Human Practices

OVERVIEW

Synthetic biology isn’t easy to explain to non-scientists. But explaining CRISPR-Cas9 is way harder. Not only because those matters are complex, but also because we still don’t know precisely the consequences of such technologies. If CRISPR-Cas 9 is undoubtedly a revolution, the seism affects other fields, interconnected with science (ethics or law as an example).

As our project use CRISPR-Cas9 we looked for its potential huge consequences. It seemed important for us to collect the opinion of both scientists and non scientists. As we worked on CRISPR-Cas9, we discovered how overwhelming it could be, and ask ourselves how we could imagine a responsible way to work with this technology.

Thus, we tried to find an answer in the concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI). We believe that this concept could help iGEM teams to think about responsability in their project. Considering our project on CRISPR-Cas9, we believed the concept could give us the good questions we should ask ourselves to build a responsible project.

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).

As their is no general responsible rules than can be applied to all project we developed a RRI test : this test works as a feed-back for each iGEM projects, in order to improve the responsability in the long term.

A feed-back on the responsability in a project on CRISPR-Cas9 can give a personal experience about the problematics the project met, and a quick overview on how we could deal with them.

See the RRI test : RRITest.pdf

Respond : (typeform)

Our work on CRISPR-Cas9 had two parts : on the one hand the work with stakeholders, in order to learn more on CRISPR-Cas9, and on the other hand the public engagement we made for popular science, through several activities.

CONFERENCE  : THE SOCIETAL ISSUES OF CRISPR-CAS9

Because we had a strong concern both on popular science 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.

FESTIVAL VIVANT

The “Festival Vivant” is a three days festival, to debate and share views about living organisms and the way we use them. During these three days you could find conferences, workshops and meetings. The iGEM Paris Saclay’s team was there to present the field of synthetic biology and our iJ’AIME project. This festival presented different insights about living organisms to professionals, students and general audience. This festival gave us an other opportunity to do popular science. On this occasion we worked on popularising science : we modeled our project, and presented posters about it.

EXHIBITIONS

The iGEM Paris Saclay 2016 team made an exhibition in Nanterre’s University, a french university that is mostly non-scientific. We made posters, explained to students what was synthetic biology. It was a successful exhibition because the discussion we had with students were very different from discussion from scientific or general audiences !

Pays de Limours

VOX POP

Our team made a vox pop in a park in Paris, “Les jardins du Luxembourg”. We wanted to know if people ever heard of the field of synthetic biology, and if not spread the field and get their opinion on the subject.
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.

Meeting stakeholders

PARIS-SACLAY MEDIA

Members of our team were interviewed by the magazine of Paris-Saclay, the “Paris-Saclay media”. Paris-Saclay media addresses to all the formation of the university Paris-Saclay : we were very pleased to interviewed because the media follows the interdisciplinarity of the University Paris-Saclay by addressing to all formations, and interdisciplinarity is a major part of the DNA of our team !

iGEM teams are leading in the area of Human Practices because they conduct their projects within a social/environmental context, to better understand issues that might influence the design and use of their technologies.

Teams work with students and advisors from the humanities and social sciences to explore topics concerning ethical, legal, social, economic, safety or security issues related to their work. Consideration of these Human Practices is crucial for building safe and sustainable projects that serve the public interest.

For more information, please see the <a href="https://2016.igem.org/Human_Practices">Human Practices Hub</a>.