Synthetic Society/Community Organization and Culture

From OpenWetWare
Revision as of 15:15, 23 January 2006 by Sroosth (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigationJump to search

Meta-level questions to be addressed

  1. Is thinking about community organization and culture a waste of time?
  2. Do we actually need to write down standards of practice or can they just exist as community norms?
  3. What would a code of conduct for synthetic biologists look like?
  4. What standards of practice, if any, are needed beyond that of existing disciplines?
  5. Can this small group of people speak for the community or have their ideas accepted by the community? What about people outside the mainstream synthetic biology research community?
  6. If we do want to implement a community code of conduct, how should it be done?

Upcoming tasks

  1. research relevant examples from other disciplines and post summaries on the wiki
  2. brainstorm names of outside people we want to bring in to voice opinions
    1. Here's the emeritus professor in STS I mentioned at the last meeting: Charles Wiener If you think his input would be helpful, I'll contact him. Sophia

Relevant examples from other disciplines

Professional engineering societies

  • Exams
  • Whose held liable if a bridge breaks?
  • there are a number of professional societies in the "bioengineering" space. it would be good to (i) list these and (ii) understand what their missions are. Endy 21:37, 11 January 2006 (EST)

Assigned to: Austin

Asilomar

  • How did the BSL system arise from Asilomar?
    • A group of 140 prominant scientists met to determine if they could self-regulate safety and ethics of experimentation to be done. Their work, summarized in the meeting notes, describes the self-imposed classifications and restrictions on biological research. This meeting first defined the different Bio-Safety levels used in modern biological research.

Links

Meeting at the time

  • Meeting notes from Asilomar
    • Document detailing the groups conclusions.
  • The Pandora's Box Congress, Rolling Stone, June 19th, 1975 (no link)
    • a great article in the Rolling Stone about the meeting. Ask Drew or Sri for a copy.

Retrospectives

NIH regulations and recommendations

  • NIH Requirement for instruction in the responsible conduct in Research
    • Initial Policy Letter, NIH/
    • All students and post-docs on training grants must recieve such training.
    • No forced curriculum, but NIH provides resources to allow teaching (videos, discussion primers, books, et cetera). Program directors are strongly encouraged to cover topics related to conflict of interest, responsible authorship, policies for handling misconduct, policies regarding the use of human and animal subjects, and data management.
    • Each individual program is reviewed.

Assigned to: Sri

Monsanto

  • What kinds of regulations does Monsanto have to adhere to in order to grow its crops? FDA? EPA?
    • Legal Review of US Regulation of biotech A summary of federal regulations begins on pg. 223.
    • Levidow, Les. 2001. "Precautionary Uncertainty: Regulating GM Crops in Europe". Social Studies of Science 31:6, 842-874.
    • Science Policy Forum on Monitoring and Labeling GM Products
    • In 1986, federal regulatory agencies (USDA-APHIS, FDA, EPA, OSHA) and research organizations (NIH, NSF) jointly established the Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology. One or more of these agencies oversees each GM product, depending on the gene or crop. These regulations were not tailored to biotech, but applied already enacted agricultural and pharmaceutical regulations to biotechnical products in a patchwork fashion. The framework emphasized regulating products rather than biotechnical processes. The USDA regulates plants, plant pests, and veterinary biologics ("safe to grow"), the EPA oversees new microorganisms, microbial and plant pesticides, and new uses for pesticides ("safe for the environment"), and the FDA is responsible for food, animal feed, medical and veterinary drugs, and food additives ("safe to eat"): Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology.
    • Before field testing a new GM crop, research organizations must first file either a notification or a permit application with the USDA. The notification is used for well-known or low-risk crops; the USDA evaluates the safety of unknown or high-risk crops before approving permits. The USDA-APHIS site has more details.
    • The USDA guidelines regulating research that plans to introduce GMOs into the environment is here.
    • Monsanto and other biotech companies are not federally liable for any damages to persons, property, or environment caused by their GMOs, but common-law tort principles and state statutes continue to apply.

Assigned to: Sophia

Institutional review boards

  • Institution-level committees that review sensitive research projects (for example, those having to do with human subjects).

Assigned to: Larry

International bodies

  • United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

UNESCO has five functions including as a standards setter and mechanism for collecting and distributing information in certain fields. And it does some work in science policy. As expected, a lot of effort is focused either on environmental issues or on building infrastructure for science in developing countries. They do seems to have a very large and diverse set of initiatives.

  • Do journals have any prescribed standards?

Assigned to: Reshma

Medicine

There appears to actually be a lot of dispute over the Hippocratic oath and exactly what it should contain. And there are different versions so not all doctors necessarily adhere to the same oath. Interestingly, the modern version linked here contains the phrase "I must not play god." It also includes a section on calling in outside help when it may aid a patient's recovery.

  • Medical licensing

Assigned to: Reshma

Programming

  • There is no open source community slashdot post article
  • No known standards of practice beyond ad hoc peer review
  • Software code is awful so this might not be the model we want to follow?

Actions that could be coordinated on a community-wide basis

  • prescribe a code of conduct
  • develop eduational materials
  • organize conferences
  • promote a motto for the community (i.e. "Don't be evil")
  • publish journals
  • develop and establish standards
  • implement safety regulations for synthetic systems and organisms
  • give awards of excellence

Methods to coordinate community-wide action

  • iGEM serves to help form a cohesive community since it brings people together on an annual basis
  • Synthetic Biology conference
  • Drew as a Stallman-like figure who prescribes a philosophy for the field that others buy into
  • found a new organization to better represent the entire community
    • how does it gain widespread acceptable and legitimacy?
    • who would do the work of starting it?
  • use existing institutions to give legitimacy to our proposed initiatives
    • government at the local, state or federal level
    • universities
    • National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, National Research Council
    • NIH principles and guidelines
    • The BioBricks Foundation
Retrieved from "https://openwetware.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Synthetic_Society/Community_Organization_and_Culture&oldid=17980"