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Ethics of Synthetic Biology

• Suitable for: high school and college students

Presentation Suggestions

• Short talk (~10 minutes) about what synthetic biology is, what has been done, what we can do with it in the future, bio ethics issues of the past, and bio ethics issues of today.
• Use slides to introduce a variety of ethics issues to students, prompting them to talk about the issues and to engage their classmates and you in discussions.

At the start of the presentation, give a summary sheet of ethics issues to each student to give them enough information to discuss the issues after your intro slides. The issues below are just a few examples. To this page, please add more ethics issues (issue summary + a quote/ prompt to put on a slide) so we can all have many situations to draw from and thus make our ethics presentations even more engaging for students. Put your team name under the title of your contribution so we all know who to give credit to. Also, to prevent people in black suits from banging down our doors in the dead of the night, don’t forget to list your references! Thanks. –-Alyssa, Cornell iGEM

J. Craig Venter Institute: Synthetic Life

(from “Craig Venter creates synthetic life form,” The Guardian, UK, 2010)

• Cornell iGEM 2011

Scientists have created the world's first synthetic life form in a landmark experiment that paves the way for designer organisms that are built rather than evolved.

[…] The new organism is based on an existing bacterium that causes mastitis in goats, but at its core is an entirely synthetic genome that was constructed from chemicals in the laboratory.

The single-celled organism has four "watermarks" written into its DNA to identify it as synthetic and help trace its descendants back to their creator, should they go astray.

[…] ‘This is an important step both scientifically and philosophically,’ Dr Venter told the journal. ‘It has certainly changed my views of definitions of life and how life works.’

The team now plans to use the synthetic organism to work out the minimum number of genes needed for life to exist. From this, new microorganisms could be made by bolting on additional genes to produce useful chemicals, break down pollutants, or produce proteins for use in vaccines.

Contrasting viewpoints:

• “Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny. He is not merely copying life artificially or modifying it radically by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of a god: creating artificial life that could never have existed naturally.”

--Julian Savulescu, professor of practical ethics at Oxford University

• “[This is] a defining moment in the history of biology and biotechnology.”

-- Mark Bedau, philosopher at Reed College in Portland, Oregon

Reference:

• Sample, Ian. “Craig Venter creates synthetic life form.” guardian.co.uk. May 20, 2010

Henrietta Lacks: Genetic Rights

From The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, 2010 (Soon to be made into an HBO movie by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball, the creator and executive producer of HBO’s “True Blood”)

• Cornell iGEM 2011

Book excerpt:

“There’s a photo on my wall of a woman I’ve never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape. She looks straight into the camera and smiles, hands on hips, dress suit neatly pressed, lips painted deep red. It’s the late 1940s and she hasn’t yet reached the age of thirty. Her light brown skin is smooth, her eyes still young and playful, oblivious to the tumor growing inside her—a tumor that would leave her five children motherless and change the future of medicine. Beneath the photo, a caption says her name is ‘Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson.’

“[… ] Her real name is Henrietta Lacks.

“[…] Henrietta died in 1951 from a vicious case of cervical cancer, [my high school biology teacher] told us. But before she died, a surgeon took samples of her tumor and put them in a petri dish. Scientists had been trying to keep human cells alive in culture for decades, but they all eventually died. Henrietta’s were different: they reproduced an entire generation every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped. They became the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory.

“Her cells were part of research into the genes that cause cancer and those that suppress it; they helped develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, and Parkinson’s disease; and they’ve been used to study lactose digestion, sexually transmitted diseases, appendicitis, human longevity, mosquito mating, and the negative cellular effects of working in sewers. Their chromosomes and proteins have been studied with such detail and precision that scientists know their every quirk. Like guinea pigs and mice, Henrietta’s cells have become the standard laboratory workhorse.

“’HeLa cells were one of the most important things that happened to medicine in the last hundred years,’ [my biology teacher] said.”

References:

• Skloot, Rebecca. About The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca Skloot. 2011.
• Skloot, Rebecca. Excerpt: Prologue. Rebecca Skloot. 2011.