Team:Evry/HumanPractice/FirstSurveyB

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Human Practice

We decided to put on line the various answers we had from the survey. However as some team members requested, those answers are anonymous.

Some of them were in English, others were in French. For the French ones, translations will come during the summer.

First Survey

B/ Do you feel embarrassed when you have to explain what you are doing to your friends or family?

Not at all! I feel proud !

Yes I am. Synthetic Biology is a tough subject to talk about, especially with people without a scientific background. Whenever someone asks me a question about it, I can’t just give a simple and quick answer such as “fluorescent frogs”. I feel necessary to explain the whole process, the different potential goals and perspectives. However, explaining the details of the project takes time and during family dinners or casual discussion with friends, it gets boring really fast. This is why, unless the person is willing to spend some time and effort understanding the project, I never give that much details and always end up talking about very general things.

No, I feel rather proud of working on research and on this new field “synthetic biology”. However sometimes for me it is controversial, because not only my parents but also me think something like I am playing “God” and that it may have side effects that we cannot control. So in a way it’s very exiting because this field is really new, but because of this it can me also dangerous cause we are not aware of all the consequences, and it’s impossible to predict this.

Not at all. I feel this is very cool.

No, I’m glad to talk about it, because I know that there are some great ethical problems and discussing with my friends and family can help me think about it. Moreover, I think it’s important to make the population feel concerned about the advantages and the problems of that domain. I believe it is the only way to show them that people who work on it think about those problems, and to avoid what has happened with GMOs; a kind of demonization of the firms and people who work upon that just because it was something really new for them, that they never really heard of before it ended up in their plates for dinner.

Nevertheless, I try to choose well my words in order to convince them that on the one hand the potential of doing “good” stuff is enormous (such as replacing chemicals or doing less expensive drugs, or finding a new effective ways to replace petroleum)and on the other hand we can end up making really bad stuff if we do not control enough who can use it and how to use it.

No, my family (especially my mum and sister) are really interested in this project and ask me about ours advancements regularly. My non-biotechnologists friends are used to some “crazy projects” I do, so I left the stage of embarrassment behind me. Besides I do not believe in science for science, but science for a cause.

Pour ce qui est de la famille, je pense que c'est assez subjectif, en effet ma famille n'ayant pas fait de grandes études (voire pas du tout), ils se sont assez impressionnés quand je leur explique ce que je fais. Enfin même en essayant de vulgariser au maximum ma famille ne s’intéresse que partiellement à mon travail, comme j'ai dis c'est assez subjectif. Pour ce qui est de mes amis, j'ai eu des avis assez convergents, j'ai des amis assez scientifique donc l'avis qui ressort le plus c'est : "Bah c'est soit des têtards soit des souris donc voila , et puis l'éthique ne reste qu'un frein a la science" . J'essaye de garder un esprit non pro-scientifique, l'éthique reste essentiel à l'avancée scientifique.

No but maybe I should, they sometimes give me weird looks.

No, I’m not embarrassed but I tried to explain that it is not the same thing that to work on a dog or a cat.

Non car en général ils ne voient pas les possibles dérives du domaine. Après la manière dont chacun présente le sujet doit influencer aussi les réactions. Moi je me concentre plus sur la partie technique quand j'ai à en parler donc cela laisse, je pense, moins de place à l'imagination.

No, because the aim of this is to help identifying hazardous material that threaten human lives and no doubt that our intentions of using tadpoles is to torture a living soul.

Pas du tout! Pour moi la manipulation génétique n'est que la continuation de la tentative de l'homme à dompter la nature pour son évolution. Donc je classe la biosynth dans la continuité de l'agriculture et de l'élevage primaire d'il y a 12000ans.

D'autant que ces expérimentations ne sont pas douloureuses pour les têtards ou grenouilles, et j'irais même jusqu'à dire qu'on leur offre une putain de vie par rapport à ce qu'il aurait dans la nature.

Je ne me sens pas embarrassé mais c’est assez difficile à expliquer aux personnes qui ne connaissent rien à la biologie. En plus, la biologie synthétique est très récente et mal définie. J’ai souvent le réflexe de qualifier la biologie synthétique « d’OGM amélioré » et les OGM ont une image très négative. Mais ce raccourci de langage permet aussi de faire réagir les gens et ça c’est intéressant.

Pas vraiment, j'ai déjà travaillé avec des grenouilles ça fait toujours sourire, du coup c'est plutôt bien accepté, surtout si tu dis que tu fais des grenouilles fluo, certains demandaient d'en ramener pour les aquarium (ils ne font pas la différence entre fluorescent qui demande une lampe UV pour le visualiser et phosphorescent qui est visible directement).

Sinon ils vous posent rapidement des questions pour savoir si ça peut être dangereux pour l'environnement, prolifération des gènes ou autre. Ils acceptent qu'on fasse cela seulement si il a un intérêt scientifique, avec application concrète pour permettre d'aider les population (détections de polluants, tests de produits cosmétiques etc...).

It depends to whom you have to explain. The first times you explain the project, it is a bit hard, as you don't want to be misunderstood. The hardest for me was telling my mom, I was a bit anxious about her reaction. Therefore, she's one of the first people I talked to about the project, asking her straight-forwardly (if) and what seemed wrong to her in the project, in order to discuss it.

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