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  • Field Notes
  • Gregory E. Kaebnick, Research Scholar, Editor

Progress with precaution

At the meeting in mid-July of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues—which is producing a report on synthetic biology as its first order of business—two points came quickly and repeatedly to the fore.

The first was that the potential benefits and harms are vast, and vastly different. Synthetic microbes are promoted as offering a new way to produce medicines, tools for environmental remediation, agricultural applications, fuel, and many industrial chemicals. Supporters believe synthetic biology will usher in a second industrial revolution. Many also believe it is the best solution to some of the problems created by the first, on grounds that its production methods could be much less destructive to the environment. Some critics think it will only compound those problems, though; they set out a dystopian vision in which synthetic biology obsoletes the livelihoods of working class and poor people, vast amounts of land (especially in the developing world) are given over to producing sugars for synthetic organisms to convert into fuel and chemicals, and property rights in the new technology are hoarded by a relatively small group of new capitalists. Many critics and supporters agree that there is a chance synthetic microbes might somehow hop their boundaries, mutate or recombine with wild-type microbes, and run amok. And everyone agrees that the technology could be put to nefarious uses: pathogens could be synthesized, made more powerful, maybe designed from scratch.

The second, closely linked point was that a deep uncertainty surrounds the possible outcomes. This uncertainty may be more than a mere margin of error in determining where the technology will go and what it may let people do. It may be (paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld) that we do not entirely know what we do not know. The hope in synthetic biology is that what genetic sequences make microbes do can be rendered predictable. What if that's not true? What if new genetic combinations and new environmental contexts generate new behaviors?

How do we go about assessing a technology that offers such a dramatic contrast of potential benefits and harms along with such deep uncertainty? And how much do we care about the benefits, the harms, and the uncertainty itself? In a way, this is the kicker. It turns out that we must try to sort out synthetic biology's benefits and harms just as a debate about how to assess benefits and harms rages. One side, represented by the mechanisms known as risk-assessment and cost-benefit analysis, favors objective scientific and economic analyses—and according to its critics, gives too much weight to potential benefits. It also downplays fundamental normative assumptions it makes, such as by applying a discount rate to future risks and benefits. The other side, represented by the precautionary principle, invokes an expressly normative stance—and according to critics, gives too much weight to potential harms. At issue are a series of difficult decisions about values that can be buried in equations without really attending to them. It seems plain that we not only need more and better analysis of the potential outcomes associated with synthetic biology, we also need a better understanding of how that analysis should be done. [End Page 5]

Gregory E. Kaebnick, Research Scholar, Editor
Hastings Center Report
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