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How to Address the Policy and Ethical Issues Emerging with New Technology. The Case of Synthetic Biology in a Small Country

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Abstract

Synthetic biology (SB) is rather a new field of science and technology. Societal, regulatory, legal, ethical, safety and security aspects of this field have already been analysed in much detail and discussed very widely in recent years. There is, however, a dearth of empirical studies on the points of view of relevant stakeholders in countries where SB is still in the process of emergence. Slovenia is one of them, and accordingly, the article analyses the situation of SB in this small country, focusing on the points of view of various stakeholder groups concerning three aspects of SB: the policy framework, the ethical-legal discourse and the issues of biosafety and biosecurity. It is argued that Slovenia has missed many opportunities to foster the domestic development of the field; in particular, considering that at an early stage, young Slovenian researchers participated very successfully in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition.

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Notes

  1. The success of iGEM teams could be one reason that the share of the Slovenian public that is familiar with SB is quite large. The last Eurobarometer survey of public opinion about new technologies showed that 22% of respondents in Slovenia had already heard of SB. For example, quite similar shares are found in the UK (21%), the Netherlands (20%) and Germany (18%) [34].

  2. In Slovenia, there exist some bioinformatics companies that deal with genomics data analysis and visualisation consulting services and software products in biogenomic science. One such firm is ‘Genialis’ which focuses on the development of web applications that enable exploratory analysis of next-generation sequencing and microarray data and target gene prioritisation using various machine learning approaches. ‘Genialis’ was founded in 2013 as a spin-off from the Biolab (Bioinformatics laboratory) at the Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences of the University of Ljubljana. Another relevant SME is the ‘Metagenomic Centre’ which concentrates on applied (meta)genomics, cell-abiotic surface and cell-biotic surface interactions within the study of bioaerosols.

  3. A get-and-give philosophy underpins the Registry of Standard Biological Parts. The Registry is part of the iGEM Foundation [33]. It is a continuously growing community collection of biological parts that can be mixed and matched to build synthetic biology devices and systems. The Registry provides these resources for the continued growth of SB in education, academic research and new industry.

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Funding

This article was written with the support of the European Commission FP7 Science in Society funded project, Synthetic Biology – Engaging with New and Emerging Science and Technology in Responsible Governance of the Science and Society Relationship (SYNERGENE).

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  1. Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Franc Mali

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Correspondence to Franc Mali.

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The interviews were conducted by the author and Dr Toni Pustovrh (†) from the Centre for Social Studies of Sciences at the Faculty of Social Sciences (University of Ljubljana).

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Mali, F. How to Address the Policy and Ethical Issues Emerging with New Technology. The Case of Synthetic Biology in a Small Country. Nanoethics 12, 61–73 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-017-0310-9

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