Effective and responsible communication of research in Synthetic Biology

Scroll down to the bottom for the three sections of this week's assignment and skip my ramblings

After reading through the literature I found on biosafety, ethics and the future of synthetic biology and/or biology in general, I was left with more questions about ethics and biosafety than I started out with [ Find a list of resources below].

• What exactly is the definition of synthetic biology?

• If we built a machine that can compute like a biological neural network, does it count as a living thing ?

• What are the ethics of release of synthetic organisms into the wild ?

• Actually, are those ethics different if we release synthetic organisms in space ?

• What would be the societal consequences of having an ability to manipulate/create life ?

• Should information sequence information be open sourced or censored in some ways ?

• Is it the responsibility of scientists to have exhaustive debates around the unintended consequences of the technologies they are designing ?

• What are some repercussions of having technologies that can extend life - would nature of our work, familial relationships, spiritual beliefs, structure of our society change ?

• How would synthetic biology applications increase the inequality gap between have and have-nots ?

• How would biosafety regulations scale beyond a country ?

• Would disastrous consequences would arise due to environment manipulation through synthetic biology applications by countries with a different set of biosafety regulations ?

• AND SO MANY MORE!

Parallels in Artificial Intelligence

I was also reminded of a book by Norbert Weiner, the founding father of Cybernetics. In his book, The Human Use of Human Beings, he says this about rise of artificially intelligent machines:

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The machine’s danger to society is not from the machine itself but from what man makes of it.

I believe the same also applies to any living machine engineered through discoveries in Synthetic Biology.

In the book, Wiener also talks about how despite humankind's best attempts at creating order and structure in our societies, scientific breakthroughs introduced chaos in the form of new information about our universe. Most of these scientific breakthroughs were previously unimaginable.

Refer to https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/06/15/the-human-use-of-human-beings-norbert-wiener/ for a longer discussion on the book and views on other authors on ethics of artificial intelligence

The unpredictability of the next discovery in science makes it hard to proactively plan as a society for all the unforeseeable consequences of new technologies.

Calling for a blanket moratorium on living machines like https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/03/111-organizations-call-synthetic-biology-moratorium has the danger of stifling scientific research. On the other hand, not planning for unintended consequences can have devastating consequences for our societies and environments. So how do we move forward?

Engineered living machines will affect every one of us so it makes sense to let everyone have a say in setting rules and regulations for biosafety. But, proponents of this idealized democratic approach to biosafety forget the knowledge-based inequalities between various individuals in our societies. While there have been many breakthroughs and scary technologies in our past (like the bomb), synthetic biology is coming of age in the age of the internet. Unlike other technologies, synthetic biology's proximity to manipulating/creating "life" also raises religious concerns for certain factions in our societies. While members of the scientific community may understand the nuances and limitations of new technologies and research, headlines like these are usually the content consumed by the general public

While using such headlines as clickbait is not necessarily a bad thing, most often the headlines are linked-to articles that don't fully discuss the details or limitations of these technologies. There have been many technologies in the past that have fallen prey to sensationalism in news and acquired a bad reputation as a consequence despite their many benefits (eg-GMOs). Those headlines above, in particular, were one of the reasons why President Barack Obama asked the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to review the state of synthetic biology and identify appropriate ethical boundaries by consulting with scientists, engineers, faith-based and secular ethicists others. The commission found that the research does not amount to creating life as either a scientific or a moral matter. While it is definitely a good thing for governments to periodically review the state of science and discuss the ethical and safety issues, I think these discussions shouldn't be driven by the trending topic on twitter. Some of the more dangerous technologies may not receive the same media attention as "creating life".

Questions of ethics never have a binary answer and instead should be built through discussions between scientists, ethicists, policymakers and other concerned parties. These questions can be about publishing risky research and methodologies, gain of function research, open-sourcing information, privacy, communicating the research, etc. While it might be ideal to have an ethicist on every research team who can listen and raise these ethical questions as a proactive measure instead of reactive, not all teams can afford to have one. So as a solution, we propose an online community forum EthicsOverflow - similar to StackOverflow for software engineers.

Goals & Rationale

• We already have some well thought out biosafety regulations and we have been fortunate so far in avoiding frequent widespread disasters as a direct consequence of these technologies. But these regulations need to be periodically updated and reconsidered in the light of new advances in science.

• Most of the existing biosafety regulations are reactive rather than proactive. The best time to think about ethics is while planning research projects.

• Most of the existing biosafety regulations are also broad in scope and miss nuances and issues with specific technologies that only experts in the fields can recognize.

• Ideally, it's best to have a bioethicist on every research team who can listen and raise these ethical/safety questions as a proactive measure. Example of this - https://www.statnews.com/2017/02/23/bioethics-harvard-george-church/

• But since it might not be affordable for every research team to include an ethicist as part of their team, we propose an online platform for discussion on ethics and safety of experiments. EthicsOverflow - Similar to StackOverflow for software developers to discuss/ask questions about programming.

Design & Requirements

• EthicsOverflow would be a platform for anyone (scientists, policymakers, ethicists ) to raise concerns about a specific technology or direction of research or a new protocol.

• The platform can implement a system of upvoting/downvoting for people to upvote answers similar to stack overflow. This information can provide insights into popular views on a specific topic and can inform policymakers.

• The platform could also have a system of badges for identifying backgrounds of various contributors and this could help identify views of various factions in our society on specific topics.

• The platform would facilitate discussions around nuances and issues with specific technologies that would be out of scope for any one biosafety regulatory committee.

Assumptions & Risks of “Success”

• These discussions would help us be more proactive about new directions of research rather than be reactive.

• This kind of platform would only be successful under the assumption that everyone is equally incentivized to talk about ethics and biosafety.

• There is also an information overload paradox that may act as a barrier for meaningful discussion.