Synthetic biology: enthusiasm and care.

Abstract

A new European research project will soon begin, to provide the first detailed analysis of a key application of synthetic biology. The SYBHEL Project: ‘Synthetic Biology for Human Health – Ethical and Legal Issues’ will examine the impact and implications of this new discipline for human health. Synthetic biology promises innovations in drug development, delivering drugs to the point of action in the human body, creating synthetic stem cells, new vaccines and live organisms to treat human disease. This new project, which will involve ethicists and scientists from across Europe, will tackle the ethical and legal implications of these new technologies, as well as debate the best way that bioethical analysis should progress. The promise of these innovations is significant, yet we must bear in mind their implications for how we understand human wellbeing, the concept of ‘life’ itself and how new health outputs from synthetic biology can be shared in a fair way. We also need to consider whether we need any new laws or policies to govern these developments. Bioethics can play a rich and important role in debates over synthetic biology, but we need to be sure that we do it right. Ethics is important New developments in science are often criticised for advancing too quickly, leaving no space for reflection or debate on ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI). To their credit, scientists working in synthetic biology have taken a different approach. Researchers have been frank in raising potential pitfalls of this exciting area of multi-disciplinary research, and the options for keeping them in check. Scientists have also invited ethicists into the discipline from an early stage. UK research councils have joined together to fund seven networks on synthetic biology, each of which has to demonstrate ELSI activity. However, it may be challenging to ‘do’ bioethics in synthetic biology given that the field is so broad.