The Societal Issues of CRISPR/Cas9

Engagement

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

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 17 teams to fill this test we saw how much inclusiveness is important among iGEM teams.

Firstly, we tried to have a great outreach, then we learned a lot on CRISPR/Cas9 by meeting politics, scientists or patent Attorneys. At last, we connected public and stakeholders during a conference on the societal issues of CRISPR/Cas9.

Outreach

Synthetic Biology Survey

In a first step, in order to build a better outreach, we wanted to know how much people knew about synthetic biology. We made a survey and spread it as much as possible. We know survey are not always the best reflection of the reality. In a vision of righteousness and honesty we looked for the weaknesses of our results in order to have the best interpretation of it. Here are some rules we should keep in mind about this results:

• We tried to have answer of both scientists and non-scientists in reasonable proportion, in order to have a truest vision of the reality. If we didn’t pay attention we knew most of the people who would have answered would be people close to us, and most of them are scientists.

• This survey has been spread on social networks. Most of the people who answered to it are French young people (79% of the people are between 20 and 30 years old).

Some questions interested us. We knew from previous experiences that synthetic biology is not well-known among public. A lot of medias talked about CRISPR-Cas9. We wanted to know if people without scientific background knew more CRISPR-Cas9 than synthetic biology. We guess we could see the influence of medias on scientific knowledge.

The survey showed us clearly that the influence of the media was not so important: only 10% of the people had heard about CRISPR-Cas9 without knowing synthetic biology.

The main factor of knowledge of synthetic biology and Crispr-Cas9 seems to be the scientific educational background.

Ethics: We also wanted to know how a scientific formation could impact the perception of CRISPR-Cas9. We thought people without scientific background would probably have more fears than people which have a scientific formation. Here again our expectations have been challenged: 3% of the people without scientific background strongly fear CRISPR-Cas9, while 9% of people with scientific background strongly fear it… 66% of the people without scientific background and 60% of people with scientific background think CRISPR-Cas9 could lead to new treatments. The results are very low and quite similar: the perception of CRISPR-Cas9 does not evolve that much, if you have a scientific background or not. People fear CRISPR-Cas9 but as they know it could be beneficial for society they are in favor of it. Nonetheless, the bulk of the people we asked (76%) think editing genome is good but should respect strict laws.

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!

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.

To the question about using animal in synthetic biology, the persons who were against changing a bacteria's genome were also against it for animal. However, some of them for who changing a bacteria's genome was conceivable, were against modifying an animal's genome because of the mistreatment of animals.

Meeting stakeholders

In order to know more about the societal issues of CRISPR-Cas9 we went to met stakeholders from different fields around science and law.

Agnes Ricroch

Agnès Ricroch, Professor at AgroParisTech School working on plants and their regulations

She brought an interesting opinion: CRISPR-Cas is not a revolution, but a continuity. In fact, everything CRISPR is able to do already existed (like cutting the genome). CRISPR is neither easier to use: we still need to do a transgenesis in order to do it, and not everybody has the tools to do it. On regulations Mrs Ricroch casted a light on the non-coherence of the system. A lot of different regulations coexists, for GMO’s or plants for instance. However, sometimes, those different regulations apply to the same object: how can we guess if an organism underwent genetic mutations ? Oftenly, those mutations cannot be seen on the final results. The law needs to be updated on the technologies, to be able to seize all of the evolutions.To learn more about GMO regulation, click here. When we talk about CRISPR-Cas9, we immediately think about ethics and abuses. Mrs Ricroch had a strong concern on putting first the great challenges facing humanity. Among these challenges, some of them can be solved by science. She told us we had to weigh the pros and the cons. But we should always remember first the issues we would be able to solve with science.

To see full interview, click here.

Marc Fellous

Marc Fellous, Emeritus Professor at Paris Diderot University and Medical Doctor

He told us CRISPR technique is a revolution because it eases genome editing which obviously raised new issues. It is, thus, necessary to established rules. Today, CRISPR has a wide range of applications: plants, animals, insects. CRISPR is interesting today in the struggle with Zika virus transmitted by mosquitoes. Some researcher looks at the question by modifying genetically female to render them sterile thereby erasing any progeny. When it comes to the question: Does this technique should be applied to humans? Well, there is a general consensus among the scientific community, the answer is no, not if it affects the human progeny. To sum up, CRISPR is a more precise gene editing technique which ease the process and reduce the risk of “off-target”.

To see full interview, click here.

Eric Enderlin

Eric Enderlin, French and European Patent Attorney at Novagraaf

Legally speaking, CRISPR does not raise any issue, patent law is the law of innovation. Research and legal protection can work together. The problem comes from a misguided perception: patentability provides a return on investment which allows then to fund future researches. The example is clear when it comes to fund research for rare diseases. In those cases, where public fund is difficult to obtain because the number of patients is small, patentability offers a solution. Patent law is not there to restrain scientists in their work, indeed, 80% of the scientific information is contained in those patents. As a consequence, Patent law must be seen more as a source of economic development and a source of information. In France, the tradition for scientist is to published their results for the recognition from their peers. This tradition destroys the requirement of novelty necessary to patent any invention. Thus, in France even if the country has the first place for innovation, there is a lack of valorization and protection

Connect public and stakeholders

If we met public and stakeholders to improve our research on the societal issues of CRISPR/Cas9 we also connected the two. This connection happened during a conference we made about the societal issues of CRISPR/Cas9.

Conference about 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 at AgroParisTech school using CRISPR-Cas9 on plants, and Pierre Walrafen an European patent attorney.
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. To learn more about GMO regulation, click here.

French poster of the conference on the societal issues of CRISPR-Cas9