Team:GDSYZX/Human Practices
HUMAN PRACTICES
Overview
Our project stems from our middle school students' attention to this year's major public health crisis - COVID-19. We have been keep thinking about what we can do responsible and good for the world. IGEM advocates "local people to solve local problems". As a Chinese team, we are always looking for ways to treat (or prevent) COVID-19 with regional characteristics. After a series of background investigations and data collection, we try to draw inspiration from tranditional Chinese medicine. Finally, we set our sights on honeysuckle and hope to express its active ingredient chlorogenic acid in rice. Therefore, we can obtain a more convenient and low-cost effective epidemic prevention method. Before designing our human practice activities, we considered possible potential problems in ethics, sustainability, inclusion, security and other aspects. Here are some aspects that public may concerned:
The effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine in the prevention of COVID-19;
The rationality of long-term dietary supplementation of chlorogenic acid;
The safety of GMO food crops;
Acceptability of our project;
To get more diversified opinions, our team interacted with potential users (general citizens) and Chinese medicine experts to inform them of their project selection, design and execution.
In order to obtain expert opinions, our team interviewed Director Jiang and Dr. Hu of The First Affiliated Hospital Of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine; in order to understand the public’s thoughts on our project, we conducted a questionnaire survey. After the interview and questionnaire survey, we conducted further data collection and analysis on the collected questions, and responded in our public education.
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Expert Interview
In the COVID-19 epidemic, Chinese medicine has played a significant role, and honeysuckle is one of the Chinese herbal medicines. In order to get a more professional view and improve our project, we interviewed two Chinese medicine practitioners in the disease treatment department.
introduction
Jiang Ning, an attending physician in the Prevention and Treatment Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. She graduated from Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 1995.She has a wealth of clinical work experience in traditional Chinese medicine health care, and is good at Chinese medicine conditioning for gynecological diseases, sleep disorders, chronic gastritis, sub-healthy Chinese medicine, ointment, and medicated diet conditioning.
Hu Peng, attending physician, graduated from the Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology of Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and has been engaged in clinical work of Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology for 6 years. In 2001, he went out of labor to study neurosurgery. Since then, he has been focusing on clinical, teaching and related scientific research in neurosurgery. Based on the strengths of traditional Chinese medicine, focusing on the advantages of traditional Chinese medicine, focusing on the treatment of various neurosurgical diseases with integrated traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine.
Firstly, in traditional Chinese medicine area, the core herbs that can improve immunity are usually Supporting the Healthy Energy, but honeysuckle is the herb eliminating pathogenic factors, and medicated diet is based on herbs that can improve immunity while the herb eliminating pathogenic factors is the supplementary--which means the thing is not the important one component. In addition, in the basic concept of traditional Chinese medicine, medicine should follow the thought of "unity" --the effectiveness of Chinese traditional medicine is often not used for just only one malady, but for human whole body system. In constract, we transffer chlorogenic acid-- one of the components of honeysuckle-- into rice, not the whole gene of honeysuckle. 1. The results of recent studies on traditional Chinese medicine have shown that the organic acids, polysaccharides, general, alkaloids and volatile oils contained in a variety of traditional Chinese medicine can give full play to the adaptability and immune function of the body and achieve the purpose of disease prevention. In the paper "Analysis of the Law of Drug use in the treatment of leukopenia with traditional Chinese Medicine compound", the method of statistics was used to analyze the law of drug use in the treatment of leukopenia. The following data were obtained: astragalus membranaceus, Angelica sinensis, Tripterygium wilfordii, Atractylodes macrocephala, Rehmannia glutinosa, Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch, Ligustrum lucidum, Lycium barbarum, Codonopsis pilosula, psoralen and Poria umbering were the most frequently used in the treatment of leukopenia, accounting for 53% of the total frequency of drug use. 49%. Astragalus membranaceus and Angelica sinensis are the core drugs for the treatment of leukopenia; the drug categories are mainly tonifying qi and blood, promoting blood circulation and removing blood stasis drugs and promoting dampness drugs in two and three places respectively, which are relatively more used; the drug taste is mainly sweet, bitter and Xin; the meridian is mainly spleen, liver and kidney meridians. The drugs used are invigorating qi and nourishing blood, warming kidney and invigorating spleen, supplemented by promoting blood circulation and removing blood stasis, clearing away heat and detoxifying. The role of honeysuckle is to clear away heat and eliminate inflammation. From the point of view of traditional Chinese medicine, it can only be used as an auxiliary effect by people to eat, rather than as the main ingredient of medicinal diet. Moreover, the pharmacological effects of chlorogenic acid which we transferred into rice are anti-bacteria, fungi, viruses, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor and so on, but it is different from improving the autoimmune function of human body. According to the facts, we turn the purpose of our project--from increasing people's immunity to give specific people a way to prevent disease like the people who get imflamed or have no cool fitnees.
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Questionnaire
Introduction & Universality&Security
In order to learn about the acceptance and understanding of our project from the society, we sent a survey on the Internet. Finally, we received answers from 964 people. Respondents are concentrate on the age between 10 and 20 and 40 and 50, which shows a wide range of the age join in it and it thus becomes much more reliable.
Also, we keep the information of respondents only to our team members, so people can make their true choice with our consideration. Therefore, what we can believe is that this survey thoroughly reflects people’s genuine opinions about honeysuckle, genetically modified food and our project.
Traditionally Chinese Medicine
We totally set 19 questions. In questions 4 to 7, we asked people about their attitudes towards the efficacy of Traditional Chinese medicine(TCM). If 10 is very effective and 0 is not at all, the average perception of TCM is 6.8. At the same time, more than half of people will choose to use Chinese medicine for prevention or treatment during the influenza epidemic. What is more, more than 70% of people believe that TCM has the ability of enhancing the immunity. These data show that people's general view of TCM is relatively positive.
Honeysuckle
In questions 8-10, we set questions about honeysuckle.
The graph shows that 91%of the respondents have taken medicine containing honeysuckle, which also indicates that the medicine made by honeysuckle has been widely used in the current society and has been accepted by the majority of people. Connected with the average of believing honeysuckle is beneficial is 6.57, we concluded that people support the efficacy of honeysuckle.
Genetically Modified Food
In questions 11-15, we asked about the attitude towards genetically modified food.
As we can see from the figure, two-fifths of the respondents indicate that they do not support genetically modified food, and 42% stand on neutrality . This shows that the current society is not so recognized for genetically modified food. In order to promote the development of our project and its social acceptance, further research and publicity of genetically modified food is very necessary.
This graph illustrates people’s anticipated benefits of genetically modified food.
People show their worries about the potential risk of genetically modified food. one fifth of people concerned that biodiversity will be destructed and another 20% people think it will generate new disease. We must admit that these risks are possible, so in the future, we need to do more research in order to push the development of genetically modified food.
Acceptance of Our Project
We described the basic information and inquired about the acceptance of our project in questions 16-19. If 10 is our project very beneficial to the society and 0 is not at all, the average perception of benefits is 5.74, which positively shows that more than half of our respondents believe that our project will make contribution to the whole society. What is more, 5.5 proportion of total people indicate that they are willing to consume the new rice made from our project. This also shows people’s confidence and support to our project.
Conclusion
It is persuasive that this survey makes a positive influence of publicizing our project to the whole society. Citizens support what we do, which indicates that up to now, we make a successful progress.
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Integrated Human Practices
The public speech that was held in a community promoted our project to a large extent. In the course of preaching, we had a zero distance contact with the masses and fully understood people's views and demands on Traditional Chinese medicine and genetically modified food(GMF). For example, we found that the middle-aged and elderly hold a positive attitude towards Traditional Chinese medicine, but there is resistance to GMF. And they pay more attention to the texture and taste of rice as a staple of life. Therefore, in order to improve the content of chlorogenic acid in rice and affect the taste and nutrition of rice to a minimum at the same time, we chose to express HQT gene specifically in rice seeds, which contributed to the popularity and integrity of our project.Through this community presentation, we knew the exact ideas and public demands toward our project, and got direct feedback that helped us improve our project.
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, we publicized our project to the public in the form of online questionnaire at the very beginning, and this introduced us to the public's opinions and suggestions on our project. According to the questionnaire data we received, people in different ages had different opinions on our project. For example, most of the young and middle-aged people hold positive attitude towards our project, while some of the old and middle-aged people might have some misunderstanding and resistance to GM food. According to these problems, we modified part of the community propaganda, adding some more science about GM to help the public know more about our project and GM food. Therefore, the online questionnaire provides a clearer direction for our offline social practice and guides us to carry out the following projects.
The safety of the experiment is our priority. In order to ensure the safety of products as far as possible, we have made certain compromises after human practice.At the primary design, we planned to sell our products to all the people in the society so as to improve their ability to resist the virus. However, in our human prcatice of interviewing the expert, we learned that there were some problems in our assumption, such as neglecting All aspects of applicable users, ecological problems, safety issues, etc. The interview helped us pinpoint our final goal, finding out many problems and gave us great inspiration. Therefore, we changed our plan to sell our products to certain groups of people, such as the elderly, the seriously ill and so on. By changing the target group, we have clarified the direction of our project and improved the efficiency of subsequent preparation.
If we want to implement our project in real life, we still need to go through a series of considerations and optimizations. Our experiment has already demonstrated that CGA can be specifically expressed in rice protoplasts. In the future, we will still face a series of challenges in order to make our products available to the public. In order to close the loop, we consider about what necessary process we should achieve. In next stage, we need to develop rice plants that can stably express CGA through long-term experiments. After certain results have been achieved, we will apply to the country for project permission to carry out more processes. Animal experiments and volunteers will in turn help us further determine the safety of the product, and finally the success of the public view.