Kickstarter bans project creators from giving away genetically-modified organisms | The Verge

[Thomas Landrain]

This backfiring is just the beginning of what the glowing plant project has triggered, in my sense, by a lack of responsibility. Let's be humble and take this as a lesson for the future.

T

Kickstarter is clamping down on genetically-modified organisms following the success of a project to genetically engineer glowing plants for use as additional lighting in people's homes. Earlier this week and without explanation, the crowdfunding website quietly altered its guidelines for project creators, introducing a new term that bans creators from giving away genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) as rewards to their online backers. "Projects cannot offer genetically modified organisms as a reward," the new language states. The prohibition is effective July 31st, meaning that the popular glow-in-the-dark plant project is safe, but that any future projects like it can't offer GMOs to their backers.

"PROJECTS CANNOT OFFER GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS AS A REWARD."

When asked about the change by The Verge, the company provided only the following canned statement: "we aim to be as open as possible while protecting the health and creative spirit of Kickstarter for the long term." Yet the move comes just days after a project called "Glowing Plants"successfully raised nearly half-a-million dollars.

The project was launched by a team of trained synthetic biologists, who want to insert bioluminescence genes from bacteria and fireflies into several types of plans — arabidopsis and roses— to make them glow in the dark. Project backers who pledged $40 or more were promised packets of seeds of the final glowing plant products. Similar glowing plants have been created separately by other biologists going back to the 1980s. But the Kickstarter project creators are hopeful that their effort will go further, and that future iterations of their plants can replace some electric lighting altogether.

"For us, [Kickstarter’s move] doesn’t change anything," said Omri Amirav-Drory, one of the project’s creators, a biochemist who is also CEO of a biotech company Genome Compiler. "We already have the money, and we’re working on the project as we speak, transforming plants using DNA. But for me, I’m very sorry to see this, because it puts synthetic biology in the same category on Kickstarter as hate crimes and tobacco." Amirav-Drory said he had not been in touch with Kickstarter about the change in policy, but expressed puzzlement about it, because his glowing plant project had been featured repeatedly on Kickstater’s editor-curated project sections.

"IT PUTS SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY IN THE SAME CATEGORY ON KICKSTARTER AS HATE CRIMES AND TOBACCO."

The creators maintain their project is legal under US law, and that the risk of cross-pollination is low because the main plant they’re engineering, arabidopsis, is not native to the US. However, they also say they won’t be able to send the seeds to countries in the European Union and other areas where GMO crops are widely curtailed. Meanwhile,Environmental advocates and some scientists outside of the project have expressed concerns that it may lead to a negative perception of synthetic biology, or set a worrisome precedent for unsupervised release of GMOs. One researcher recently toldNature that the plants were "frivolous."

As for Kickstarter, the website seems to be trying to insulate itself against critics of the glowing plants project and GMOs more generally. But as Amirav-Drory noted to The Verge, Kickstarter’s new stance may lead scientists like himself to choose other crowdfunding platforms for their projects going forward.

[Paul Schroeer-Hannemann]

Are there any crowdfunding sites specifically for research projects?

[Avery louie]

microryza and petridish, I think.

--A

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[Mega [Andreas Sturm]]

Petridish only allows projects from people who have a phD, so many diy bio people may not be allowed to submit projects

[Mega [Andreas Sturm]]

Or maybe they accept a master degree? Can't remember that.

I just remember the essence: before I joined Omri's glowing plant campaign, I asked at petridish if it was possible, but without a degree/affiliation they wouldn't have accepted it...

[Reason]

It is my understanding that Petridish is a dead thing, its founders having
moved to some other project some months ago having failed to create
sufficient traction to validate the concept to their eyes, and the current
leading light is Microryza - though that may be somewhat biased since
Microryza is a YC startup and therefore automatically going to get more and
better tech insider press than competitors that are not YC-funded.

Reason

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[Bryan Bishop]

On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 12:08 PM, Reason <rea...@fightaging.org> wrote:

It is my understanding that Petridish is a dead thing, its founders having
moved to some other project some months ago having failed to create
sufficient traction to validate the concept to their eyes, and the current

Same with Microryza, even with their acceptance into ycombinator. They only have like 15 funded projects over their entire existence. I don't think they have moved on, but they haven't exactly found a repeatable business model.

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

[Reason]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: diy...@googlegroups.com [mailto:diy...@googlegroups.com] On
> Behalf Of Bryan Bishop
> Sent: Sunday, August 04, 2013 12:10 PM
> To: diy...@googlegroups.com; Bryan Bishop
> Subject: Re: [DIYbio] Re: Kickstarter bans project creators from giving
> away genetically-modified organisms | The Verge
>

A pity. It's clearly possible to make this happen under the right
circumstances, as demonstrated by the success of the Methuselah Foundation,
and the work at Longecity, and a bunch of stuff in mainstream per-disease
fundraising that I'm less familiar with. Objectively, it seems to be just a
special case of a tapping a community for funding. No magic there.

I'm all for people trying to find a recipe to enable generalization and
lowering of transaction costs for research (micro|crowd)-fundraising, as
that would greatly enable progress in all sorts of important projects. It
will be unfortunate if this current round of efforts doesn't crack the code,
as we'll probably be waiting the better part of a decade for the next wave
of groups to forget that "it obviously doesn't work" and give it a try. More
optimistically, perhaps it might instead arise as a sideline from a
successful distributed marketplace for laboratory services, as there are
several of those out there at the moment.

Reason

[Bryan Bishop]

On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Reason <rea...@fightaging.org> wrote:

successful distributed marketplace for laboratory services, as there are
several of those out there at the moment.

Besides Science Exchange and Assay Depot, which other ones are you thinking of?

[Lisa Thalheim]

And for the folks in Germany (and Austria?), there's sciencestarter.de.

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[Antony Evans]

Indigogo accepts all projects with no editorial content...

[Cathal Garvey]

Also, self-hosting is viable if you handle banking and refunds
ethically: http://selfstarter.us/

That's a software platform for another excellent project that
Kickstarter rejected, based on (I think) Ruby. Handles all the frontend
stuff, so you just accept the money personally; no cut goes to anyone,
no stupid editorial rules, no third party for lobby groups to bully.

The disadvantage is that you lack the "trust" of a third party if
you're doing an all-or-nothing project, because there's no escrow to
guarantee a refund if the project goal is not met. So, not worth trying
to convince people that's how things will work; just run it indiegogo
style and say "this is the target but all donations gratefully
accepted".

Also, projects should not forget the awesomeness that is gittip.com,
and should totally set up a gittip and let it be known that more
long-term, sustained funding is also very welcome. At present gittip's
pay-out is only to the US, but Gittip's founder is looking at ways of
sending payouts elsewhere, manually if need be. I think he suggested
that someone earning a reasonable amount could be simply sent cheques
or cash.

On Mon, 5 Aug 2013 06:14:48 -0700 (PDT)
Antony Evans <anton...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Indigogo accepts all projects with no editorial content...
>
> On Sunday, August 4, 2013 10:07:25 PM UTC+8, Paul Schroeer-Hannemann
> wrote:
> >
> > Are there any crowdfunding sites specifically for research projects?
> >
> > On Saturday, August 3, 2013 4:27:27 PM UTC-5, Thomas Landrain wrote:
> >>
> >> This backfiring is just the beginning of what the glowing plant
> >> project has triggered, in my sense, by a lack of responsibility.
> >> Let's be humble and take this as a lesson for the future.
> >>
> >> T
> >>
> >>
> >> Kickstarter is clamping down on genetically-modified organisms
> >> following the success of a project to genetically engineer glowing

> >> plants<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit>

> >> for use as additional lighting in people's homes. Earlier this
> >> week and without explanation, the crowdfunding website quietly
> >> altered its guidelines for project creators

> >> <http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines>, introducing a new

> >> term that bans creators from giving away genetically-modified
> >> organisms (GMOs) as rewards to their online backers. "Projects
> >> cannot offer genetically modified organisms as a reward," the new
> >> language states. The prohibition is effective July 31st, meaning
> >> that the popular glow-in-the-dark plant project is safe, but that
> >> any future projects like it can't offer GMOs to their backers.
> >>
> >> "PROJECTS CANNOT OFFER GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS AS A REWARD."
> >>

> >> When asked about the change by *The Verge*, the company provided

> >> only the following canned statement: "we aim to be as open as
> >> possible while protecting the health and creative spirit of
> >> Kickstarter for the long term." Yet the move comes just days after
> >> a project called "Glowing

> >> Plants"<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit>successfully

> >> advocates<http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Tell_Kickstarter_not_to_allow_bioengineered_organisms>

> >> and some scientists outside of the project have expressed concerns
> >> that it may lead to a negative perception of synthetic biology, or
> >> set a worrisome precedent for unsupervised release of GMOs. One

> >> researcher recently told* Nature
> >> <http://www.nature.com/news/glowing-plants-spark-debate-1.13131>*

> >> that the plants were "frivolous."
> >>
> >> As for Kickstarter, the website seems to be trying to insulate
> >> itself against critics of the glowing plants project and GMOs more

> >> generally. But as Amirav-Drory noted to *The Verge,* Kickstarter’s

[John Griessen]

On 08/05/2013 08:32 AM, Cathal Garvey wrote:
> Also, self-hosting is viable if you handle banking and refunds
> ethically: http://selfstarter.us/
>

> The disadvantage is that you lack the "trust" of a third party if
> you're doing an all-or-nothing project, because there's no escrow to
> guarantee a refund if the project goal is not met. So, not worth trying
> to convince people that's how things will work; just run it indiegogo
> style and say "this is the target but all donations gratefully
> accepted".
>
> Also, projects should not forget the awesomeness that is gittip.com,
> and should totally set up a gittip and let it be known that more
> long-term, sustained funding is also very welcome. At present gittip's
> pay-out is only to the US, but

Thanks for telling us about these Cathal.

[Denny Luan]

Just FYI, Microryza has funded 40 projects so far. It's still a very small figure, and we still have a lot of ground to cover, but the recent decision by Kickstarter just proves that creative or reward based crowdfunding won't be the best solution for science and research. 

Obviously we're also big fans of SciFund Challenge, Crowdtilt, Rare Genomics, Consano, and many more as other great options. :D

[Paul Schroeer-Hannemann]

PopSci: Is Kickstarter hostile to science? I think so.

On Saturday, August 3, 2013 4:27:27 PM UTC-5, Thomas Landrain wrote:

[william...@gmail.com]

What's the difference between Gittip and flattr? I always thought flattr was a great idea but hasn't seem to catch on.