WASHINGTON, D.C. — On July 8, Penn President Amy Gutmann answered a request from President Barack Obama by heading a commission of philosophy, law and government experts to discuss bioethical issues in up-and-coming sciences.
About 70 audience members attended the Presidential Bioethics Commision’s first public meeting, on July 8 and 9 in the Washington D.C. Ritz-Carlton hotel. The commission heard experts on ethics and bio-technology. “We will develop recommendations as the President charged us, and I quote ‘about any actions the federal government should take to ensure America reaps the benefits of this developing field of science, while minimizing identified risks,’” Gutmann said in her introductory remarks.
The meeting focused on the creation of a self-replicating, living cell with a completely synthetic genome.
J. Craig Venter — founder of the J. Craig Venter Institute where the cell was created — explained, “We started remaking the software of life and activating that in cells.”
However, some experts argued Venter’s progress is not as ground-breaking as it has been made out to be. Princeton molecular biology professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Bonnie Bassler cited the replication and synthesis of a virus in 1967, saying that though the genome being discussed is “significantly larger,” the accomplishment is “strikingly similar.”
“What the work does not do is provide information or insight about the nature of life,” Bassler said, adding that Venter and is team “did not create. They cloned.”
Another speaker, ETC Group Program Manager Jim Thomas, strongly cautioned the group to look at the uses of past scientific advances, and that synthetic biology may create a “bioeconomy” with negative impacts.
“I think in the process … [the bioeconomy] will require a mass reorganization, a grabbing of land and stripping away of plant matter and nutrients that could affect every part of the planet and some of the lives of the poorest people on the planet,” Thomas said.
Later, in response to a question, Thomas said there remain questions on the feasibility of the public having the means to approve new technologies.
Regarding the argument. Gutmann said, “We don’t have a Democratic way of assent to it, but neither do we have a Democratic way of banning” the technology.
Recently graduated Engineering student Steven McGill was among the audience. After receiving an e-mail about the meeting, he travelled to Washington D.C. from New York City.
“I was surprised at the quality of the commission,” McGill said. “A lot of times you’ll have these conferences or commissions and get a lot of repetitive things. But for me everything here was very enlightening.”
He added that though he does not know what recommendations the commission will make to Obama, the group shows promise. “In terms of educating the people who were present — they were very successful.”
Colleen Lyons, a 2006 graduate of the School of Medicine and Professor of Clinical Research Ethics at Drexel University’s, agreed that the commission was informative.
“This has added an extra week to my course,” Lyons said, explaining how she intends to include an overview of “the science, its promises and the ethical issues involved.”
She also described the commission as very sophisticated. “There was very isolated hubris. There’s a sense of humility in where we are in this science,” said Lyons.
Gutmann closed the meeting saying, “The number and diversity of members of the public who have turned out is truly heartening for anyone, like myself, who believes that education first and foremost is at the heart of a lot of the issues that we face in our democracy,” Gutmann said.
