The Societal Issues of CRISPR/Cas9

Engagement

Guided by curiosity we tried to establish a public dialogue beyond the lab on the societal issues on the CRISPR/Cas9 technology. We met public and stakeholders and tried to combine their contributions. We wanted for everyone the possibility to express an opinion on science. Everyone should be able to question Synthetic Biology, professional or citizen. This is even more true with the CRISPR/Cas9 technology. The ethical question behind is so big that every citizen should be involved. We tried to gather all of the opinion on the societal issues of CRISPR/Cas9 the societal issues of CRISPR/Cas9, from different fields, but also from public and professionals. We then tried to spread this information with general audiences.

Our concern about Public Engagement is so strong we made "Inclusiveness" one of the principles of our Responsible Research and Innovation Test. To learn more about it, see our researches on Responsible Research and Innovation. When we asked to 18 teams to fill this test we saw how much inclusiveness is important among iGEM teams.

Firstly, we tried to build a strong outreach. In order to do so, we did a survey to know how much people knew about synthetic biology and CRISPR/Cas9 and what were their feelings about it. We also made a vox pop vox pop for the same reasons. With this information, we saw what people knew about synthetic biology and CRISPR/Cas9. Thus we tried to explain more what those techniques represent through many exhibitions, at the Festival Vivant or at Nanterre University for example. We also learned a lot on CRISPR/Cas9 by meeting politics, scientists or patent attorneys meeting politics, scientists or patent attorneys. We conducted many interviews with people working with or about CRISPR/Cas9. We learned and CRISPR/Cas9 but we also saw the great oppositions between people on science in general or CRISPR/Cas9 in particular. At last, we connected public and stakeholders during a conference on the societal issues of CRISPR/Cas9 conference on the societal issues of CRISPR/Cas9. Our lecturer were Jean-Denis Faure, professor at AgroParisTech and Pierre Walrafen, patent Attorney.