Difference between revisions of "Team:Paris Saclay/HP/Silver"

Our scientific project required to use CRISPR-Cas9. We quickly understood that the we didn’t know much about this technology, and chose to work on its issues. Beyond the scientific world, CRISPR-Cas9 addresses major questions to different fields : it permitted us to identify easily the questions we wanted to work on. Our issues were scientific, but also societal (ethics, law, economy).

This lead us to investigate about CRISPR-Cas9 and its major consequences in several fields. We tried to draw the consequences and think about what would be a responsible use for scientists but also considering the societal issues. Our Human Practices followed two goals : researching among stakeholders what would be a responsible use, and vulgarisation for public. We met different stakeholders and we made a conference on “The societal issues on CRISPR-Cas9”. This conference in front of students permitted us to vulgarise this new technology. We also met the public as often as we could to explain what was synthetic biology, CRISPR-Cas9, and the issues of it (conference, “Festival vivant”, exhibition in the Nanterre’s university, exhibition in the” pays de Limours”, vox pop, polls).

VULGARISATION : A KEY CONCERN

As we believe scientific vulgarisation is a key concern in synthetic biology and especially for CRISPR-Cas9, we lead several actions of vulgarisation. During a vox pop we saw that people were mostly unaware of synthetic biology itself. We thus tried to meet public, to discuss with us of synthetic biology, CRISPR and our project. (link of the vox pop ?) We met students during an exposition in the Nanterre University, but also during the Festival Vivant, opened to everyone and an exposition at the Pays de Limours. What did we learn of this experiments ? Most of the people we met trust scientist to be responsible in their use, and doesn’t feel legitimate to bring a critic on a subject they don’t master.

CONFERENCE : THE SOCIETAL ISSUES OF CRISPR-CAS9

Because we had a strong concern both on vulgarisation and meeting stakeholders, we hold a conference in our university, in front of students, with two researchers, Jean Denis Faure, a researcher and teacher using CRISPR-Cas9 on plants, and Pierre Walrafen a scientific with a cellular biochemistry and patent engineer. We tried with our guests to think about the societal issues of CRISPR-Cas9, for the ethics, the law and the economy. The ethical problems CRISPR-Cas9 is bringing are huge, and for most of them, unknown. The ethical problems comes with what is done with the technology : therapeutical applications ex vivo or for genetical diseases, or applications on embryos and germ cells. The ethical problems comes along with the question of transhumanism. The issues are rising because of the simplicity of CRISPR-Cas9, authorizing a wider scientific audience to edit the genome.

About the legal framework, our speakers made a comparison between the European legal framework, the process based evaluation, and the product based evaluation, and how the patentability was in Europe restrained by a principle of public order.

What did we learn ? Leading a project on fundamental biology involves to work a lot with stakeholders. In a RRI vision, a fundamental project is an opportunity to think about the responsability of science, in our case CRISPR-Cas9. The we saw that the potentiality of CRISPR-Cas9 was huge. This leads to two things : it’s very difficult to define precisely what could be the impacts, thus a harder work must be furnished on the subject. vulgarisation for the public is a key issue. CRISPR-Cas9 is easy to use, even by students and has big consequences. We should define the purposes with more rigor and strengthen the safety part. Using CRISPR-Cas9 requires to know about the gene before we can mutate its functions. This requires to work on genes we already know about or to have a strong research on the gene. In the ethical field we should always balance the advantages and the disadvantage. Even if it seems obvious, it is fundamental to do this and to present the balance to the public opinion.

★ ALERT!

This page is used by the judges to evaluate your team for the <a href="https://2016.igem.org/Judging/Medals">human practices silver medal criterion</a>.

Delete this box in order to be evaluated for this medal. See more information at <a href="https://2016.igem.org/Judging/Pages_for_Awards/Instructions"> Instructions for Pages for awards</a>.

</div>