Because we were working on CRISPR/Cas9 it seemed important to us to knew more about it. We wanted to lead a responsible project, but we realized we did not know much about CRISPR/Cas9 and its huge consequences. So we decided to investigate the societal issues of CRISPR/Cas9.
This research on the societal issues of CRISPR/Cas9 was for us a public engagement. We built a strong outreach by meeting public through survey, vox pop and exhibitions in order to explain synthetic biology and CRISPR/Cas9 and gather their opinion about it. Then we met a lot of stakeholders in order to know more about those societal issues. It was highly important for us to meet stakeholders from different fields. So we met scientists, politics, and patent attorneys, all working with or about CRISPR/Cas9. At last, we connected our research on the societal issues and our outreach by organizing 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.
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!
The event “Challenge du Monde des grandes écoles et universités (CMGE)” held on 26th of July. This huge sportive event followed by a meeting in which French student and companies were gathered together. Yacine went there to introduce our team in order to find the financial help for our project.
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.
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/Cas9 is not a revolution, but a continuity. In fact, everything CRISPR/Cas9 is able to do already existed (like cutting the genome). CRISPR/Cas9 is neither easier to use: we still need to do a transgenesis in order to use it, and not everybody has the tools to use 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 these 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 is well placed for innovation, there is a lack of valorization and protection.
To see full interview, click here
Geneviève Fioraso Former French of Higher Education and Research ( 2012-2014), Current Deputy
Catherine Proccacia Vice-President of the Parliamentary Office for the evaluation of scientific and technological options, French Senator
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 click here .
French flayer of the conference on the societal issues of CRISPR-Cas9
