SYBHEL’s Objectives

Although developments in SynBio have progressed hand-in-hand with an awareness of ethical issues, it is time to consider some of the specificities of innovation in SynBio and the ethical issues these will generate. An area of particular interest is the planned applications of SynBio for human health and well-being. Specific issues on this topic to be addressed within SYBHEL are: the philosophical and ethical conceptions of life, including a consideration of concepts such as instrumental versus intrinsic value and the ethics of creating life per se; critiquing and assessing various approaches to applied ethical reasoning in SynBio for health, to arrive at a conclusion as to what methodological approach might be best; and a detailed analysis of the possibilities for SynBio in human health and the kinds of issues that will arise. Numerous vignettes will be used in this process and will be continually updated throughout the study as scientific advances continue.

Underpin research with a consistent awareness of the SYBHEL cross-cutting themes, namely: the definition of SynBio; scientific research; safety and justice;

SYBHEL will be informed by previous and concurrent work on the scientific state-of-the-art in SynBio definitions, research, safety aspects and preliminary ethical analysis. The findings of SynBio research are, however, changing rapidly, so various strategies will be adopted to ensure that the work packages can flexibly respond to new findings in SynBio as they will affect human health – for example each work package will have involvement from scientists working in SynBio.

A final cross-cutting theme is justice and the distribution of the benefits of SynBio. As with any new technology, there will be a challenge with SynBio to ensure that the benefits of this technology are distributed in a just and equitable way. A particularly relevant aspect of SynBio is that it may offer alternatives for drug development to those which currently rely on rare naturally occurring pre-cursors. But these applications of SynBio will have to be distributed in a fair and just way. The cross-cutting theme of justice will help these issues to be considered across the whole SYBHEL project.

Create a hub for researchers and policy-makers interested in ethical, legal and social issues arising in SynBio as it applies to human health to meet and exchange ideas.

A project website will be created and disseminated early in the SYBHEL project to ensure all who are interested in Europe and beyond have the opportunity to contact partners and to register their details to receive updates. Partners will also be encouraged to exploit these early contacts to include them in members of expert working groups, as participants in workshops or to invite responses to reports and other scholarly activities. Links will also be established with other ongoing projects, policy activities and public engagement initiatives across Europe. At the end of the SYBHEL project the consortium will have access to a network of academics and policy-makers with whom to explore the next stage of research in Europe.

Debate and agree key recommendations for regulation and commercialisation of SynBio as it applies to human health and well-being.

No current laws or guidelines in the EU specifically address synthetic biology. The SYBHEL project will consider whether specific regulation is required to facilitate the robust and appropriate use of SynBio for human health and if so, what form such regulations or policies might take. SynBio is a lucrative area for intellectual property yet this raises prospects that the benefits of this research may not be available to all. Moreover, a harmonised EU response to SynBio has yet to be questioned in detail, particularly with respect to this technology being applied for human health.

Determine a strategy for policy deliberation for SynBio in human health.

The novel nature of SynBio means that public debate on SynBio is not yet widespread. However it is not unlikely that new developments will give momentum to this debate and that SynBio will gain increasing attention in the public domain. Work package 6 will therefore draw on the outcomes of work packages 2-5 to yield insights on how the various issues raised could be considered in EC policy. This work, which will be carried out with key policy organizations and stakeholders, will culminate in an international workshop, recognizing the global importance of SynBio.

(Image Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Carbon Monoxide Detector
From The Synthetic Kingdom)