Scientists and Society: Synthetic Biology in a Societal Context

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00:00:11.14 Hi, my name is Emma Frow and I'm
00:00:12.24 an assistant professor at Arizona State University.
00:00:15.24 I'm a social scientist and I work in a field
00:00:19.15 called Science and Technology Studies.
00:00:21.17 And this is a field that is particularly interested
00:00:24.07 in studying the practice of science in everyday life.
00:00:26.23 So, what scientists do, how they make knowledge,
00:00:30.03 how they share information, and how they relate
00:00:33.03 with others outside of the scientific community.
00:00:35.22 So I've actually been studying synthetic biology
00:00:38.22 and synthetic biologists now, since about 2008.
00:00:42.01 Studying what they do, how they work, and how they
00:00:44.22 engage with the rest of the world. So today we're going
00:00:47.05 to talk in broad terms about synthetic biology in context.
00:00:51.17 Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to essentially
00:00:56.10 talk you through a chapter that I wrote with a colleague
00:00:58.14 of mine, Jane Calvert, who's based at the University of
00:01:01.03 Edinburgh. So we'll go through several examples today.
00:01:03.16 At the end of the talk, I'll put the reference up on a slide,
00:01:06.15 in case you're interested in reading more and seeing
00:01:09.23 other examples about what we're going to talk about
00:01:12.15 today. So, synthetic biology is a field that has generated
00:01:17.03 an awful lot of interest in the last 10 or 15 years.
00:01:20.05 It's a fairly new field, so you might think 10 or 15 years
00:01:23.22 is a long time. But when you're starting to build or when
00:01:26.16 you're striving to build a new field from scratch, it takes
00:01:30.16 a lot of time and effort and resources to bring people
00:01:33.15 together. To create a vision that people will buy into,
00:01:36.02 and to secure enough funding and resources to really
00:01:39.09 start to build a community of practitioners who will
00:01:42.12 -- who will sort of work toward a common goal with you.
00:01:45.07 So, synthetic biology has actually been really successful
00:01:48.12 in the last 15 years at doing exactly this. At raising its
00:01:51.21 profile, at building awareness about the field, and
00:01:54.19 they're trying to enroll a number of practitioners into this
00:01:58.14 new and growing community. So there has been a lot of
00:02:03.05 interest from the perspective of policy makers and research
00:02:07.04 funders and other groups to look at and to think about
00:02:11.01 synthetic biology and the type of visions and the type
00:02:16.07 of technology that it's striving to produce. So over the past
00:02:20.16 10 or 15 years or so, as I said, there have been a whole
00:02:23.19 host of reports that have been published about synthetic
00:02:26.06 biology. This is just a snapshot of a few. There are at least
00:02:30.02 a hundred or more reports that have been published by
00:02:32.10 research funders, by non-governmental organizations,
00:02:36.11 and by learning societies who are interested in thinking
00:02:39.20 about what the future might look like if we start developing
00:02:42.24 synthetic biology. Now it's very interesting that a lot of these
00:02:46.19 reports don't just focus on the technical aspects of the field.
00:02:50.05 They also are very keen on thinking about some of the
00:02:53.16 broader and ethical social issues that might be associated
00:02:56.23 with the development of synthetic biology. And if we look across
00:03:00.06 these reports, we see that they often raise a fairly
00:03:03.17 similar pattern of issues that they are concerned about
00:03:07.07 regarding the social and ethical aspects of synthetic biology.
00:03:10.03 So we see a number of recurring topics, and I think across
00:03:13.23 the reports, there are 4 recurring topics that we see
00:03:17.02 fairly regularly. The first is a lot of discussion about the
00:03:20.10 possible ethical implications. For example, if we become
00:03:24.13 able to create synthetic life. The second is often a set of
00:03:29.14 speculations about what the future benefits and harms
00:03:32.04 of synthetic biology might be if we get to a stage where it
00:03:36.14 starts to become a much more viable technology. The
00:03:41.03 third recurring topic is a reasonable amount of concern
00:03:43.21 about whether or not the public will accept synthetic
00:03:46.18 biology as a technology, as and when it begins to develop.
00:03:49.22 And the fourth is concern about how we might begin to
00:03:54.14 go about regulating and evaluating the risk of new
00:03:57.07 synthetic biology products that begin to come onto the market.
00:04:00.14 So this set of four topics are ones that we see occur
00:04:05.13 over and over again in a number of the published reports
00:04:08.07 on synthetic biology. What I'm going to suggest today is
00:04:12.16 that actually, we take a step back and we reframe the
00:04:15.19 discussion slightly. So rather than focusing on -- I'm not
00:04:19.02 suggesting that those four topics are inappropriate or
00:04:22.21 wrong topics, but what I'm suggesting is the way that they're
00:04:25.23 currently framed and phrased can lead you into slightly
00:04:29.24 difficult tricky situations, and sort of dead ends when it comes
00:04:33.13 to trying to open up a very productive conversation about
00:04:36.02 synthetic biology. So what I'm going to suggest instead is
00:04:39.14 that we come up with slightly different ways of beginning
00:04:42.16 to open up conversations around these issues, creating
00:04:45.06 a different space for discussing synthetic biology. And I'm going
00:04:48.05 to do this by suggesting four shifts in how we talk about
00:04:51.10 the broader social context for synthetic biology. The first shift
00:04:55.17 I'm going to propose is one of changing our discussion from
00:04:58.18 talking about the social implications or the downstream
00:05:01.16 implications of synthetic biology, to instead thinking about
00:05:04.23 more of the social dimensions of synthetic biology. I'll explain
00:05:08.22 a little bit more about what I mean with each of these shifts
00:05:11.03 as we go through the lecture. The second shift that I'm
00:05:14.08 -- that my colleagues and I would like to advocate for
00:05:17.08 is a shift from entering a great deal of speculation about the
00:05:22.10 future of synthetic biology, to doing a little bit more grounded
00:05:26.11 anticipation that's based more in a real-time understanding
00:05:30.06 of what is happening in the field, as opposed to jumping
00:05:32.22 too far forward into the future from the beginning.
00:05:35.06 The third shift that I'd like to propose is moving away
00:05:39.07 from discussions about whether or not the public will
00:05:41.21 accept synthetic biology, to instead thinking about synthetic
00:05:45.01 biology as a possible technology for improving public good.
00:05:48.09 And the fourth shift that I'm going to advocate is one
00:05:52.11 of moving from discussions about how we would regulate
00:05:56.17 synthetic biology to how we would govern it. Now you might
00:06:00.18 look at this list here and just say, "This is just word games.
00:06:02.17 What difference does it make what word exactly we use
00:06:06.08 to describe this?" What I'm going to suggest actually, though
00:06:09.01 is that these words really do matter. And I'm going to try
00:06:11.07 and show you, going through each one of these in turn,
00:06:13.19 what it looks like if we actually begin to shift the language
00:06:16.22 that we're using to talking, for example, about dimensions
00:06:20.03 instead of implications. And how that begins to change the
00:06:22.23 space for our discussions about synthetic biology in context.
00:06:26.13 So what we're going to do for the rest of the talk is go through
00:06:29.08 each of these four shifts in turn. And I'm going to try to give
00:06:32.00 you some examples to suggest why I think these are important
00:06:36.02 shifts for us to try and adopt for when we're thinking about
00:06:39.02 synthetic biology in context. One thing I want to do very
00:06:42.14 quickly first though, is just take a very quick moment to
00:06:45.19 reflect upon the kind of broad relationship between science
00:06:48.21 and society. This is something that is much bigger than
00:06:51.10 synthetic biology as a whole, it's much more about how we
00:06:54.01 think about the relationship between science and society.
00:06:56.20 I think very often there's a tendency to see science and society
00:07:00.04 as two fairly different spheres, ones that don't interact
00:07:03.11 very much. Where scientists are happily going about doing
00:07:06.18 their work and society either responds to or accepts or rejects
00:07:11.15 scientific developments. And I'd like to suggest actually that
00:07:16.02 again, we sort of think about this in a slightly different way.
00:07:18.13 First, we need to acknowledge and remember that science
00:07:21.15 is part of society. And that's fairly obvious, right, when you
00:07:24.21 stop and think about it. Science is one way, one approach,
00:07:29.10 it's within society. It's one approach to gathering knowledge
00:07:33.15 in a systematic way, to organizing a community and to
00:07:36.03 learning about our world. In today's society, it's a very powerful
00:07:39.14 way of learning about the world. But it's not the only way, so
00:07:42.22 it's very clear that science operates within a broader
00:07:45.24 societal context. Maybe less intuitive is the suggestion that
00:07:51.06 society is also part of science. So we're often very keen to
00:07:56.03 sort of think that scientists really operate in a little bit of a bubble
00:08:00.02 or a vacuum that's insulated from sort of discussions
00:08:03.21 about -- with the rest of society. And actually, when you stop
00:08:08.12 and think about it again, it becomes very clear that science
00:08:11.03 as a body of knowledge is hugely influenced by and shaped
00:08:16.00 by society in many ways. Everything from the fact that
00:08:20.04 different national context, different countries have different
00:08:24.18 priorities when it comes to supporting science. So the type
00:08:27.23 of science that's done in any given place or any given
00:08:30.17 country or institution is really affected by what the priorities
00:08:35.15 at that particular moment in time are. So that, you know, what we
00:08:39.13 choose to ask as scientific questions is shaped by what society
00:08:42.15 is interested in and values at a given moment in time.
00:08:45.10 But also, we can -- it's not just about the external pressures
00:08:48.21 on science, it's also about the way that science as a kind of,
00:08:53.14 as a community and as an institution structures itself. So
00:08:58.01 for example, there's a lot of discussion and debate at the moment
00:09:01.06 about promoting gender diversity in science and recruiting more
00:09:05.01 women in science. Well, actually, these kinds of discussions
00:09:08.10 are not unique to science. They actually have much broader
00:09:12.16 historical and social context relating to the role of women in
00:09:16.06 the workplace, and kind of broader social cultural concerns
00:09:20.12 about gender diversity. So we can see in many ways actually
00:09:23.19 society is very much a part of science, too. So all this is just to
00:09:27.21 say that, I think when we're talking about synthetic biology
00:09:30.22 in context, what we're really doing is trying to make it clear
00:09:34.12 that actually, science and society are not separate entities.
00:09:37.22 They're deeply interwoven, science is part of society, society
00:09:41.08 is part of science. And actually, as we go through the rest of the
00:09:44.07 talk today, we'll really see -- I'll try and show you some examples
00:09:47.01 of exactly how, how deep these interconnections are.
00:09:50.20 Okay, so as I said, this talk is really going to be about
00:09:54.11 proposing a set of shifts in how we begin to frame the
00:09:58.14 --our discussions about synthetic biology in context.
00:10:02.02 The first shift that I said we would talk about is one of
00:10:05.07 moving from discussions about the downstream implications
00:10:09.04 of a technology, like synthetic biology, to thinking about
00:10:12.04 its social dimensions. So there's actually a long history
00:10:17.15 of referring to the implications of developments in science
00:10:22.08 and technology. And for the purposes of synthetic biology,
00:10:25.18 probably the sort of most important precedent to draw upon
00:10:30.02 is the humane genome project. So this is a project that was
00:10:33.00 funded by the U.S. and British governments, along with a
00:10:39.20 couple of other countries that were heavily invested in sequencing
00:10:43.07 the humane genome. And it was a project that really took place
00:10:45.24 across the 1990s. And what was really innovative about
00:10:49.10 the humane genome project was that of the vast sums
00:10:52.06 of money they were pouring into sequencing the humane genome,
00:10:54.12 they made an explicit decision to dedicate 5% of the
00:10:58.08 funding for this project to study what they called the ethical,
00:11:01.23 legal, and social implications of sequencing the human genome.
00:11:05.10 And this got shortened to the acronym, ELSI, so this
00:11:08.10 is an acronym that you will hear repeated today when you hear
00:11:12.21 discussions about emerging technologies. So what was
00:11:15.09 seen as very innovative to spend some money on thinking
00:11:19.19 about the implications of what it would be like to sequence
00:11:22.15 the human genome. Now, interestingly, this word implication
00:11:25.19 suggests that what we're really doing is saying, "Go ahead
00:11:29.02 and sequence the human genome. And we'll think about
00:11:31.18 what the consequences of what that might be afterwards."
00:11:34.13 So it really positions the ethics, the legal, and the social
00:11:38.23 issues as being downstream of the science. As being
00:11:42.00 things that you worry about only once the science has been
00:11:44.15 done, not something that you think about maybe before
00:11:47.19 you start doing the science or as you're working with the science.
00:11:50.13 And this is a criticism of the kind of ELSI label, that has been
00:11:55.16 picked up on in different places. And so what we've seen
00:11:59.04 actually, over time is modifications of the ELSI label to try
00:12:03.24 and adjust for this concern about leaving the ethics and the
00:12:07.20 social to being downstream. So in different parts of the
00:12:11.04 ELSI label has been modified in different ways. in the U.K.,
00:12:14.24 we often see the term ELSI referring to Ethical, Legal, and
00:12:18.16 Social Issues, rather than implications. In continental Europe,
00:12:22.23 we often hear the term "ELSA," referring to Ethical, Legal,
00:12:26.04 and Social Aspects. But again, sort of not presenting it
00:12:29.19 necessarily as downstream. And in Canada, they've added
00:12:32.22 a couple of extra Es into it. So they talk about Ethical,
00:12:35.19 Environmental, Economic, Legal, and Social Issues.
00:12:39.01 To make sure they're giving enough attention to
00:12:43.04 what they see as some of the broader contextual issues
00:12:47.04 associated with emerging technologies. And actually in
00:12:52.18 synthetic biology too, we see that there has been something
00:12:55.09 of a shift away from this discussions around implications.
00:12:57.24 In the case of synthetic biology, we are seeing some groups
00:13:02.17 adopt again, quite different labels. Not even labels that look
00:13:06.11 like the ELSI label, but that are much more concerned
00:13:09.11 with grappling, in real time, with some of the issues that are
00:13:14.19 cropping up as the field is trying to build itself. And as
00:13:19.03 it's trying to secure a base of support and funding and so on.
00:13:22.16 So there's a U.S. research center in synthetic biology called
00:13:26.08 Synber, that some of you might know about, and there
00:13:28.16 the ELSI questions are often referred to as human practices,
00:13:32.14 or as practices questions. And again, this shift that really gets
00:13:37.02 us away from thinking about the downstream part of
00:13:39.18 what happens after you've done to science to thinking about
00:13:42.10 the actual practices involved in doing the science from
00:13:45.11 conception of the idea right through to the downstream
00:13:48.20 implications. For those of you who might have heard of the
00:13:51.15 iGEM competition, or even have been involved in it,
00:13:54.02 again we see a label for the ELSI work that has become
00:13:58.06 policy and practices. And again, this is very much about
00:14:01.07 trying to draw our attention to some of the real time questions
00:14:03.23 that are emerging that scientists and engineers are grappling
00:14:06.09 with, and that regulatory bodies and members of the public
00:14:09.22 and lawyers and ethicists are starting to raise as the science
00:14:15.05 is beginning to take shape and form. So this is all just to say that
00:14:20.00 I think it's very productive for us to not fall into the trap of
00:14:24.08 thinking about just the downstream implications of science
00:14:27.01 and technology. That there can be a lot of merit to thinking about
00:14:29.19 what happens in real time. So I think one really nice example
00:14:32.22 of paying attention to the dimensions, rather than implications
00:14:35.12 of synthetic biology is to think about some of the metaphors
00:14:39.02 that are currently in use within the field. So we see that
00:14:42.08 for example, metaphors being brought from several fields
00:14:44.23 of engineering in synthetic biology. We see examples from
00:14:49.14 electrical engineering, where trying to turn genetic elements
00:14:56.02 into circuits. So we're talking about input and output functions
00:14:58.23 and building genetic circuits instead of electric circuits.
00:15:04.07 And we can see in published papers about synthetic biology
00:15:07.15 these kinds of diagrams that show us input and output functions.
00:15:11.03 Instead of using electrical wiring here, they're talking about these
00:15:14.16 are all genetic components that they're building into
00:15:18.06 genetic circuits, so the genetic equivalence of electrical
00:15:22.01 components. And as we know with electrical circuitry,
00:15:26.03 we can also program it to produce different types of functions.
00:15:29.03 So again, we're seeing not just the idea that genetic elements
00:15:32.23 can be composed into circuits, but they can also be programmed
00:15:35.10 to achieve certain outcomes. So again, there's been a lot of
00:15:39.09 attention recently in synthetic biology to build logic gates,
00:15:43.06 that's the genetic equivalence of software logic gates.
00:15:47.18 So this figure down here for example, is an example of
00:15:51.07 the architecture of a logical end gate in genetic circuitry.
00:15:55.07 As well as the truth table that's involved in building this
00:15:59.15 circuit. We're also seeing analogies being brought from
00:16:03.18 the field of mechanical engineering. So some of you may
00:16:06.23 have heard discussions of using cells as chassis for
00:16:12.05 bolting your genetic circuits onto. So cells like host
00:16:17.07 organisms like E. coli or yeast, might be used to drive
00:16:22.03 the expression of the genetic circuit of interest, in order to
00:16:25.05 produce your desired outcome. So I'd like to suggest metaphors
00:16:30.11 are actually very powerful things, and they raise a number of
00:16:33.16 questions for us when we start thinking about what the
00:16:36.22 implications are of adopting these metaphors within
00:16:40.17 the context of synthetic biology. So, for example, if we start
00:16:43.16 thinking about cells in terms like circuits and chassis, do we
00:16:49.12 begin to change our understanding of what cells actually are?
00:16:52.19 At the same time, are there limitations to the use of
00:16:58.06 these metaphors? So, for example, if we're referring to
00:17:00.22 cells as chassis, if we really think about what a car chassis
00:17:05.01 is like, a car chassis is not able to reproduce or to evolve
00:17:09.19 in the same way that a cellular chassis might be.
00:17:11.23 So, this raises an interesting question. Is it fundamentally
00:17:16.23 limiting our understanding if we think about cells as chassis
00:17:20.24 or in fact, does it help us with our engineering project
00:17:24.05 in synthetic biology by reminding us that what we really
00:17:26.22 trying to do is to limit the evolution and the reproduction
00:17:29.18 of these chassis? And to really make them as much
00:17:33.04 like mechanical objects as possible. So metaphors are really
00:17:35.24 powerful things in this regard. There's actually a sociologist
00:17:39.19 of science called Susan Lee Star who says explicitly that
00:17:43.04 metaphors lead to power. So power is really about whose
00:17:50.10 metaphor ends up bringing different worlds together.
00:17:52.12 And I think this is a really provocative statement for synthetic
00:17:55.03 biology, because we're seeing a number of different disciplines
00:17:57.21 coming together. We're seeing engineers, computer scientists,
00:18:00.13 and biologists all entering the field. And I think it will be
00:18:03.09 very interesting to see whose metaphors, whose ways of
00:18:06.01 understanding the world prevail when we -- as the field
00:18:10.13 kind of evolves and develops. We can already see in real time
00:18:14.00 that the metaphors being used are shaping the types of
00:18:16.18 research questions that are being asked. And therefore,
00:18:19.07 having some kind of influence of the types of applications
00:18:21.21 that are likely to emerge. This is something that's happening
00:18:24.19 in real time. So as I said, if we just think about the downstream
00:18:28.00 implications of the technology, this is a set of questions
00:18:30.18 that we're probably not likely to be paying attention to.
00:18:33.03 But I would argue that they're questions that are really
00:18:35.11 fundamental to how the technology is likely to develop
00:18:37.21 over the next 5-10 years. Moving on now to the second shift.
00:18:43.12 And it's a related shift in some ways. I said we were going to
00:18:46.14 talk about trying to shift the debate from speculating about the
00:18:50.07 future to anticipating the future. So again, both of these words
00:18:53.22 are words that engage with the future in different ways.
00:18:56.03 Speculation is a term that's a little bit more, kind of a little
00:19:02.15 bit more extreme in some ways, ventures further into the future
00:19:05.05 than a kind of more grounded anticipation does. And I think often
00:19:10.00 the reports that we hear or that we read about synthetic biology
00:19:13.09 and especially in some of the new stories that we read,
00:19:15.22 we see a kind of tendency to veer into speculation about
00:19:19.23 what the future might hold. So just to give you a couple examples
00:19:22.20 about this, two years ago in April 2013, National Geographic
00:19:28.22 published a special issue on de-extinction, or the prospect
00:19:32.14 of using advanced genetic engineering technologies to
00:19:36.04 do things like revive extinct species, or to try and rescue
00:19:40.02 species that were kind of very much at risk of becoming extinct.
00:19:43.02 Now, this type of technology is beginning to be used on projects
00:19:47.10 to bring back species that have sort of recently become very
00:19:52.12 threatened or recently become extinct, like the passenger pigeon,
00:19:55.17 which is a species that sort of became extinct about 100 years ago.
00:20:00.10 But we have a sort of strong historical and cultural connection
00:20:03.16 with. But actually what we found was in the discussions that ensued
00:20:06.17 about this special issue of National Geographic, there was a lot
00:20:10.03 of public discussion and debate about it. Most of the discussion
00:20:12.22 revolved around what would happen if we brought back woolly
00:20:16.01 mammoths or neanderthals. So really verging much further into
00:20:19.01 the future than some of the existing, than the kind of projects
00:20:22.00 that were being worked on in real time. This is also an early
00:20:25.18 example of some of the kind of speculative art and architecture
00:20:28.10 projects that were undertaken in thinking about the future
00:20:31.02 synthetic biology might hold. This is an image of --produced by
00:20:36.16 an architectural studio based at MIT, thinking about what future
00:20:41.03 accommodations might look like in a synthetic biology world.
00:20:43.12 Again, we can see from this picture that it really is something
00:20:46.23 that's kind of much further into the future than what our current
00:20:49.24 living arrangements look like. So, the idea behind the shift
00:20:56.17 is this. Many reports about synthetic biology are very
00:21:00.00 quick to slip into the future tense. And discussion of the future
00:21:03.16 is absolutely important, particularly when you're trying to set up
00:21:06.16 a new field and you're trying to secure support and enthusiasm
00:21:09.15 and investment in the field. So actually new fields really require
00:21:13.14 a visionary momentum in order to command investment and
00:21:17.20 collaboration, and bring people along with you. But the one thing
00:21:22.11 we want to kind of caution against is that promising too much,
00:21:26.08 going too far into the future, can really distract us from paying close
00:21:29.04 attention to the present. And can kind of lead us to sort of enter
00:21:33.24 discussions that in the long run aren't necessarily very productive.
00:21:37.03 So I'm just going to give you a quick example here that relates
00:21:40.17 to some of the growing attention to the biosafety and biosecurity
00:21:44.07 aspects of synthetic biology. So one of the key interests
00:21:49.19 of synthetic biologists is to try and make the engineering of biology
00:21:53.21 faster, more reliable, and more predictable. In short, making it
00:21:58.08 easier to engineer. And one of the motivations for making
00:22:01.08 biology easier to engineer is to allow a wider number of people
00:22:05.00 to participate in the field. So, at some point in the future, you may not
00:22:08.21 need to have a PhD or even a degree at all in molecular biology
00:22:12.20 in order to undertake synthetic biology work. And over the past
00:22:16.16 decade or so, we've seen a number of groups who might be
00:22:19.10 classified as amateurs in some way, entering the field of
00:22:22.13 synthetic biology and really trying to have a go at engineering
00:22:26.03 with biology. So, for example, we've see the very rapid
00:22:30.00 worldwide growth of an undergraduate competition in synthetic
00:22:33.13 biology called iGEM. And we've also seen the growth of a do it
00:22:36.24 yourself biology community in several countries around the world.
00:22:40.08 Amateurs who are getting together to, specifically to develop
00:22:45.01 technologies that will enable cheaper engineering of biological
00:22:48.13 systems. So there's a worry though, that as companies, the rise of
00:22:54.05 these kind of increasingly amateur groups into the field.
00:22:58.23 And there's a worry in particular, that this may lead to implications
00:23:05.22 for biosafety and biosecurity. So some of my colleagues at the London
00:23:09.18 School of Economics have looked at the sorts of policy reports
00:23:13.03 that I showed on the very first slide of this talk, and they've tried to
00:23:16.01 analyze how these reports are talking about the potential
00:23:19.17 biosafety and biosecurity implications of the field. And they've
00:23:23.09 identified what they call a number of myths in the field.
00:23:26.11 And I'm just going to run through 3 of them, they have
00:23:28.18 several more myths and you can -- I've put the reference here and
00:23:32.09 the full reference will be at the end if you want more of this.
00:23:35.04 But for example, they say that a lot of reports talk about how
00:23:38.17 synthetic biology is de-skilling biology and making it easier
00:23:42.07 for terrorists to exploit advances in the biosciences.
00:23:45.16 A second myth they say that appears regularly, and it's related
00:23:49.12 to the first one, is that synthetic biology is leading to the growth of
00:23:52.15 a DIY bio community, and this can offer dual use knowledge,
00:23:56.06 and tools and equipment for bioterrorists who are seeking to
00:23:59.10 do harm. Another myth that they say that occurs regularly
00:24:03.14 in the literature is that DNA synthesis has become cheaper,
00:24:06.21 continues to become cheaper, and it's increasingly being outsourced,
00:24:10.00 and that this in itself will make it easier for terrorists to access
00:24:14.01 DNA and to create biological threat agents. Now, what my colleagues
00:24:18.23 are saying is not that these are completely wrong, but that
00:24:22.08 these ideas about synthetic biology are sort of jumping
00:24:27.07 ahead a little bit. Are thinking about a future of synthetic biology
00:24:31.13 that we're not dealing with yet. So they offer a number of
00:24:35.16 what they call challenges to these myths that are grounded in
00:24:38.16 really looking at what's happening within the field of synthetic
00:24:42.12 biology in practice. So not saying it is already cheaper, it is
00:24:47.14 already faster, therefore these are threats. But saying, if we look
00:24:50.14 at what's happening now, what can we see? And they say
00:24:53.16 for example, that yes, DNA synthesis is becoming cheaper, has
00:24:58.04 become cheaper, but at this stage, it's still not fully accurate
00:25:01.24 and reliable. They also say even once you get pieces of DNA,
00:25:06.15 assembling DNA is a technical challenge. I don't know if any
00:25:09.18 of you have tried this, but depending on the DNA assembly
00:25:13.03 methods you use, it can take a reasonable amount of time
00:25:15.13 to gain expertise to be able to do this reliably. And it's one
00:25:21.01 thing to assembly pieces of DNA, it's a whole other ballgame
00:25:25.04 to start thinking about how you might assemble DNA to create
00:25:28.15 a new pathogen, for example. What my colleagues also point out
00:25:32.24 is that members of the do-it-yourself community are already
00:25:36.15 being very proactive in engaging with the safety and security
00:25:39.16 concerns. They're engaging with their local biosafety officers,
00:25:45.19 they're making contacts with regulatory agencies, and so on. To try
00:25:49.10 and make sure the work that they're doing is grounded in a
00:25:52.18 strong appreciation of safety and security issues. And finally,
00:25:57.19 my colleagues point out then that a lot of the speculation around
00:26:00.22 the future prospects of synthetic biology for nefarious purposes
00:26:05.23 really focus on then, how we can control who has access to
00:26:10.11 the materials and supplies for doing synthetic biology. So
00:26:13.10 you know it's all about getting cheap DNA faster, and what we
00:26:16.05 really need to do is think about how we limit people's access
00:26:18.19 to it. What the policy reports often don't focus on, which is
00:26:23.00 something that you get if you really start looking in practice
00:26:25.03 at what's going on in laboratories, is to say that actually really
00:26:28.08 thinking too about the kinds of skills that are involved in the
00:26:31.15 laboratory work, the type of knowledge that's required to execute
00:26:34.21 synthetic biology projects, is really also something that we should
00:26:37.21 be paying attention to from a policy perspective, if we're interested
00:26:40.23 in limiting the potential biosafety and security hazards that could
00:26:45.04 emerge from this technology. So nobody's saying that it's risk-free,
00:26:48.06 but I think the idea is to not jump too far forward, but to be
00:26:53.03 grounding your -- to be grounding your preparation, you policy
00:26:57.21 recommendations, and your actions in a very good understanding
00:27:00.24 of what's happening in the present. And being very careful in how far
00:27:06.01 you extrapolate that into the future. So the third shift that I want
00:27:10.19 to propose is one where we increasingly move away from talking
00:27:14.17 about public acceptance of new technologies, like synthetic
00:27:18.01 biology, to focusing more on the public good. Now, I can't tell you
00:27:23.09 the number of times I've heard scientists sort of lament
00:27:28.12 or show concern about the fact that public acceptance of
00:27:31.23 synthetic biology is really likely to be a big issue for the field.
00:27:35.04 So this is something that seemed to be more of a threat
00:27:38.04 to the field than actually some of the technical hurdles that
00:27:40.23 are currently being faced. And often in these discussions about
00:27:44.14 public acceptance of technology, you sort of get the feeling
00:27:48.23 that scientists and regulators often assume that the reason
00:27:53.18 that people don't accept new technologies is because they
00:27:56.06 really don't understand them. Because of a certain number of
00:27:58.21 ignorance about the details of the technology. And so
00:28:02.20 the solution to this is often to assume that educating the public
00:28:07.02 about the technology is the solution to our problems. So if only
00:28:11.05 people would understand more about the science involved,
00:28:13.17 we'd find that they'd be much, much happier to embrace
00:28:16.12 the work that we're doing, our new science and technology.
00:28:19.20 This is something that I very often hear scientists talk about.
00:28:22.21 Actually, this is a question we can test empirically. We can ask
00:28:26.18 the question, does more knowledge about science result
00:28:30.05 in more public support for science? And this is a question that
00:28:33.15 social scientists have not been exploring for 30-40 years.
00:28:37.03 And across a whole host of studies that they've done investigating
00:28:41.16 this relationship between knowledge about science and support
00:28:44.18 for science, they've come up with a very complex picture.
00:28:48.08 This is really not straightforward, there's really no linear
00:28:50.24 correlation between how much knowledge you have of science and
00:28:53.09 your support for science. So on a whole, we see is that kind of
00:28:58.07 large scale attempts to increase public knowledge about science
00:29:00.21 have actually not led to widespread increases in public
00:29:04.19 support for science. In fact, countries and social groups that have
00:29:09.06 more scientific knowledge are often not necessarily more positive
00:29:13.07 about science and technology. So, increasing science literacy
00:29:16.11 is no guarantee that you'll be more positive about science and
00:29:20.12 technology. It will guarantee that you're better able to have a debate
00:29:23.03 about it, perhaps. Or that you're in a position to make an informed
00:29:27.00 decision based on your own values. But that may not necessarily
00:29:30.07 correlate with strong support for a proposed technology. In fact,
00:29:34.19 in the case of genetically modified crops, which as some of you may
00:29:37.09 know has been a particularly controversial issue in Europe,
00:29:39.22 one of my colleagues has shown that there's evidence that
00:29:42.20 the more knowledge people have about genetically modified
00:29:45.07 crops, the more likely they are to adopt polarized positions.
00:29:48.18 So either strongly supportive of or strongly opposed to,
00:29:52.00 rather than meeting somewhere in the middle with some kind of
00:29:54.12 consensus on support for the technology. So actually, the more
00:29:58.21 we teach people about science and technology is not a
00:30:01.06 guarantee of more public acceptance for the developments
00:30:06.23 that scientists are pursuing. There's also a somewhat problematic
00:30:11.00 assumption that risk is the key issue that the public is concerned
00:30:14.10 about when it comes to new technologies. So in particular,
00:30:16.23 there's a sense that the public really worries about the health
00:30:19.13 and safety risks of proposed new applications and new
00:30:23.16 developments in science and technology. And as a result,
00:30:26.16 there's a lot of emphasis on the part of companies and regulators
00:30:30.10 to do -- undertake science studies that really try to demonstrate
00:30:33.12 minimal risk or sort of, lack of active harm of the new products
00:30:39.03 and technologies that they're developing. Again this is a question
00:30:43.02 that we can begin to act empirically, if a technology is safe,
00:30:46.00 does this mean that people are obliged to accept it?
00:30:48.19 And actually, sort of a silly response to this would be, of course
00:30:51.11 not! I mean, if I told you that steamed broccoli is safe to eat,
00:30:55.04 that doesn't necessarily mean that this is a technology that you
00:30:58.03 have to embrace and that you have to eat broccoli. There might be
00:31:00.19 a host of other reasons, as to why you choose not to eat broccoli.
00:31:03.15 And in fact, this is very similar to the types of lessons that
00:31:09.24 we've learned from studying the controversies, or the public debates
00:31:14.01 around GM crops in the U.K., which happened over the last
00:31:17.23 sort of 15 years or os. So when GM crops first started to come out,
00:31:22.00 there was this strong assumption on the part of companies and
00:31:24.11 regulators that the main public concerns related to GM crops
00:31:27.09 would be about the risks to the environment, and perhaps
00:31:30.15 to human health, if you were to eat GM crops and if you were
00:31:33.23 to kind of plant GM crops in a widespread manner. So there was
00:31:37.14 a lot of emphasis on carrying out technical risk assessments
00:31:40.16 about the environmental and kind of health risks associated with
00:31:45.17 GM crops. The problem is that these reasonably narrow
00:31:50.16 technical assessments regarding safety didn't take into account
00:31:54.02 a whole host of features that actually were of significant
00:31:57.06 concern to the public when it came to thinking about whether or not
00:32:01.06 GM crops were a technology they wanted to embrace. So,
00:32:04.13 for example, there was no scope within these assessments to
00:32:07.14 discuss who would control these technologies, and in particular,
00:32:10.15 a sense that a lot of GM crops were being promoted by reasonably
00:32:14.09 large multinational companies, who might then begin to control
00:32:17.18 local agricultural systems. There's a long history of farming and food
00:32:22.06 cultures in Europe that varies quite a lot across Europe, as well.
00:32:25.05 So a certain sense of this technology perhaps posing a threat
00:32:28.23 to long standing culture and social histories around food.
00:32:32.24 And also a question, a very legitimate question. from customers
00:32:36.11 about really what the benefits were of these foods, should they
00:32:40.15 choose to by them. So not just about what the risks are, but what
00:32:44.04 is a consumer to gain from buying a genetically modified
00:32:47.08 tomato. Will it taste much better? Will it be much cheaper?
00:32:49.23 What kinds of criteria are important to people when making
00:32:53.00 these decisions? The problem is that because the technical
00:32:57.06 assessments were focused almost exclusively on evaluating
00:33:00.10 risk from an environmental and a health perspective, they weren't
00:33:04.05 able to address some of these broader concerns that people had.
00:33:07.01 So a lesson to draw from this is that it's very problematic
00:33:10.07 to assume in advance that we know what will be important to
00:33:13.01 people when they engage with new technologies. This is something
00:33:15.22 that regulators and policymakers are beginning to take on board.
00:33:19.00 And what they're starting to do is to advocate for a broad shift
00:33:21.21 away from sort of one-way communication from the top down
00:33:25.16 to the public, towards encouraging much more of a two-way
00:33:28.17 dialogue about the prospects of a particular technology.
00:33:31.14 And in the case of synthetic biology, I think this is perfectly justified,
00:33:35.19 because as we know, certainly from the policy reports and a lot of
00:33:39.20 kind of visions that have been put forward for this kind of technology,
00:33:42.18 synthetic biology really aims to serve broad social economic
00:33:46.05 goals. Social and economic goals are not the same as technical
00:33:50.01 goals. And so there is a legitimate question about who should be
00:33:54.10 allowed to have a say and a voice in prioritizing among those goals.
00:33:58.00 And an argument that wider groups of people should be involved in
00:34:03.06 discussing what these goals should be. And this leads us to
00:34:08.15 a discussion about the public good, rather than public acceptance.
00:34:11.18 So when we think about why we're promoting the use of a particular
00:34:15.19 technology, maybe we need to start thinking not so much about
00:34:18.22 whether people will accept it, but what benefits it will bring
00:34:21.18 and how it will best serve the public good. The problem is
00:34:24.14 that this is a slightly thorny issue. At some level, we all have an
00:34:28.03 intuitive grasp of what the public good means, but we have to
00:34:31.02 remember this isn't a static unchanging concept. There's no
00:34:34.01 one single definition of what the public good means.
00:34:37.02 This is a context dependent thing, what might be good for one
00:34:39.22 country at one particular point in time may not serve another
00:34:43.14 country as well. Or there might be different groups, different
00:34:47.12 interest groups within society who see a technology as having
00:34:50.13 particular advantages or disadvantages for them. So what
00:34:54.08 drawing our attention to the public good does is discussing the
00:34:58.03 benefits, the risks, and the opportunities associated with new
00:35:03.09 technologies is something that requires ongoing dialogue
00:35:06.08 and negotiation in the public sphere. It's not something that
00:35:09.10 any one group has the authority to decide. It needs to be
00:35:12.15 debated continuously by broad range of groups. And this
00:35:16.15 leads me quite nicely into the final shift that I wanted to
00:35:19.03 advocate, which is one where we really focus on thinking
00:35:22.24 about the governance of synthetic biology, rather than thinking
00:35:26.08 exclusively about how we would go about regulating it.
00:35:29.15 So again, often when I go to meetings and conferences
00:35:33.01 on synthetic biology, at some point during the day, the conversation
00:35:36.21 turns to a discussion of whether or not synthetic biology is really
00:35:40.16 something new. Is it a new and revolutionary technology? Or is
00:35:46.02 it really an extension of existing technologies? Like industrial
00:35:49.11 biotechnology, or metabolic engineering, or even systems
00:35:52.09 biology. And these debates rarely get resolved because people
00:35:58.24 around the room have very different views about exactly where
00:36:01.15 this technology fits in with this spectrum of other things
00:36:04.06 that scientists are currently working on. But it does have
00:36:08.02 ramifications for how we might go about regulating or governing
00:36:11.21 the technology. If synthetic biology really is a new and revolutionary
00:36:15.11 technology, does this mean it needs new regulations?
00:36:19.11 And if it isn't as new and if it isn't quite as revolutionary
00:36:22.23 as that, are there existing models that we can borrow from
00:36:26.14 that would help us to make determinations about how different
00:36:30.14 applications and products should be regulated?
00:36:33.14 I think a lot of sort of the issues with these types of discussions
00:36:37.02 is that they really focus on how the technology should be regulated,
00:36:39.13 so whether or not it should be allowed or not allowed to enter the
00:36:44.14 market. I think sometimes, in these discussions, it can be very
00:36:47.21 useful to start thinking about not just the regulation of synthetic
00:36:51.21 biology, but more broadly speaking, the governance. Now governance
00:36:55.19 is a kind of, again, term or idea that emerged around the same
00:36:59.09 time as discussions about public dialogue with synthetic biology,
00:37:02.24 instead of just public acceptance. Around the early 2000s.
00:37:06.07 And this was really a time when we were trying to -- policymakers
00:37:09.12 were trying to get away from just thinking about the top down
00:37:13.22 expert driven approaches to policy making, and thinking a little
00:37:17.04 bit more about how to involve broader groups of stakeholders
00:37:19.16 to deliberate the merits and the place of new technologies in our
00:37:25.13 world. And so, you know, again it might be a subtle shift in
00:37:30.05 words, but the idea of governance really draws our attention
00:37:32.20 to the many different groups that are currently playing a role in
00:37:36.07 shaping the field of synthetic biology. And just to show you a snap
00:37:40.19 shot, and this is a small snapshot, but just to give you a sense
00:37:43.01 of the types of players that might be involved. At the moment
00:37:45.21 already, 10 years in, 15 years into the field, we're seeing that there are
00:37:49.20 a whole spectrum of groups that are playing a role in shaping
00:37:52.10 what synthetic biology looks like today. So for example, we have
00:37:56.01 funding agencies in different countries who are making investments
00:37:59.07 into sort of science and engineering projects. We have the centers,
00:38:04.15 the research centers that they're funding, and some of the consortiums
00:38:07.14 and organizations and individual labs that are receiving the research
00:38:10.11 funds. We also have companies that are springing up that are
00:38:14.19 working in synthetic biology. And these may be large and established
00:38:18.10 companies, like ExxonMobil, or they may be companies that are
00:38:21.19 somewhat newer to the scene, starting up in various parts of the
00:38:26.04 world. We also have the emergence, as we talked about earlier,
00:38:30.02 of kind of amateur groups who are increasingly getting involved
00:38:34.16 in wanting to engineer with biology. And there are non-governmental
00:38:39.04 organizations, civil society groups, and often patient activist groups
00:38:43.21 who are also getting involved and trying to argue their own cases
00:38:47.13 for how the field should or shouldn't develop. So all of these groups
00:38:52.10 are playing a role in what the configuration of synthetic biology
00:38:55.14 currently looks like. And this is not to forget the role that institutions
00:39:01.09 like patent offices can have in shaping a field. So decisions that
00:39:05.04 get made about which processes, which applications are worthy
00:39:10.23 of patents or should not be patented will actually have a large
00:39:14.05 ramification for how the field as a whole develops. Now issuing a
00:39:17.21 patent is not typically considered within the remit of talking about
00:39:22.00 things in terms of regulation. But I would argue patenting,
00:39:26.04 for example, is a very important topic that stands to shape
00:39:29.10 the field significantly. And on top of all of this, we know that
00:39:34.24 different countries have different configurations of companies
00:39:38.09 and research funders and so on, and that they also have different
00:39:41.04 histories and traditions of working with new technologies, of thinking
00:39:45.20 about how to decide whether or not to promote particular technologies.
00:39:51.18 Or to fund certain applications over others. So this actually
00:39:56.18 becomes a much more complicated picture than thinking about
00:39:59.05 a very narrow discussion of whether or not we should allow
00:40:03.21 a particular product into a market by imposing certain regulations
00:40:07.11 on it. It might seem complicated, it might seem overwhelming,
00:40:10.16 but actually, I would argue that it opens up a much bigger space for
00:40:13.08 us to begin intervening and thinking about how we would like
00:40:16.07 the culture of this field to develop. And let's not forget too, that
00:40:20.02 synthetic biology as a field itself is hugely interdisciplinary.
00:40:23.13 So already, we're seeing the involvement of natural scientists
00:40:27.19 and engineers and computer scientists from a variety of
00:40:30.07 different academic backgrounds. We're seeing economists
00:40:34.15 and lawyers getting involved, we're seeing sociologists and
00:40:37.05 philosophers and ethicists. We're also increasingly seeing
00:40:40.04 artisan designers taking part in the field. And just the fact
00:40:44.16 that there is this amount of kind of interdisciplinary dialogue
00:40:47.11 going on where people are really trying to work together
00:40:49.13 and develop common ground can have a significant influence
00:40:53.09 on the culture of the field. I would say that the very fact that
00:40:56.21 you're watching this talk, if you have made it through this far,
00:40:59.06 shows that you also can and should have a role in shaping the
00:41:03.14 field of synthetic biology. Whether you're actively involved
00:41:06.14 in practicing in the field, or whether it's something you just have
00:41:10.08 an interest in, this means that you can and should have a role
00:41:17.01 in shaping what you would like to see happen with the field of
00:41:21.24 synthetic biology. So, I think thinking about the idea of
00:41:27.15 governance rather than regulation, really encourages us all
00:41:30.08 to think about what we would like our roles to be and to think
00:41:33.02 about how we might shape a culture and a system, and the
00:41:37.04 kinds of actual tools at our disposal to work from the bottom
00:41:40.06 up, not just from the top down. So that's just the end, that's the end
00:41:46.11 of what I was planning to say today. Essentially just to summarize,
00:41:51.09 you know, I think that the way that policy reports and discussions
00:41:55.19 so far about synthetic biology have been framing some of the
00:41:58.10 broader contextual issues, sometimes get a little bit trapped
00:42:03.23 by the language and the framing that they're using. And so what I
00:42:07.12 tried to do today is to advocate four shifts in how we think
00:42:10.10 about and how we discuss synthetic biology, in a way that I
00:42:13.00 hope will begin to open up a bigger space for conversation
00:42:15.20 that offers us more opportunities to think about and to engage
00:42:19.24 productively and to really shape the future of the field
00:42:23.06 constructively. So when you come across news articles, and
00:42:27.13 reports and stories about synthetic biology, you know, I think it's
00:42:30.13 really worthwhile stopping and taking a minute to reflect on
00:42:33.04 how the stories are being framed, whether they're focusing on
00:42:37.18 implications or whether they're really tackling the dimensions
00:42:40.08 of synthetic biology. How far they're veering into speculating
00:42:43.20 about the field, or are the extent to which they're grounding their
00:42:46.10 discussion in a much more present sense of what's really going
00:42:50.20 on. Whether they're expressing active concern about public
00:42:53.21 acceptance of the technology, or whether they're not seeing the
00:42:56.18 public so much as a problem, but as a group to celebrate
00:43:01.19 and as a hope to try and benefit the public, rather than seeing them
00:43:07.19 as an obstacle to the technology. And whether they're discussing
00:43:11.11 synthetic biology as a technology that needs to be regulated
00:43:13.24 or whether they're opening it up to a broader discussion of
00:43:16.11 governance. So as I mentioned, a lot of these ideas and more
00:43:20.14 details and more examples are available in a book chapter
00:43:23.05 that my colleague, Jane Calvert, and I wrote. The reference
00:43:25.17 details are available here if you're interested. And I've also
00:43:28.18 listed all the reference that I mentioned in the talk, in
00:43:31.01 case you're interested in following up on any of them
00:43:33.23 because you have particular interest in that area.
00:43:37.18 So, thanks very much for listening!

This Talk

Speaker: Emma Frow

Audience:

Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: June 2015

Talk Overview

Dr. Emma Frow suggests that discussions of synthetic biology, both amongst scientists and between scientists and society, need to be reframed in a different context. Conversations need to focus on current, rather than future, experiments and anticipate realistic results rather than speculate about outcomes that are only likely in science fiction. Scientists need to listen to and address questions from the public rather than assume they know how they will react to a new technology such as synthetic biology. And finally, synthetic biology would benefit from governance by the many involved parties rather than regulations imposed by a few perceived experts.

Speaker Bio

Emma Frow

Emma Frow is an assistant professor at Arizona State University in the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering and the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes. She received her PhD in biochemistry and cell signaling at Cambridge University and her MSc in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Edinburgh. Her current work… Continue Reading