Fwd: Draft Letter to the President's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues
Elizabeth Buschmann
This is going out to both diybio + bebobio...
Anyone in Seattle interested in getting together on this topic?
From: Jason Bobe <jaso...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 12:09 PM
Subject: Draft Letter to the President's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues
To: diybio <diy...@googlegroups.com>
Hello DIYbio -
Following the publication of Venter's work on Synthia, president Obama asked the President's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to review the field of synthetic biology and generate a report with recommendations. In the six month window they have to write the report, the commission is holding a series of meetings and is taking comments from the public. More background info here: http://www.bioethics.gov/
A few DIYbio folks got together at the Open Science Summit to brainstorm about the opportunity and I think there was general agreement that it is really important for the DIYbio community to submit a letter to the commission.
Why is it important? If we do not define DIYbio in our own words to the commission, undoubtedly others with define the community for us and it may not be favorable or even remotely accurate (especially if the periodic media frenzy is any indication).
Should we write one letter or many letters? I have spoken to a few different people about the how the commission operates, and from what I can gather it would be much more powerful if the community could come together and support the submission of a single letter to the commission. Even though members of the community obviously don't always agree on everything, if we could generate a general consensus on how to define the community and its importance in the grand scheme of things, that would go a long way. Anyone can submit a letter to the commission, and I in no way want to discourage that, but it would be great if we could put the DIYbio imprimatur on one letter.
How can you help? One area that I could really use help from the community is to hear your ideas about would you would like for the commission to recommend to the president in terms of DIYbio and amateur / non-institutional practice in the life sciences? The commission has been asked to "develop recommendations about any actions the Federal government should take to ensure that America reaps the benefits of this developing field of science while identifying appropriate ethical boundaries and minimizing identified risks.” We could conclude the letter with our own recommendation for the commission to consider.
For efficiency, I have taken a first cut at drafting a letter to the president's commission, with helpful comments from Mac and few community lab folks and the OSS attendees. Any errors are my own though. Take a look at the document and let me know what you think. In the description of DIYbio did I miss anything that is important to you? You can add your comments to this thread or edit the document directly. The deadline for submission is September 1st, so if you have comments please submit them by next Friday, August 27th. I will do my best to synthesize comments into something coherent.
PDF version attached and available online:
http://bit.ly/PCSBI_DIYbio_PDF
Editable version available via a Google doc here:
http://bit.ly/PCSBI_DIYbio_edit
Many thanks,
Jason Bobe
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Bryan Bishop
From: Bryan Bishop <kan...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 2:29 PM
Subject: Re: Draft Letter to the President's Commission for the Study
of Bioethical Issues
On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Jason Bobe wrote:
> How can you help? One area that I could really use help from the community
> is to hear your ideas about would you would like for the commission to
> recommend to the president in terms of DIYbio and amateur /
> non-institutional practice in the life sciences? The commission has been
> asked to "develop recommendations about any actions the Federal government
> should take to ensure that America reaps the benefits of this developing
> field of science while identifying appropriate ethical boundaries and
> minimizing identified risks.” We could conclude the letter with our own
> recommendation for the commission to consider.
Just as a reminder there was a transcript that somewhat matches what
was being talked about:
http://gnusha.org/transcripts/open-science-summit-2010/diybio-bioethics-commission.html
and previous stuff here:
http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_thread/thread/7dad27a5b3810f84
http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_thread/thread/08b5da86b61a8154
Some relevant excerpts and my suggestions below:
"""
innovation incentives, for an ethics commission? Garage biology,
innovation, small businesses, it's the ethics of innovation. I would
like to see the endorsement by the commission of garage biology, maybe
targeted towards high schools, and ti would be great if the rest of
the government could support it. Soemthing that's like, dear
president's bioethics commission, would you please assess the
tradition of innovation in America's history, and what do you think
the role of garage biology would be in the 21st century? They would
only be interested in addressing some policy/ethical sisue. One thing
might be to ask a question of them. Is there- what is the tradition of
American innovation, and what will be the trajectory of biotech in the
next century? [snip]
[snip] So I want the commission to figure out hwo to overcome the
challenges- and we want them to do it for us. Help us build a culture
of biotechnology innovation. Reference Rob's slide, reference the
security commission, reference Obama's inaugural commission. Framework
or culture of garage biotech innovation. But when you say help us,
then it just means that they, I am imagining that they are going to
write this big report, the action item I'd like to see is something
that endorses garage biotech innovation. They are going to make
recommendations. If you look at the 9/11 commission, it was volumes.
What's the scope? They are going to sort of be policy recommendations,
things that the government that should be doing to address the
concerns that they found through this.. they could say that the EPA
monitors all garage innovation, it's not ethical, but they might say
it. This is the issue, we recommend that the government and the office
of the whitehouse create a new presidential thing, that analyzes the
religious aspects of synthetic biology. It will be things like that.
Congress and the Whitehouse will say FU or we're going to do it.
There's no authority, they are just recommendations. Most of them
never get implemented, the 9/11 recommendations never got implemented
(mostly) but sometimes they do, so it's always better to air on the
side of let's get involved in case they do implement the
recommendations so you get on the positive side. It's beyond just
endorsing garage biotech. This idea of enabling this culture of this,
is sort of, a positive culture of biotech innovation. I would steer
away from I would want this X amount of money. They are going to screw
it up. It's enabling innovation in America, figuring out ways where we
go from being a fringey thing where we're scared to talk about, which
is why Todd and Dave approached me, the only groups who have taken
interest in DIYbio, and having a close relationship with law
enforcement now is that- community labs or anything like that, is it
legal for me to share this with anyone else, can I do this or do that,
and there's all sorts of legalities that nobody knows? If you have Ed
showing up to your garage lab, it's his job to enforce the law, and he
knows it a lot better than we do, and it's bad if the only person
who's interested in this are the people who can put us in jail.
being supportive of innovation outside of traditional settings, part
of that is that we need to build that framework.
"""
The first bioethics.gov commission was more of a hearing about "what
is synthetic biology" and the next one will probably amp up in terms
of ethics. What this is all about is the ethics of biotech innovation,
human and synthetic biology, personalized medicine and America's
competitive interests into the future-- especially jobs.
I don't know how to get this concept through to anyone: it's critical
that we focus on innovation, incentives, prizes (and ethics thereof)
and frameworks that foster positive growth, especially in whatever the
commission ends up hearing from our communities; the current draft
lacks this or anything we secretly talked about on this front at your
lunch meeting. Please please don't screw this up..
- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507
--
- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507