Team:Dundee/Outreach/Survey

A survey was created and was open to members of the public from July 25th to September 18th 2012. It received 107 responses from people with a wide range of backgrounds, including undergraduates, scientists and other members of the general public. The aim of this survey was to deduce the general degree of knowledge that members of the public have about synthetic biology and how open they are to it in their daily lives. Those who responded varied in age, with the biggest population (62.5%) being in the 17-25 age range category. There was a fairly even range of responses from male and female participants, with 57% being female and 43% being male. The questions asked in the survey were as follows:

Results

Public Awareness
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, highlighting the need for publicity. Our team thought that this was extremely important and from the outset tried to engage with the public and as much as possible.

It is promising to find that most respondents to our survey appear to be in the “for” category with as little as 2% being against the idea of synthetic biology. Those who replied with “neither” were those who had little knowledge on the subject and therefore did not feel they could come to an informed decision or support an argument “for” or “against”.

When asked what worried the them about synthetic biology, the majority of participants replied with the “misuse or abuse” of this technology as well as numerous others such as the “unknown, unintended consequences”.

In the case of question 9, 55% of respondents believe that restrictions should be made on the use of animals and plants in synthetic biology with the overall view that as long as the organisms do not suffer, then it is acceptable. As one respondent said “There are already numerous, good, legal restrictions on the range of organisms that can be used in research, under appropriate conditions” suggesting that the restrictions present currently are deemed acceptable. The response from question 10 about whether they are happy to eat foods altered through synthetic biology resulted in the majority responding with no problem as long as these organisms have no negative effects on other animals, the environment or upon ourselves. A prevailing response to this question is the topic of the increasing demand for food and the belief that synthetic biology may help in alleviating this high demand. It was also found that the general view on engineered plants for food is acceptable whilst the idea of synthetic biology on animals is frowned upon.

Compared to the answers received from question 10 the vast majority of responses for question 12 were found to be optimistic for the use of synthetic biology in health and medicine with 68.3% agreeing that synthetic biology has or maybe (27.9%) has the potential to improve the standard of living for future generations.

In the follow up question the responses were also agreeable to the idea of using synthetic biology to treat a close friend or family member. Those who replied negatively either explained that they did not know enough about synthetic biology or that they did not trust the testing of medical drugs e.g. “No, there are too many cases of medicine having harmful effects that begin to show decades later, unable to be detected when created and marketed.” The continuous response was that of wanting the best treatment despite its source as long as “it had passed all necessary safety tests” and “works for its intended purpose”.

As shown above and from the responses gained from questions 12 and 13, it can be reasoned that the participants believe that health and medicine will benefit most from 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 better treatment for C. difficile infection than current treatment strategies. This result is highly gratifying, seeing that this selection of people would be happy with the treatment that the team have been working towards this summer.