Hastings and Teme have similar approaches to how we develop transformative technologies. Hastings' project's ethic emphasizes open information and conversation on these ethical issues.
We must break down the separate silos separating distinct branches of technoethics. We can come together to create frameworks for action, even if we aren't necessarily deciding on a particular policy approach to specific or general concerns.
The role of policy may not be to provide any distinct guidelines, but provide infrastructure for individuals to pick the best technologies for them. Of course, this concern for freedom is paramount, it must necessarily be checked in a limited-resource economy.
For instance, synthetic biology may enable fantastic bioweapons. How does a national security system prevent the acceleration of 'Moore's Law for Mad Scientists?" The presenters have not thought deeply about these issues, but claim Erik's framework can incorporate them. They claim the risk assessment process should be democratized.
At the NIH's meeting, many were concerned that synthetic biology would already be adopted by markets before the regulatory infrastructure is instituted. That Craig Ventor exists demonstrates the urgent need for dialogue.
Scientists should facilitate education and discussion among even the most obstinate members of our community. For instance, many people would claim that "we're playing God" by using synthetic biology. Scientists should sustain dialogue with these people, even as we are forced to adopt policy positions (which may evolve over time). Proactionary individuals could point, for instance, about other areas in which we are already "playing God."
It seems everybody accepts a frame, views it as correct, and wishes to promulgate it in policy. We must step back and realize at least marginal validity in viewpoints exclusive to our own. If we wish to enact our voice, the best way forward is to speak, listen, and learn together.
Teme has a friend in the Hastings Center. I am excited about this project, given its primary focus on encouraging dialogue and repect for for conflicting viewpoints. Teme provides technologies enabling both proactionary and precautionary undergraduates to advance information science.
I am a huge fan of open communication. We can certainly harm each other with our words, in obvious ways like slander or ad hominem or more insidious ways like noise pollution. The Internet provides ample opportunity for us to manage these harms, so it's generally a great idea to speak openly and apply a pallet of filters to flexibly and dynamically organize what are often irreducibly complex and exclusive ideas about our future and our relationship with technology.
I remain, however, a skeptic. On some ethical issues I remain hesitant to embrace openness. While it's likely openness may be a reasonable absolutist approach to working out our technoethics, knowledge itself is a form of capital that can be utilized with either social or material capital to achieve power. Synthetic biology is an incredibly high-stakes game, easily offering non-negligible existential threats in the next decade. Openness does not necessarily ensure adoption, and some forms of knowledge, when combined with technology, may enable irreversible power assymetries if only partially adopted.
Even in dialogue, I encourage both action and caution.