SynthETHICS

Hello, Stefan here. Second Lifer extraordinaire and now official iGEM ethicist. You might be wondering what’s been going on in our Ethics department. Well, you’re in luck, because I’m about to tell you! Mandy, Emily, Fahd and I have been keeping busy by reading a few papers on synthetic biology. These include papers about the economics of synthetic biology, bioterrorism, and general ethical issues regarding the field. The ideas expressed in these papers will be used to elucidate both sides of ethical debates surrounding our project and to present evidence for our statements. For our project, the issues that we will look at will be: Environmental, Ethical, Economical, Legal, and Societal (E3LS). We will also take into account pre-cautionary perspectives (things are bad until considered safe) and pro-actionary perspectives (good until proven otherwise). Our paper will involve two (or more) applications of our signaling system that will be evaluated through E3LS. Can’t wait to get working on it!

In other news… We are thinking of holding an ethics conference in Second Life. We plan to invite many guests to share their thoughts as well as other people involved in iGEM. However, this probably be done in late September. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in future updates.