Posted for Lizzie Buchen

Researchers in the newly emerging field of synthetic biology need to explain their science to the public to avoid unwarranted fears over its potential, an international group of researchers warned this week.

Public education and engagement are two of most important challenges facing the field, which aims to build biological components with potentially useful functions, they told a symposium held at the US National Academy of Sciences. But the relatively new discipline also presents a unique opportunity for public outreach, according to keynote speaker Arden Bement, Jr, director of the National Science Foundation: “we have the chance to get it right at the outset”.

“These days, emerging technologies are social issues,” he said. “We need to educate and fully engage citizens about critical issues like environment, security, safety, and health. Science has the tools to inform decision and policy.”

As for the language of communication, the participants commented that, due to the severe problem of public understanding of science, phrases like “genetic engineering” and “synthetic biology” trigger fear and superstition. Stanford engineer Drew Endy joked that it might be more readily accepted if renamed “shiny happy biology”, but it would be better served, he said, by a clear explanation of the science that is accessible to policy makers and the public.

The speakers also made frequent references to the Asilomar meeting of 1975, when scientists gathered to discuss the safety and societal issues involved with using recombinant DNA. Synthetic biologists, too, need to embrace a similar attitude toward self-regulating their work and thinking about its implications for humanity.

Paul Rabinow of the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center, discussed the potential risks of insufficient public dialogue in more specific terms.

“Given the access to this material through the internet, there are unquestionably going to be accidents and malicious uses. That’s a given,” he said.

“But then what? What is the reaction to that going to be? Shut down biology? That’s what Dick Cheney would have done. I don’t think the biology community is prepared with answers to that question yet. But they need to be.”

See also

Synthetic biology gets ethical – UK centre hopes to blend science, policy and outreach in burgeoning field, Nature 12 May 2009