Omari 1

Amida Omari
Life Unlimited
Professor: Michael Flower
March 16, 2015
Synthetic Biology
How would it feel if you were eating a fish, and then you found out that it wasn't a natural fish
but instead it is a fish that was genetically engineered? Along with the fish you are also eating
vegetables that were not grown from seeds but were started in a petri dish or test tube instead? I know I
would be curious about what science had created in the lab and how this almost artificial food would
affect my health. Scientists have been experimenting with genetically modifying plants and some
animals to produce more vigorous crops or supplies of food.
Should there be rules about the way scientist invent new things, or rules about new things that
result from the inventions. My opinion is there should be regulations on how much scientists can do,
especially about synthetic engineering with foods. The FDA has stepped in to examine the genetically
engineered foods, and thus far the agency has not approved a single genetically engineered animal for
food consumption, according to an article by Henry I. Miller and Drew L. Kershen, (2015). The
Article Give Genetic Engineering Some Breathing Room: Government Regulations are Suffocating
applications with Great Promise, argues that genetic engineering could be useful in food production. I
feel strongly that scientists should share their experiments on food with the public. The rules need to
make sure that the public is aware of what experiments they are doing and what the outcomes could be.

Omari 1

But governments should not get too involved in , because each side has its own way of doing things
and the government might get in the way of the science and complicate the way things get done.

I also think that rather than having each country have its own rules, all countries should
work together via a big lab through a non-profit that will oversee the work and try to step in
when things go wrong, and could efficiently share information with the public. It would be
better if all scientists around the world worked together so that should something go wrong, such
as a virus, they know what went wrong and what to do. My picture is that once those people
work together, they can take back the information to their country and help them at the level they
need to understand and react. This way there would be worldwide regulations that would benefit
all people.
My understanding of synthetic biology is re-design and fabrication of existing biological
systems. It is a manmade product started from scratch and trying to imitate a current organism
plants, animals, and even humans, and make it better than the original. For example, the
Innate brand of potato, a brand new potato that is resistant to bruises and is made of 50-70%
less asparagine to avoid causing cancer when cooked at a high heat. One technique, wide
cross hybridization, performed by plant breeders since the 1930s moves large numbers of
alien genes from one species or one genus to another in order to create plant varieties that
cannot and do not exist in nature, also explained in the article by (Miller and Kershan, 2015, pg.
1). We get exposed to all this new food, and scientists do studies and say things are safe, but we
dont know what really happens when people rely on these new food products. They might think
they are inventing something that helps people, but at the same time we dont know what kind of
risks they are taking with the organisms they are using. It might seem like it is a benefit for
people, but later on as things are mixed more, there might be problems we cant predict. We
have to worry about the chemicals and drugs and processes we use to create these better
things. Also, there may be environmental dangers with what is going on in the scientific labs. It

seems like we have a 50/50 benefit/risk: we could potentially cure a chronic disease, but at the
same time have the risk of the new things causing a different problem or disease.
Scientists like to try and invent things new and achieve something new, like trying to
create or copy something, but experimenting with animals and plants used for food is not
something scientists should play with. Taking the experimentation slowly, and being able to
recognize that in a blink of an eye there could be a new animal, a new species, something that we
have no idea how to deal with and at the same time, we arent ready to deal with. Along the
ethical and political spectrum, if you create another life, you have to have a plan to deal with
their rights and how they will adapt to their surroundings and how ready people are to
welcome this new organism. So inventing for the sake of doing something new should not be a
rush to develop their new idea. They might not have results from the prior inventions to guide
them yet.
The synthetic life sciences seem to have emerged from nowhere and their potential uses
and misuses have taken the scientific and regulatory community by surprise. Samuel, Selgelid
and Kerridge, (2009, pg. 2). As surprised as they are, how surprised would the public be by
these emerging sciences and will they be ready for the changes? We tend to live in a world
where we have both open-minded people, ready to welcome something new, and conservative
people who want to keep things the way they are, and that is hard to deal with, especially when
the new idea might help people evolve. If you give people the right information and they
understand it, they will be more likely to welcome the ideas because they already have some
knowledge of where it came from. So part of the regulations need to be about information
sharing. Scientists seem to keep things to themselves, or the public doesnt seem well informed.
Synthetic biology has been going on since the 1930s, and yes, not everyone is interested in

science, but everyone would be interested in knowing a little overview of what synthetic biology
is, and it seems few people know much about it. It is widely thought, by both proponents and
critics, to have the potential to lead to very significant industrial, medical, agricultural, and
environmental applications. It is frequently described as a socially trans-formative technology
that will usher in what amounts to a new industrial revolution. Ethics of Synthetic Biology.
In the book The Wind Up Girl, people in Japan were more open to the modified people,
where in Thailand people were very hostile. Japan was short of young people so they invented a
new species of people, and the Japanese were more open to accepting the difference, where in
Thailand they didnt have an incentive to accept the new people. If Japan and Thailand had
worked together to share information and understand the technology maybe the Thai people
would not have been so prejudiced.
Scientists should work across political boundaries as we invent today. We have seven
continents and more than 200 countries in the world. Limiting the ideas from each part of the
world is not fair to the parts of the world that are not involved in the inventions, and in addition
inputs from the whole set of global users could insure that the invention works in the different
environments and cultures by getting their involvement. Local scientists can then take back
those ideas and figure out how it will work for them, and how to get the public aware. The
public doesnt need to know every step that happens, but in 2010 more than half of all people
didnt even know what synthetic biology was (Public Understanding of Synthetic Biology
article, 2013) and when people dont know anything they tend to make false assumptions about
what the good and bad points are. From my own experience, people in Burundi tend to be quick
to judge and charge into things or reject things without thinking or knowledge, whereas here in
the U.S. people might be less quick to jump to conclusions.

My picture is to have a non-government organized group supervise the engineering and

set regulations. I agree with Miller and Selgelid when they say that scientists shouldnt totally
self-regulate but governments, given the importance of balancing scientific freedom with biosecurity and bio-safety concerns, neither self-governance nor centralized governmental control is
appropriate. A non-profit organization should regulate the experiments to insure nothing is
threatening to public safety and maintain safety for the scientists themselves so that they dont
accidentally expose others. The reason for having a non-profit is because they wont try to profit
from the research, and we are more likely to share information since it is not a competition to
make money (unlike the GMO companies in Hawaii who resisted sharing anything on their
chemical uses). A non-profit provides the advantage of sharing the information we need in order
to understand the choices involved. The government tries to make things so safe that they cause
big delays or increase costs so that small companies and scientists are paralyzed. A for- profit
organization will have money, time, and the outcome as a high priority. A non-profit would
prioritize the outcome, people and patience in taking steps. The scientists will benefit because
there wont be pressure to hurry up to finish and make a product to sell, but there will be
allowance to explore each function as they do experiments with mutation. In addition, any
government can only regulate activities in their own country where working with a world-wide
group like a global health organization would avoid differences and complications such as
science changing direction for political reasons such as a war, or a country choosing a path
accounting for the benefit/risks of their own country rather than the global benefits and risks. I
think a worldwide approach to regulating synthetic engineering would work the best for all
people.