Team:KU Leuven/Human Practices/Ethics/Debate
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!
![tree](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2013/a/ac/Tree.png)
![ladybugcartoon](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2013/6/64/Ladybugcartoon.png)
The Debate
![Debate poster](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2013/2/2e/DebatPoster.jpg)
The poster of our debate.
We organized a debate in which four speakers were invited with a different backgrounds to debate the ethical concerns surrounding synthetic biology. The panel members are: René Custer, regulatory affairs manager at the VIB (Flemish institute for biotechnology). Prof. Johan De Tavernier, a bio-ethicist from the faculty of theology of the KU Leuven. Dr. ir. Anneleen Vandeplas who is economist working for the European Commission specializing in agriculture. And lastly dr. ir. Hermes Sanctorum, member of parliament for Groen, which is a Belgian green political party that has sustainable development and ecology as a pillar of its program. The debate was moderated by Ben Vanheukelom, journalist from the VRT radio news and in the auditorium around 200 people with a interest in the topic were present. 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. Our iGEM team provided 6 specific statements that were used as a starting point for the discussion. Below the summary of the discussion per topic is summarized.