Presidential Bioethics Commission discusses DIYbio

[Randy]

From Rob Carlson's blog: "Here are the archived video and slides from
last week's meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of
Bioethical Issues. And here is the session with presentations from
Drew Endy, Bonnie Bassler, and myself, followed by questions and
discussion with the Commission and public."

The first session runs about an hour and a half, and talks about
synthetic biology as it relates to the expertise of the three
speakers. The extensive discussion after the presentation includes
several questions about DIYbio. Although some of the material is a bit
dry, it's well worth the time to watch the panelists give an
enthusiastic endorsement of DIYbio. One of the questions asked was if
DIYbio should have licensing in place similar to gun laws!

The original link to Rob Carlson's blog: http://www.synthesis.cc/

The link to the presentations: http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/bioethics/100708/default.cfm

Enjoy!

[Bryan Bishop]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 1:03 AM, Randy <beb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The first session runs about an hour and a half, and talks about
> synthetic biology as it relates to the expertise of the three
> speakers. The extensive discussion after the presentation includes
> several questions about DIYbio. Although some of the material is a bit
> dry, it's well worth the time to watch the panelists give an
> enthusiastic endorsement of DIYbio. One of the questions asked was if
> DIYbio should have licensing in place similar to gun laws!

yep, and I still think we should be taking action on this. See the call here:
http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_frm/thread/7dad27a5b3810f84

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

[Tito Jankowski]

Thanks Bryan and Randy,

Want to work with BioBrick parts, sequencing your own genome, or
starting an iGEM team?
Start a community DIYbio lab?
Start a biotech business? Hack hardware for biotech?

Watch these sessions. Especially Drew/Rob/Bonnie's session.

Tito

[Phil]

On Jul 14, 2:31 am, Bryan Bishop <kanz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 1:03 AM, Randy <bebo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The first session runs about an hour and a half, and talks about
> > synthetic biology as it relates to the expertise of the three

...

> yep, and I still think we should be taking action on this. See the call here:http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_frm/thread/7dad27a5b3810f84

I didn't see any call there. I saw a request to say what we would
say. I interpreted that as meaning, "Write your opinion, send it back
to this group, and I, Bryan, will summarize them and in some way
forward them to some relevant authority."

Did you mean to send our responses back to DIYbio, to the contact
email listed on that website (in...@bioethics.gov), or to some other
place where it's more likely to be seen by someone on the ethics
committee?

[Phil]

At least it's not Bush's presidential bioethics committee, which was
hostile from the outcome. I read one of their reports - some chapters
cited the Bible as an authority on ethics and law. Leon Kass, the
chairman, once wrote an essay against eating in public, as an activity
that deprives humans of dignity and debases them by putting their
animal functions on display.

[Bryan Bishop]

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Phil Goetz wrote:

I didn't see any call there.  I saw a request to say what we would
say.  I interpreted that as meaning, "Write your opinion, send it back
to this group, and I, Bryan, will summarize them and in some way
forward them to some relevant authority."

Well, I guess that's one way that it could happen.
 

Did you mean to send our responses back to DIYbio, to the contact
email listed on that website (in...@bioethics.gov), or to some other
place where it's more likely to be seen by someone on the ethics
committee?

I definitely meant that #1 should happen (write stuff that we can talk about here as a group), and everyone is of course welcome to email the bioethics.gov email address. I was thinking that we could probably do a few different things, and was also hoping that we could hash things out. I would be willing to do take a summarization, but honestly the responses so far have been limited, and I don't think they are general enough or are even the basic diybio pitch. So, once we have some interesting content, we can figure out what to do with the content, but at this point I don't see that- not yet, anyway.