The Synthetic Bestiary – Synthetic Biology, Genetic Engineering, and The Future

Congressional Hearing on the Ethics of Synthetic Biology

Gregory Karbnick is a researcher scholar at the Hasting Center who studies bioethics. In the following video he gives a brief testimony at the House Committee on Energy and Commerece in 2010. In this testimony he talks about the ethics of the field of Synthetic Biology. He divides the ethical issues into two categories: intrinsic concerns and concerns about potential consequences – and makes a case that regulation and governance of the field should come primarily from the latter category. Watch the video after the break.

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The Rothamsted GM Wheat Story

The picture above comes from anti-GM protests in the UK in 1999. More than 10 years later there are still anti-GM protests, but it seems like the political landscape has changed. Over the past month a large controversial protest called “Take The Flour Back” has been making headlines with its goal of destroying an open-field experiment of aphid resistant BT-Wheat, developed by scientists at Rothamsted Research. What made this event special however is the way the scientists reacted to the threat of years worth of work being destroyed – and it may have been a turning point for these discussions.

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