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 there 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 issue of CRISPR/Cas9
French poster of the conference on 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 du 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.
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.
Agnès Ricroch is a professor 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.
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.
We also talked about CRISPR with the professor 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”.
