Just while humanity is disrupting the foundation of marine
food webs by affecting the abundance, variety, and even the livability of
phytoplanktons and pteropods alike, synthetic biologists are altering the
genetic alphabet of life itself, among other things, and the scientific
academies see only rosy pictures of exciting adventure and applications, while
short on sober caution (other than paying lip service to the need for “regulations/self-governance”). The same flawed paradigm of “presumed safe
until proven harmful” that has led us to today’s pollution laden planet is
being applied to synbio organisms, and GMOs are presented as victimized by
environmentalists, exemplifying the need for strong PR investment for the synbio
field from the start, to win over the public.
IAP’s co-chair, Volker ter Meulen, loudly promotes synbio’s
cause in Nature, which devoted a
special issue to the field:
But of course, despite such champions mouthing the word “precaution”,
caution is the farthest thing from the minds of software engineers designing
and 3-D printing viruses and other synthetic life:
Here is about the recent study adding letters to DNA’s
alphabet:
A short article on this is here:
Technology watchdog the ETC Group’s Jim Thomas has this to
say (emphasis added):
“…… breakthroughs like this raise huge ethical, legal,
regulatory etc questions in the longer term and that governments right now
should be ashamed how far behind they are: While synthetic biologists invent
new ways to monkey around with the fundamentals of life, governments haven't
even been able to cobble together the basics of oversight,
assessment or regulation for this surging broad new field.”
“(The alphabet altering work) is part of the emerging field
of xenobiology and xenobiology as a whole (including this sort of work) is being
actively promoted as a potential way to overcome biosafety problems in
Synthetic Biology. The idea is that because these alternative genetic
alphabets (called orthogonal genetic systems) work differently from natural DNA
they can't cross contaminate and so you get around the problems of gene
flow etc - basically creating biological containmnet of a genetic
sort. This is entirely speculative and its important to point out that there is
no proof of the inherent biosafety of these systems. Indeed they are so
novel as genetic systems that its hard to know what biosafety issues they
may give rise to in themselves.”
“(In June) 193 governments meeting under the Convention
on Biological Diversity will for the first time discuss international
oversight of Synthetic Biology. Xenobiology (including the topic of
alternative genetic alphabets) is explicitly part of the discussion. In
our view governments now need to state loud and clear that this technology
is not ready for prime time, should be kept locked in the lab and a freeze put
on the commercialization and release of synthetically modified organisms
in general until transparent and precautionary governance arrangements
are worked out.”
Last but not least, synthetic
biology is also a major area of focus of the U.S. military
– that, in itself, should make one wary.
Please see if your organization can help in any way to influence the CBD negotiations next month by demanding such real precaution.
Regards,
Maggie
