This collaboration coordinates between two ongoing research projects around the emergent sciences of synthetic biology and nanotechnology. Visit the Blog.
SynBERC
This research project is conducted by Paul Rabinow and centers on the emergent field of synthetic biology. As the organizers of the First International Conference on Synthetic Biology at MIT in June 2004 put it: “Synthetic Biology is focused on the intentional design of artificial biological systems, rather than on the understanding of natural bio-logy. It builds on our current understanding while simplifying some of the complex interactions characteristic of natural biology.” At the beginning of the twenty-first century, after more than two decades of massive sequencing projects, synthetic biology represents a return of the organism; it aims at nothing less than the (eventual) remediation of living organisms in a precise fashion according to instrumental goals set by the engineer.
It includes both applied research modules under the leadership of Kenneth Oye of MIT and fundamental research modules under the leadership of Paul Rabinow of the University of California at Berkeley.
The Ethics and Politics of Nanotechnology (EPNANO) project, conducted by Christopher Kelty, has two simultaneous aims. First, it is an experiment in research methodology, collaboration, critique, and new forms of composition and dissemination. Second, it is concerned with the emergence and stabilization of “nanotechnology” both as a field, and in specific cases (through specific people and communities) of new objects, instruments, and ethico-political realities. It is funded by the Center for Environmental and Biological Nanotechnology.
It is an outgrowth of an earlier experimental project, the Ethics and Politics of Information Technology (EPIT), which was identical in its aim of experimenting with form, but substituted the content of computer science. A draft report on that project is available.
TOPICS
1. Intellectual Property and the Commons
Analysis of approaches to sharing and/or guarding the parts, devices, chassis, systems, protocols, standards and design rules that constitute synthetic biology; focus on effects of property rights and sharing regimes on incentives for investment, advancement of knowledge and diffusion of benefits of innovation; potential practicums in Registry of Biological Parts; Office of Biological Disenchantment; copyright and public licensing of protocols and standards.
2. Security, Health and Environmental Effects
Analysis of benefits and risks associated with the development of synthetic biology in security, health and environmental affairs; assessment of methods of engaging with uncertainty over effects; analysis of methods of enhancing benefits and containing risks; potential practicums working with governmental and nongovernmental organizations in risk assessments; developing educational materials on synthetic biology for the policy community; and working with synthetic biologists on ways to limit risks through self governance.
3. Fundamental Research on Ethics
Rethink the relationship of ethics and science in view of the highly innovative assemblage of objectives and practices in synthetic biology; analysis of the limitations and advantages of recent bio-ethics projects, including Belmont, Asilomar, ELSI, and Presidential Commissions; empirical research on evolving ethical practices in synthetic biology (including IP and security), monitoring differences in context and practical experience; design and develop collaborative ethical practices that reconfigure science and ethics for synthetic biology; eventual standardization of these practices.
4. Fundamental Research on Ontology / Emergent Objects
Reflect on the form and essence of the parts, devices, chassis, and systems being created by synthetic biology; analyze the differences between the objects created in older recombinant technologies and those projected in synthetic biology; empirical research tracking how these parts, devices, chassis, systems, and test beds are designed and the ways that evolution and contemporary synthetic approaches differ from and enforce each other; observe and design new institutional arrangements and interventions appropriate to the new objects being brought into the world; eventual standardization of this new mode of productively assembling scientific, technological, economic, cultural, ethical, and security components.
