Team:Aalto-Helsinki/Ethics
Ethics
We are all collectively responsible for the future of our planet. We should therefore carefully consider and weigh choices that are made during all the phases of an iGEM project: ideation, execution and application concept design. This page will elaborate on how we have considered different applied ethics aspects during our project. Ethical questions are not simple, and one quickly runs into arguments about the nature of morality and the arbitrary definitions of value. In this section, however, life and the absence of suffering are considered universal values. Furthermore, utilitarianism is here considered to be one good perspective in ethics discussions relating to science and responsibility. Utilitarianism is, simply put, the view that morally the best action is such that results in the least suffering and most pleasure - combined together. Let us now speculate on our project, synthetic biology, intellectual property rights and science communication, this thought framework in mind. [1]
Ethics in Our Project
It is true that a genetically engineered machine could in theory be used in a harmful way on purpose, especially if the open source aspect is not supervised in any way. However, since we are working with Safety level 1 organisms, the produced product dermcidin can already be found from human skin and cellulose is a natural material, our project can be considered to be relatively safe and the potential harm in a situation of our modified Escherichia coli escaping outside the lab is relatively small and it would be difficult to use it to do harm even on purpose. This does not mean that it would be entirely safe or responsible to free them to the nature since their antibiotic resistance to Kanamycin or Chloramphenicol could spread to other bacteria in nature and cause some trouble in the future.
During our project, we collected our team members' sweat and analysed the dermcidin it contains. Our original plan was to also analyse the amount of DCD-1L present in sweat, but our synthetic control peptide was better used in other tests, and we therefore discarded this plan. Sweat collection in mind, we first contacted the iGEM headquarters, who were unsure of whether we need to apply for a permission. Then we proceeded to writing an inquiry to the HUS Ethical Committee (the ethical committee of Helsinki and Uusimaa area public healthcare). They replied - quoting the Finnish research law - that we need to apply for permission if humans, human embryos or human tissue/blood samples are analysed. This was not the case for us, so therefore we proceeded with our plans of sweat collection. The people whose sweat was collected signed a consent form, which can be found from below.
Consent Form for Sweat Collection.
When designing our project, we wanted the production process and the end product itself to be safe, cheap, environmentally sustainable and most of all to provide something to the user. In the summer we were faced with a difficult decision: would we continue application concept development with wound care or acne treatment? Many of us felt that treatment of acne was a superficial problem, especially when compared to the fact that people die from hospital acquired infections. We were therefore compelled to stick with wound care. However, acne is a problem which affects a large portion of the population and can trigger self-hatred or dislike in individuals who already have a low self-esteem - especially young people. We thought that our peptide may suit better to an application such as this, as it may not be able to compete with strong agents used in wound care. It could be argued that it is better to provide a good solution to a minor problem than to force an average solution to a major problem.
After we saw how many people answered our acne survey and while interviewing professionals, including a dermatologist and a psychotherapist, we realized that acne in fact is a problem that affects so many people that it should not be belittled. There are many factors contributing to the problem, such as media and advertisements, and it is a difficult task to approach the issue from an angle that wouldn’t make the situation worse. Skin care products are being marketed with retouched images and products are often marketed in a way that aims to make consumers believe that it is socially unacceptable to have pimples. Commercially available cosmetics might even promise miracles which do not have to be scientifically proven since some of the ingredients and testing methods can be hidden behind patent laws.
We wanted to create a responsible product concept. Therefore, we experimented on using a carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) hydrogel, which we were very happy with. Cellulose is abundant in Finland, and less and less paper is used throughout the world, so our product is one good use for the wood. Thinning of the forest is a good way to acquire wood without disturbing the growth of the forest. Cellulose is a safe foundation for a product, and it does not pose a threat to humans or the environment!
We were also critical of microbeads which many cosmetic companies use as exfoliating agents in their products. Microbeads are tiny plastic particles which end up in the oceans, as they cannot be filtered from our waste waters. After, through plankton, they start to accumulate in fish and fish-eating birds [2]. Cosmetics is one of the major sources for microplastics that end up in the environment. In the beginning of 2017 microplastics were already detectable from table salt. Microbeads could be replaced with an alternative that doesn’t have such a huge impact to the environment. Currently, it is common to scrub one’s face with granulated sugar but for commercial exfoliation products an insoluble option should be used. We thus introduced ground peach seeds as a replacement to combat the trend of microplastics! Our end product is therefore environmentally friendly, and it is safe to discard in the trash and the sink.
There were a number of other ethical questions that were relevant to our project. You can read more about dermcidin in relationship to providing an alternative to antibiotics from the Safety page. As we are well aware of the problems of the clothing industry [3], we wanted to purchase environmentally sustainable team clothing. Our team clothes are therefore provided by Pure Waste Textiles - a Finnish company that produces clothing 100% from the textile industry waste.
The Scientific Community and Intellectual Property Rights
One of the most difficult questions in the field of science today is the juxtaposition between open source research and patents. On one hand, the aim is to be able to provide good quality therapeutics to the population, as fast as possible. On the other hand, if we had no patents, the companies would probably be even more secretive about their findings, because there would be no guarantee that their investments would pay themselves back.
Patents were relevant to our project. You may read more about the legal aspects from our Entrepreneurship page. Clearly, patents sometimes result in extremely unethical situations, such as keeping the price of a cancer or HIV drug incredibly high. Yet, we do not have to see patenting as a scary boogeyman but as an option that can sometimes even speed up the development of innovations which might ultimately help humanity and make the world a better place. This is not to say that open source would not be a honorable goal. However, as long as we have a capitalistic economy, companies need some sort of incentive to invest their own money in innovations, especially in synthetic biology and related fields where the development of the products and getting the permit to sell them can take years and incredible amounts of capital. Without patents, it is difficult to imagine this could be achieved, unless the countries themselves were responsible for such efforts. Therefore, it should always be carefully thought case-by-case which option is the most ethical. One may also be against patenting in principle, but still see it as a better option in practice.
Ethics in Synthetic Biology and iGEM
Team Uppsala had three interesting discussions about ethics (see in Youtube) with other iGEM teams, which we were unfortunately not able to attend due to their schedule. Nevertheless, the discussions were filmed, which enabled us to watch them and think about some of the questions that concerned our project or synthetic biology in general.
In the videos one of the questions was if iGEM increases injustice between countries or continents. This is not such a simple question, because obviously richer countries have more resources to make new innovations and test them in the laboratory, but on the other hand this sort of competition also produces innovations on cheaper versions of the common laboratory equipment that can be more accessible to poorer countries and solutions to problems with e.g. diagnosing and treating patients that can be caused by lack of electricity or other basic resources that people in richer countries take for granted.
Science Communication and Responsibility
All results should be published. Otherwise, the research statistics are skewed from the fact that negative research results do not get published. Therefore, it is easy to draw wrong conclusions in meta-analyses.
Communicating about the projects and science in general to the general public is essential. The world is going forward at a growing pace and the amount of data is so vast that no one can know everything. At times it can be absolutely terrifying to find one’s own place in the world to be quite insignificant. The best way to fight fear and misinformation is communicating as clearly and honestly about science, even when the results might not be what we hope. It doesn’t help anyone to use a lot of jargon in order to look smart when nobody understands you. It might also be tempting to just deem the people with opposing views as idiots, but it is our duty to try to understand their backgrounds and where their attitudes are coming from. Only then is a true dialog possible.
References
[1] Jones, Gerald & Cardinal, Daniel & Hayward, Jeremy, 1968- (2006). Moral philosophy : a guide to ethical theory. Hodder Murray, London
[2] Haynes G., 2016. Microbeads – tiny objects, massive problem? Article. Accessible at: [here].
[3] Looking Good Can Be Extremely Bad For the Planet. (2017, April 8) Accessible at: [here].
