Team:Paris Bettencourt/Human Practice/perception

During this summer, all of us gained knowledge in synthetic biology and learned lab skills, but that wasn't all. From the beginning of our brainstorming sessions, safety questions came up in our discussions. Our mutual interest in this topic lead us to center our project on safeguard systems and human practices related to public awareness and risk assesssment. This meant that we had to work hard not only on our wet lab project, but also on human practices. The greatest thing is, this effort resulted not only in the outreach towards lay people, but also changed our own opinion on biosafety in the context of synthetic biology. We feel that our Human Practice project make a change for each and every one of us. Here are our personal perceptions.

When we first began our project, I was really skeptical about the long term goals of releasing bacteria into the environment. However, during the debate we held some members of the "government", arguing in favor of the release of genetically modified bacteria, reminded the audience that there was a time when some held the opinion that airplanes were infernal machines that would only end in doom. We were questioned by judges in Amsterdam, who said that bacterial containment is impossible. I was inspired by the debaters. We have two options, we can either accept that biological containment is impossible, or we can try to study this problem and develop containment devices. In the end we may come to the conclusion that the risks are too great to ever release GE bacteria into the environment, but if we do not try to explore this problem we will do a great diservice to all the beautiful and brilliant iGEM projects dedicated to bioremediation.

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