Synthetic Society

Overview

The MIT / Boston-area Synthetic Society Working Group (SSWG) is an collection of individuals who are working to directly address societal issues embedded and surrounding the emerging field of synthetic biology. Everybody is welcome to participate either via contributions to the pages hosted on this wiki or by visiting Boston for a meeting. At MIT, participants include scientists and engineers engaged in synthetic biology research and scholars expert in considering societal issues associated with emerging technologies. The primary goal of the SSWG is to make unbiased progress on the issues. A secondary goal of the SSWG is to collect and organize resources in order to faciliate widespread understanding and consideration of the issues.

Background

What is synthetic biolology?
The limited, working definition of synthetic biology that we are using in our discussions is (i) the design and construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems and (ii) the re-design of existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes. That is, we are now primarily interested in considering the impact of new, engineered biological systems that are encoded via standard four-base DNA (that is, A, T, C, G). This "definition" leaves out certain aspects of synthetic biology research (for example, understanding the origins of life by re-creating a cell from raw chemicals in the lab). Two reasons encourage us to use of a focused definition. First, we believe that the direct engineering of living systems via standard DNA will have the widest societal impact over the near term. Second, we are likely already at risk of trying to do too much.

What issues are you considering?
We are considering four classes of issues: (i) Biological Risks and Security, (ii) Understanding and Perception, (iii) Ownership, Sharing, and Innovation, and (iv) Community Organization and Culture. Each of these issues is introduced in detail below. If there's an additional class that you think should be considered please let us know.

[editorial note: the sections below should likely move to their own independent pages as soon as we start making real progress]

Biological Risks and Security

Place holder questions

• What are biological risks and why do they exist?
• Can humans engineer pathogens that are more dangerous than those found in nature?
• Is there a useful list of "top 100" biological risks or do such lists themselves pose a dangerous distraction from recognizing a dynamic, agile threat landscape?
• Is biological safety possible?
• Should pathogen research be conducted in secret?
• Can defensive pathogen research be successfully conducted in secret?
• Should synthetic biology researchers be subject to government background checks?
• Can one country successfully implement a biological security program in isolation?
• Should biological security measures be open or closed? Centralized or distributed?

Background Materials

• Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism, NAS report.
• Seeking Security: Pathogens, Open Access, and Genome Databases, NAS report.
• Recipe for Destruction, NY Times editorial authored by Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy.
• [Note, there are other relevant NAS reports, not all of which may be out yet. We should come back and look for more].
• Strategy for Biological Risk and Security, 2003 working paper by Drew Endy.

Point of Contact

• Student:
• Faculty:

Understanding and Perception

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn8365/dn8365-1_250.jpg

Place holder issues (collected/presented by Laurie Zoloth)

• DNA as the really real self.
• Dignity is intactness of the being.
• Nature is fixed.
• Nature is normative.
• Suffering is what defines the human condition.
• Slopes are slippery.
• Dual-use is inevitable.
• Mistakes are inevitable.
• We will be as gods.
• The marketplace will distort science.
• An unfair world (inequity).
• A Synthetic world (i.e., couldn't you have named the field "shiny happy" biology?).

Background Materials

• The Perception of Risk by Paul Slovic
• Others, TBD

Point of Contact

• Student:
• Faculty:

Ownership, Sharing, and Innovation

http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/patent_pending.jpg

Place holder questions

• Programming in DNA will require a library of basic biological functions that can be used over and over again in combination.
  • Who is going to make such libraries? [Can it be made?]
  • Who is going to own such libraries? [Will anybody?]
• DNA synthesis lets you convert genetic information into genetic material.
  • How cheap will gene/genome synthesis become?
  • Will anybody pay attention to material transfer agreements for DNA?
  • Can copyright be still further munged so that it applies to DNA?
• How do ownership terms impact perception and public acceptance of biological technologies?
• Something that is hard today (for example, designing a protein) will become easier tomorrow. How to best incentivize such work?
• Something that is hard to do once (for example, designing the first copy of a synthetic protein) is easy to reproduce...
• More TBD.

Background Materials

• Drew Endy's talk at OSCON 2005
  • PowerPoint; PDF; Podcast
• Meeting notes from Nov 2005 SynBio conference at Duke Law's Center for Study of the Public Domain [available, email endy@mit.edu]
• Innovation & Incentives by Suzanne Scotchmer.
• Notes & FAQ from the pre-historic days of the BioBricks Foundation.
• Arti Rai and James Boyle article on legal status of Synthetic Biology [draft pending, email endy@mit.edu]

Point of Contact

• Student:
• Faculty:

Community Organization and Culture

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/SciRefGuides/images/engineeringsociety.jpg

Place holder questions

• Are there any actions or standards of practice (celebratory, proscriptive, or restrictive) that should be coordinated on a community-wide basis?
• If yes, would such actions benefit from (require?) one or more forms of community organization?

Background Materials

• TBD

Point of Contact

• Student:
• Faculty: Drew Endy