Team:Imperial College London/Human Practices/Workshop

From 2010.igem.org

Human Practices Overview | Panel | Workshop | Meetings | Report | Documentary
Human practices has been a hugely important influence in the design of our final product. We contacted a number of experts very early on in the design process to allow us to truly adapt our specifications to meet the requirements of a field testing kit for parasites. This has ensured that our design is as feasible and useful as possible.
Human Practices Workshop with Susanna Finlay, IC & LSE
On our second day of iGEM we had a 2-hour Human Practices workshop led by Susanna Finlay, from the BIOS Centre (centre for the study of bioscience, biomedicine, biotechnology and society) at LSE (London School of Economics). Susanna's research interests include the social impacts of Synthetic Biology.

During the workshop we have discussed a range of case studies where synthetic biology has raised social, political, environmental, economic, ethical, legal and safety issues. We also discussed the relationship between the scientific community and the wider public and how it can be improved through public engagement.

In addition to the above issues, we also considered the following questions:

- Where do the scientist's/engineer's responsibilities end?

- Should scientists think about the impact of their work on the wider world when doing research?

- Who should be responsible for the direction that synthetic biology takes?

- Do synthetic organisms have less intrinsic value than natural organisms?

- What are the consequences of seeing life as nothing more than parts to be assembled?

- Is nature too complex to be treated as parts?

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