"
Team:KU Leuven/Human Practices
From 2013.igem.org
Secret garden
Congratulations! You've found our secret garden! Follow the instructions below and win a great prize at the World jamboree!
- A video shows that two of our team members are having great fun at our favourite company. Do you know the name of the second member that appears in the video?
- For one of our models we had to do very extensive computations. To prevent our own computers from overheating and to keep the temperature in our iGEM room at a normal level, we used a supercomputer. Which centre maintains this supercomputer? (Dutch abbreviation)
- We organised a symposium with a debate, some seminars and 2 iGEM project presentations. An iGEM team came all the way from the Netherlands to present their project. What is the name of their city?
Now put all of these in this URL:https://2013.igem.org/Team:KU_Leuven/(firstname)(abbreviation)(city), (loose the brackets and put everything in lowercase) and follow the very last instruction to get your special jamboree prize!
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.
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.
Click anywhere on the picture!
