Week 1: Governance of Biotechnology Assignment

The Current Situation:

Dangerous gene synthesis is covered by intergovernmental treaties like the Biological Weapons Convention, and private organizations like International Gene Synthesis Consortium.

Scientific community, media discourses, consumer response (e.g. contaminated food, CRISPR babies).

Public guidelines on best practices, industrial regulations e.g. from the NIH, Department of Agriculture, DoE.

Gene synthesis producers screen orders against government lists. (DNA 2.0/GENEART Nature letter)

As Megan pointed out, traditional levers for governance are being outpaced by rapidly changing technology.

As the stakes grow higher, we can’t rely on responsive mechanisms (condemnation, centralized screening). We also can’t rely on profit-driven companies to regulate themselves.

(If) it is a good thing for biology to become more open and accessible – away from only elite nations and private companies – how to preserve this trajectory while instating necessary protections for a rapidly expanding community?

Cryptographic protocols could enable a baseline of in-built governance in a semi-democratic manner.

This would not stifle increasing diffusion and decentralization of biotechnologies while encouraging communication, discourse and cooperation within the community.

Proposal

Assuming the risk of biology → information (cf. 3D printing), sensitive forms of DNA analysis and synthesis takes place through encrypted procedures, e.g. using hash functions so that aspects of the sequence/interaction/reaction is encrypted, allowing users to work with data without actually accessing the data (homomorphic cryptography, computing ciphertexts), or accessing it using a private key.

Quorum-based validation, whereby using a process like “Shamir’s secret sharing”, projects requiring sensitive genetic information could be green-lit only when a minimum number of reputation-based “trusted parties” approves the request. (Each party has a “piece” of the secret). This would allow for the relative decentralization of the trusted parties (reputation system rather than state or consortium-sanctioned), while nonetheless requiring cooperation and communication across the network to move forward.

Strong regulation of production: international-level regulation of the manufacture of gene synthesis technologies (i.e. foundries). Analogous to licensing, regulation and standardization for manufacturers of vehicles, weapons, currency, etc.

*Requires all parties to sign onto this protocol. What would incentivize/enforce this? Controlled genetic repository e.g. controlled but open-access genes? Abolition of intellectual property for DNA?

Assumptions and Pitfalls

Collusion between “trusted parties”: decentralized, quorum-based procedure is inevitably built on top of existing geopolitical, financial, institutional, social, networks. These ties would easily corrupt the process. (Could you distribute the keys to only a proportion of parties so that collusion would be less likely?)

“Trusted parties” could be hacked. As could the hashed genetic repository that the process is based on. As with any cryptographic process, someone will lose their keys.

Incorrect assumption: How exactly would a reputation system work? Within a field driven powerfully by profit, wouldn’t parties just buy each other out?

Incorrect assumption: I still assume significant bottlenecks to gene synthesis and development which means that users would still depend on some kind of external process. Can you make smallpox at home?

Incorrect assumption: I assume that “information wants to be free”, and that biotechnology will decentralize to the point that if the genetic information is out there, someone could do something bad with it. Is it better to limit the outflow of information?