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| {{SBPWG Temp}} | | {{SBPWG Temp}} |
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| Please add material and edit ruthlessly!
| | '''Materials & Notes From Past Working Group Meetings''' |
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| ===May 10th 2011===
| | [[SBPWG:Meetings/Jan_18_2012 | Jan 18 2012]] |
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| | [[SBPWG:Meetings/Dec_13_2011 | Dec 13 2011]] |
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| ====Agenda ====
| | [[SBPWG:Meetings/Nov_15_2011 | Nov 15 2011]] |
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| 0. Welcome & Practices@SynBERC Update
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| 1. Discussion of Proposed Working Group Vision, Goals and Formats
| | [[SBPWG:Meetings/Oct_26_2011 | Oct 26 2011]] |
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| 2. Breaking Down Practices v1.0 - Informal Presentations and Discussion
| | [[SBPWG:Meetings/Sept_15_2011 | Sept 15 2011]] |
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| 3. Drafting of Topic and Invited Guest List for Future Meetings
| | [[SBPWG:Meetings/July_27_2011 | July 27 2011]] |
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| 4. Discussion of Additional Opportunities for Practices Engagement
| | [[SBPWG:Meetings/June_30_2011 | June 30 2011]] |
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| 5. Next Meeting - Content and Scheduling
| | [[SBPWG:Meetings/May_10_2011 | May 10 2011]] |
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| | [[SBPWG:Meetings/April_6_2011 | April 6 2011]] |
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| ==== Notes ====
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| Recap of last meeting (April 6 2010) - notes to be put up online shortly
| | '''Suggestions for Future Meetings''' |
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| Review of Vision and Goals
| | Please Add! |
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| Two potential formats for this working group:
| | Risk Analysis Expert |
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| 1. Practices in practices – invite community member to propose address problems, followed by a write-up
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| 2. Breaking down practices – in-depth discussion, possibly with expert
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| (Number 1 informs number 2, and vice versa)
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| Additional goal: creating a list of “Top ten open challenges to synbio”
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| There may be lessons for us to learn from the Synthetic Society
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| - a now-defunct working group started at MIT among early synbio practitioners
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| - what was the rationale and driving force behind Synthetic Society?
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| - interesting questions and meeting notes on OpenWetWare
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| =====Breaking Down Practices v1: 5-min presentations from individuals on various topics of interest =====
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| '''1. Ownership (Ryan)'''
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| this overview based on Arti Rai (2007)
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| if you create a new organism, how to patent, should you be able to patent?
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| currently two methods for protecting intellectual property: copyright & patent
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| 1. copyright is intended to protect artistic creation/instance (not functional)
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| 2. patents are supportive of functional elements, not artistic
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| synthetic organisms may fall into both categories
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| they also replicate, raising questions such as how to we prevent use of “inventions” that drift across the oceans or blow across the fields
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| many have pointed to flaws of current system, but few have stepped up to say what things SHOULD look like
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| if we could invent intellectual property protections for biological entities from scratch, what would we want things to look like?
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| personal perspective:
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| * reasonable protections, not overarching, but provide sufficient incentive
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| * want to avoid patent thickets (layered patents), submarine patents (latent)
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| * Biology Commons needed? pool of stuff free to share
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| Rettberg believes biological parts should be protected by copyrights
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| But do we need a new third type of protection, or specifically extend copyright/patent to biological entities?
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| Precedent is getting stretched thin, and as laws are extended into areas they weren’t designed for, there may be unintented consequences
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| New laws would have to be created by legislative branch
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| Some models for protection/innovation:
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| * GNU (copyleft) or GPL - free use where derivative works must be free
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| * BSD license - source code open, derivatives may be sold (Mac OSX)
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| * DMCA (digital music) - (bad example) you cannot decrypt/recreate digital materials (e.g., DVD)
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| how does this relate to our work?:
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| what property rights do we want? not want? and not violate others’ rights?
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| potential speakers on this topic:
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| * in-house legal counsel for companies like LS9: if you could reform intellectual property law, how would you do it? how to balance restrictions vs. innovation?
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| * Electronic Frontiers Foundation - created to define RIAA and MPAA, enforce GNU - protect both software
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| * history of gene patents: violation of the original spirit of the patent law, now related to specific uses
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| * industry/commons lawyers, who protect artists’ rights as well as defend music industry
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| A conversation about open commons at retreat could be productive
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| Laws should be revamped ways that protect existing patents
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| What is the cost to industry to do business this way?
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| Stanford open source model - allows researchers to put works directly into the public domain
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| Practices is starting an Innovation and Sharing research program
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| See also open technology platform paper by Gaymon
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| '''2. Security - Mike'''
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| How to walk the line between mitigating risk and not hampering research?
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| New challenges from synbio:
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| * genomes can be easily assembled
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| ** How should DNA synthesis companies be regulating this
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| ** Gov’t released guidelines, less stringent than companies'
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| ** Companies have a vested interest in doing the right things
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| * DIY: one-year ann of NY community biology lab (Gemspace)
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| * Technology dissemination
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| Case studies:
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| * Wemmer synthesizing polio viris (could he do it again today?)
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| * Federation of American Scientists: Case studies in dual use (http://www.fas.org/biosecurity/education/dualuse/index.html) (altho more safety than security oriented)
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| One possibility: more thorough background checks on researchers in professional way (although this wouldn’t cover the DIY community)
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| Extra reviews in addition to IRB
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| Danielle: In dealing with EH&S, she has to re-write every scope. So the review part is tough, but the enforcement part is slack (e.g., announce their visits)
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| Danielle: Also, use of organisms like salmonella seemed unconcerning/out of scope to IRB
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| “If you see something, say something”
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| “The Demon in is the freezer” chapter about mobile Iraqi anthrax units tells story of security challenges
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| There is a bias toward human therapeutics - human infectious viral vectors
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| A challenge: Trying to teach biosafety in a way that is engaging, inspiring
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| If there were an accident/event, what would the synbio community have to do to convince authorities that it’s okay to proceed?
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| E.g., the chemical industry must prepare for an anthrax attack, but how does it track the DIY community?
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| Ryan - could be fun and instructive to hide our credentials and try to “red team” the synthesis industry
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| Reid: We’re constantly imagining short-scale issues, but what about long-term issues? (e.g., underbleaching over many years)
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| Kevin: Could we improve security (and not create additional work for ourselves) by engaging with IRBs to develop more effective guidelines for emerging threats?
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| '''3. Reid - contextualizing engineering practices with other fields'''
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| we constantly use metaphors
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| where do these metaphors break down, and what does that tell us?
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| what’s unique about synbio, and how can we put that back into the engineering field?
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| * one unique characteristic: specific desired behavior using directed evolution without understanding underlying mechanism
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| There are already a couple examples of biology put back into other fields
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| * genetic algorithms
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| * enzymatic computation
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| What can we learn from looking at other engineering disciplines?
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| history and failure - our bias is to look only at recent past, as if engineering builds upon itself in a strictly linear fashion
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| architecture of complexity - what common definition of complexity is useful
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| Potential speakers:
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| * David Mandell (MIT) - looks broadly across disciplines and history
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| * speaker from engineering and design, industrial design/engineering
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| Recent engineering milestone: Software code validated to be correct (microkernel unix)
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| Examples of software systems failures: x-ray burns, east coast blackout, flash crash
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| '''4. Danielle - Communication & outreach'''
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| There is much incentive for us to educate our stakeholders (e.g., funding, public support, science literacy)
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| Is there something new about synbio? Not sure, but it’s a reason to renew the conversation with the public
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| Case study #1: nanotechnology
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| Compared to synbio, has the opposite PR problem: People have a hard time figuring out how it can be used, and a hard time figuring out why it might be dangerous
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| Most people have no opinion (or not a negative opinion)
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| But in general, people who don’t understand something fear it
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| Case study #2: Nuclear technology
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| Education/outreach has been poorly executed in general, esp. in US
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| There’s an association with weaponization
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| From beginning, treated as something dangerous, secretive
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| Regarding case studies, we could spend a lot of time drawing risk parallels, but maybe we shouldn’t
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| We should spend time talking about positive aspects (beneficial applications)
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| Is there a case study of something that is hopeful yet appropriately wary?
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| As a community, we need to figure out best way to communicate this info so as not to set off nightmares or unrealistic promises
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| Potential speaker:
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| People in participatory technologies
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| E.g., in fields that require sophisticated understanding, consider a model of paying a lay panel learn about and then discuss topic
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| David Guston is a proponent of such models
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| How to put a face on synthetic biology?
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| '''5. Megan - Applications'''
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| Nita Farrahany (Presidential bioethics commissioner): most of the questions asked were about distant future, so commission intentionally took an optimistic view in order not to unduly restrict ongoing research
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| Success often evaluated largely by applications, but its greatest impact may be in tools (cross-cutting technology applications)
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| Stated differently, a field is often identified by its artifacts (e.g., artemisinin), but it is sustained by the questions that it asks (e.g., how best can we assemble biological parts)
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| Relevant case studies: SynBERC testbeds, synbio labeled applications like biofuels
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| Speakers might include Keasling, Arkin, Kalil
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| example Pipes-programs vs. discovery-design (Adam Arkin’s model for R&D)
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| Apollo program resulted in many new technologies
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| steam engine, too
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| =====Next Steps=====
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| next meeting:
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| - top three things we’re interested in pursuing
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| - week right before SB5
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| parse out the gaps from these notes
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| let megan know if you’re interested in bay area science festival. Please provide ideas (e.g., game show!)
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| harvard group interested in writing white papers on biological design principles -- socially responsible design, taking advantage of biological properties - let megan know
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| ===April 6th 2011 ===
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| First Meeting @ UCSF
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