Team:KU Leuven/Human Practices

Top-down

As the impact of synthetic biology is exponentially increasing and our project being part of that, we examined the implication of our project for the security, safety and environment. We did this by means of a normative approach in which we evaluated our project against the background of the literature on biosafety, biosecurity and justice and synthetic biology. This normative approach is prescriptive in the sense that it prescribes how one ought to act. The work of the philosopher Hans Jonas can also be considered as an exponent of top-down structure.

New additional approach: Bottom-up or ethics from within!

The top-down structure sometimes fails because scientist get the feeling that they do not get the proper recognition and they feel restricted by laws and regulations. Therefore a philosophy student joined the KU Leuven iGEM team to develop a new approach for human practices. This unique collaboration resulted in an extensive approach.

The different parts of this approach are:
⇒ Interviews: All team members and their supervisors were interviewed to get a better understanding of their ethical beliefs with regard to synthetic biology and our project.
⇒ Blog: We wrote a blog to give regular scientists a better understanding of ethics.
⇒ Psychoanalysis: Here used as a tool to come to terms with synthetic biology as an important component of the current scientific revolution.
⇒ Hannah Arendt: We explained with the work of this philosopher why iGEM (and as a consequence our team) would like to make contact with the general public.
⇒ Debate: The aim of the debate was to focus on the ethical issues surrounding synthetic biology in a way which is accessible to students, academics, but also non-scientists.
⇒ The end user: We involved the end-users (farmers) in our project. By having direct contact with them, our project improves already in early stages.

Central in this new additional approach is the dialogue between philosophers, scientist and the general public. What are the strengths?
⇒ Dialogue: The central position of the dialogue results in a agreement of all stakeholders.
⇒ Ethics from within: No third person standpoint, but constant dialogue. The philosopher is asking questions out of curiosity and guiding the process of inventions.
⇒ Recognition: By bridging the gap between scientists and philosophers, the scientist get the proper recognition for their work.
⇒ Philosophers: By using the work of well-known philosophers, our new developed approach gets a strong foundation.

This new developed approach is unique within the iGEM competition and we consider this approach a new starting point for human practices.