Team:Paris Bettencourt/Human Practice/Debate

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Why

We decided to organize a debate on the question "This house would allow environmental release of genetically modified bacteria for applications in the following fields: medicine, pharmacy, agriculture, energy, bioremediation" for the following reasons:

• Only 17% of Europeans, and 12% of the french population, had heard about synthetic biology in 2010 (Eurobarometer 2010 on biotechnoly). In our human practice report, we came to the conclusion that efforts to raise awarness should be made.

• One of the lessons we can learn from the GMO case study in our human practice report is that people want to have a say on new technologies.

Objectives

1. To raise awarness about synthetic biology in the population.
2. That students who previously knew nothing about synthetc biology have a passionate debate on releasing genetically modified bacteria in the wild.
3. To see how students who previously knew nothing about synthetc biology react to such a motion: where they will get the information, what type of arguments they will come up with, will they consider things from a different angle that we do?
4. To get the audience's feedback on the debate and views on the question.
5. To bring together scientists and non scientists to discuss releasing gentically modified bacteria in the wild.
6. That the debate be accessible to everyone

Procedure

We organised a debate on the following motion "This house would allow environmental release of genetically modified bacteria for applications in the following fields: medicine, pharmacy, agriculture, energy, bioremediation".

Style

Debates have been organized over and over in iGEM. To be more origininal, we decided to use one of the codified debating style used by French debating clubs. This is the FDA style, also referred to as "Paris 5 Debating Style". Let me briefly run through the main features. There are 2 teams of 5 speakers. One team is assigned to be in favor of the motion (government side), the other team to be against the motion (opposition side). The first speaker of the government will speak, then the first speaker of the opposition, and so on. Speakers can be interupted by POI's, that is, in the form of a question made to a speaker by a member of the opposing team. The speaker may or may not accept the point, but is obliged to accept at least one and is expected to accept two during his or her speech. Speeches are 6 minutes long. The motion is annouced one week in advance.

Debators

Participants were students members of french debating clubs. There was a very big diversity in terms of background, though no synthetic biologist.

On the side of the proposition we had, in order of speech:

Mister Ivan PALENICK, from the buisness school "Ecole Supérieure de Commerce Paris"

Mister Charles PARTINGTON, from the engineering school "Ecole Centrale Paris"

Miss Xinglu LIN, from the institute of political study "Sciences Po Paris"

Miss Alix MOMMEJA, from the law school "Paris II - Assas" AND from the buisness school "Ecole Supérieure de Commerce"

Mister Omar LAYACHI, from the egineering and military school "Ecole Polytechnique de Paris"

On the side of the opposition we had, in order of speech:

Aurélien GLEYZE, from the engineering school "Ecole Centrale Paris" AND from the institute of political study "Sciences Po"

Max FATHI, a PhD student in mathematics at the "Ecole Normale Supérieure-Ulm"

Julie BERG, from the buisness school "Ecole Supérieure de Commerce Paris"

Xavier LAVAYSSIERE, from the law school "Paris II - Assas"

Diane CHODRON, from "Paris Descartes Medical School

Judges

Our 8 judges were experienced debators, teachers, and 2 students from the UCL and Grenoble iGEM teams. By alphabetical order:

Jean Batiste Crabière, from the Magistracy School "Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature"

Mrs Kathryn English, who is a lecturer at the law school "Paris II - Assas" AND coach of their debating team

Mister Romain Decharne, from the law school "Paris II - Assas"

Mister Kai Dittmann, from the engineering school "Ecole Centrale Paris" and member of the Berlin Debating Team

Mister Grégory Hansen, from the Grenoble 2012 iGEM team, AND a master student in neurobiology

Miss Maria Kfoury,from "Paris Descartes Medical School"

Mister Philipp Boeing, from the UCL 2012 iGEM team, AND an undegraduate student in computer science

Miss Desislava Tocheva, from the law school "Paris II - Assas" AND coordinator of the Franco-British Project

Invitation to the debate

The following description was posted on the facebook event page of the debate, on the CRI forum, and sent to all other french iGEM teams:

Imagine a world where you can create bacteria and plants that purify water from heavy metal, that fertilize arid land, that detect cancer.

Synthetic biology has made all of that possible.

Now imagine a world where these genetically modified organisms can be created, but also actually used (to be used they need to come out from their confinement in the lab, and into the environment).

To some people, this world is a dream come true, to others, its hell!

On Sunday the 16th of September, we are giving a voice to all citizens.

Students from all possible backgrounds (but no expert in synthetic biology) will have a passionate, enlightening, entertaining debate on the following motion: "This house would allow environmental release of genetically modified bacteria for applications in the following fields: medicine, pharmacy, agriculture, energy, bioremediation"

Afterwards, the debate will be opened to the floor. We hope to have a very large audience, where all citizen, if they wish to, can express his/her opinion on the subject and on the debate they just saw.

This was followed by something called "more on synthetic biology"

Video

Feedback

Conclusion

the debate was a success as we meet all the objectives we had set.