The Ethics of Synthetic Biology: Next Steps and Prior Questions

It is easy to call for public engagement (or dialogue) around difficult, morally fraught policy topics such as synthetic biology, but it is quite another thing to make sure that the deliberation is meaningful, as Kaebnick, Gusmano, and Murray aptly insist it should be. 1 Synthetic biology is potentially so transformative that there is a very high degree of uncertainty surrounding it, and therein lies the difficulty for setting up a real discussion.The surveys, focus groups, and public dialogues that have been held about synthetic biology to date show a very low level of public knowledge about it. In 2010, only 26 percent of Americans had heard a lot or some about it. 2 Focus group findings also suggest that the inherent uncertainty and complexity surrounding synthetic biology give rise to greater ambivalence moving forward. The Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Hart Research Associates presented respondents with a "balanced description" of synthetic biology in nationwide phone surveys and eight sessions of focus groups and found that, after respondents received information, the percentage saying that the risks outweighed the benefits consistently increased. 3 In my view, the Hart research suggests three very important conclusions about how best to structure public deliberation. First, information about uncertainty may not inform the public in any meaningful way. Second, the purpose of assessing public opinion and conducting public deliberation is crucially important. Third, as Kaebnick, Gusmano, and Murray point out, the type and framing of the information given and the timing of the discussion matter a great deal for shaping the content.Uncertainty requires very careful framing. In the Hart research, the "balanced description" of synthetic biology provided to survey and focus group respondents does not, upon closer scrutiny, appear completely balanced. The description consisted of a statement that "[t]he potential BENEFITS of synthetic biology include developing new microorganisms [for medical, industrial, and environmental applications]," followed by the statement "[w]hile the potential RISKS of synthetic biology are not known, there are concerns [about public safety, environmental damage, and bioterrorism]." But it is probably important that, although the word "potential" is used before both "benefits" and "risks," only the sentence about risks highlights that the potential is not known. The same point is not made about the potential benefits, although it could be. We know it is technologically possible to create biofuels, but we do not know if, or how much, biofuels will solve our environmental problems, for example. More broadly, we know how to create new DNA, but we do not know exactly what will happen-in terms of either benefits or costs-when we try to use this new technology. This is the uncertainty the public is responding to: instead of embracing the potential for future benefits, the majority fear what could go wrong-especially when c...

Section: Commentariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Engagement and the Importance of Content, Purpose, and Timing

Grogan¹

2014

“…Kaebnick, Gusmano, and Murray tackle some important issues raised by the emerging field of synthetic biology . Many of these issues arise precisely because synthetic biology is still emerging, making it hard, if not impossible, to predict how the technology will pan out.…”

Section: Commentariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governing in the Context of Uncertainty

Calvert¹

2014

Kaebnick, Gusmano, and Murray tackle some important issues raised by the emerging field of synthetic biology. Many of these issues arise precisely because synthetic biology is still emerging, making it hard, if not impossible, to predict how the technology will pan out. In the context of this uncertainty, Kaebnick, Gusmano, and Murray imply, we may have to change our familiar patterns of thinking and governing. It is this point that I elaborate on here. I argue that if we embrace the distinctive characteristics of emerging biotechnologies, we can shift away from attempts to analyze the risks and benefits of technological developments and toward discussions of the motivations and purposes that drive them in the first place. This perspective gives us a solid rationale for public and stakeholder engagement (or “democratic deliberation,” as Kaebnick et al. call it) and helps us address some of the concerns Kaebnick and colleagues raise about how this engagement should be organized.

“…One important voice in this debate has been the report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, New Directions: The Ethics of Synthetic Biology and Emerging Technologies . We now have an equally important new voice in “The Ethics of Synthetic Biology: Next Steps and Prior Questions,” by Kaebnick, Gusmano, and Murray . One of the more significant contributions of the paper is its exploration of the difficulties of developing policy that appropriately addresses the risks and benefits of synthetic biology.…”

Section: Commentariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy‐Making and Systemic Complexity

Bedau

2014

Synthetic biology has spawned a debate about how society and the international community should go about policy-making, especially given the potential for both transformative benefits and existential threats. One important voice in this debate has been the report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, New Directions: The Ethics of Synthetic Biology and Emerging Technologies. We now have an equally important new voice in "The Ethics of Synthetic Biology: Next Steps and Prior Questions," by Kaebnick, Gusmano, and Murray.1 One of the more significant contributions of the paper is its exploration of the difficulties of developing policy that appropriately addresses the risks and benefits of synthetic biology. In this comment I want to develop this point further and emphasize how the proper methodology for addressing synthetic biology's ethical and public policy issues are affected by the unpredictable and complex causal webs in synthetic biology (which have analogs in other new and emerging technologies).The debate about synthetic biology has featured prominent promises that synthetic biology makes the creation of synthetic cells simple and predictable because it adopts the methods of traditional engineering.2 Nevertheless, no one in the debate denies that the synthetic cells created in synthetic biology are extremely complex. The "complexity" of a synthetic cell refers to the organization of the causal web among all of its material chemical components. We can call a causal web "complex" if it is highly parallel (has many nodes) with many local and loopy links (positive and negative feedback loops), if the nodes have many upstream and downstream links (that is, the nodes are context-sensitive and synergistic), and if node response is nonlinear.Complex causal webs are characterized by what we can call "weak emergence." That is, some of the properties of the web are generated by the web itself-that is, by the rules that govern the response of each node and by the web's initial and boundary conditions-and the quickest way to determine the web's precise global state is to simulate (or observe) the web. Complex causal webs with weak emergent properties are found throughout biological systems, including those created in synthetic biology. Given their complexity, it is perhaps no surprise that the precise global behavior of a complex causal web is unpredictable, even given complete information about the state and rules governing all of the parts of the web. The methodological consequences for complex causal webs are also perhaps no great surprise, and three are especially worth emphasizing here. First, we should expect the unexpected in the behavior of complex causal webs. Their behavior is difficult to predict and control, except by extensive and systematic observation, experimentation, and computer simulation. As a result, we must learn from experience if we want to discover the typical global behavior patterns of complex causal webs. Furthermore, it takes a continual plurality of observations...