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 but these people would be happy with animals being used in this way as long as they did not suffer in any way. From the replies, it would seem that most people think that the restrictions currently in place for the use of animals in research are sufficient. The majority response to question 10, regarding whether or not they would be happy to eat foods altered through synthetic biology was positive. Most responders would have no problem with these foods as long as they are produced with no negative effects for animals, the environment or ourselves. Many respondents believed that synthetic biology could play a positive role in helping to alleviate the growing demand for food from the increasing world population.

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 has(27.9%) has the potential to improve the standard of living for future generations.

Respondents were also mostly positive towards the idea of using synthetic biology 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 this, or did not feel that modern drug testing standards were sufficient for them to feel happy with their use. Most responders agreed though that they would agree with the use of synthetic biology in treating disease if the treatment “passed all necessary safety tests” and “worked 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 a 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.