To gauge some idea of public opinion on Synthetic Biology, we created an online survey which was available from July 25th to September 18th 2012. It received 107 responses from people with a wide range of backgrounds, including undergraduates, professional scientists and lay members of the public. Responses came from people in a variety of age groups, with most respondents 62.5%) aged 17-25 age range category. 57% of respondents were female and 43% male. The questions asked in the survey were as follows:
Results
Responses showed that participants have more of an awareness of "Genetic Modification" than they have of "Synthetic Biology". This is unsurprising as the term "Genetic modification" is still preferred by the media. More than half of respondents claimed they had never heard of iGEM previous to participation in this survey, which highlights the need for more publicity of the competition by those involved at all levels. We felt as a team that public engagement with iGEM was extremely important and from the outset we tried to engage with the public as much as possible.
It is promising to find that most respondents to our survey appear to be “for” Synthetic Biology- only 2% said they were against the development of this science. Those who replied with “neither” mostly backed this viewpoint by saying that they did not feel informed enough about Synthetic Biology to decided whether they were for or against this field of Biology.
When asked what worried them the most about synthetic biology, the majority of participants replied that they were concerned about the “misuse or abuse” of this technology. Others were worried about the “unknown, unintended consequences”.
For question 9, 55% of respondents replied that they thought restrictions should be made on the use of animals and plants in synthetic biology. However, most people were happy for animals to be used as long as proper controls were in place- most respondents already thought that the restrictions currently in place for the use of animals in research are sufficient.
Most of the respondents said that they would have no problem with consumming foods that had been altered using Synthetic Biology techniques (question 10), as long as the production of this food had no negative effects for animals, the environment or ourselves. Many believed that synthetic biology could play a positive role in helping towards a solution for alleviate the growing world food crisis.
A majority of the replies were positive towards the idea of Synthetic Biology being used to improve current treatments in healthcare (question 12). 68.3% agreed that Synthetic Biology has the potential to improve the standard of living for future generations through improved medicines and treatments, whilst 27.9% replied that they thought it maybe had this potential.
Respondents were also mostly positive towards the idea of using Synthetic Bbiology to treat illness in a close friend or family member. Those who did reply with a negative opinion mostly explained this viewpoint by stating that they did not feel that they knew enough about Synthetic Biology to support its use. Others, however, did not feel that modern drug testing standards were sufficient for them to feel comfortable with treatments developed using Synthteic Biology technologies. Most responders agreed though that they would support the use of Synthetic Biology in treating disease if the treatment “passed all necessary safety tests” and “worked for its intended purpose”.
It can be concluded from our survey results that a majority believe that health and medicine will benefit positively from developments in Synthetic Biology. The final question of the survey was created to get the public thinking about our project specifically. 86% replied with the viewpoint that development of an oral/suppository tablet created through synthetic biology would be a better treatment for
C. difficile infection than current treatment strategies. This result is highly gratifying, as this supports the work that we have done for our project.
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