Our Safety and Dual Use activities aimed to reduce potential risks of our project for
us and for society.
We considered a range of strategies to ensure the biosafety and biosecurity of our work and minimised ethical risk using concepts of responsible research and innovation.
Introduction
It was crucial for our project to consider various risks at an early stage. HippoSol targets the consumer market and negligence could lead to the collapse of our project or other potentially adverse consequences, such as an inability to secure intellectual property rights. The risks we considered can be divided into three broad categories:
Biosafety;
Biosecurity;
Ethical risks.
Biosafety risk mitigation focused on means to protect the team and prevent the release of biohazardous material to the environment. Biosecurity risk mitigation focused on the protection of biological materials and biosecurity-relevant information to prevent theft, misuse and loss of the results of our project. Ethical risk mitigation focused on anticipating the possible consequences of our project and their ethical implications.
Work completed
To ensure that our project complies with the biosafety standards of iGEM we received the necessary training and completed a safety form. To ensure the biosecurity of our project we met with a patent attorney, attended a workshop on biosecurity, completed a biosecurity learning resource, and identified possible dual-uses of our project and how to address them. To reduce ethical risks of our project we fully evaluated all parts of our project, read a wide range of literature on the ethical implications of synthetic biology and biotechnology, and acted on feedback we received from other teams to develop strategies to minimise ethical risks.
This ribbon certifies we have completed the Dual Use and Dual Use Research of Concern resource produced by the 2018 Bielefeld-CeBiTec iGEM Team.
Examples of biosafety risks
Coming into contact with hazardous chemicals such as hydrochloric acid;
Escape of experimental strains of bacteria into the environment.
Examples of strategies to minimise biosafety risks
Wear protective equipment such as gloves and safety glasses to avoid contact with hazardous materials;
Use safe bacterial strains,conduct experiments in a sterile environment and sanitize yourself as well as a work surface well to avoid environmental contamination.
Examples of biosecurity risks
Theft of intellectual property;
Experimental bacteria passing antibiotic resistance to pathogenic bacterial strains to make pathogenic bacterial strains more dangerous.
Examples of strategies to minimise biosecurity risks
Had a consultation with patent attorney to create a plan of how to best protect our invention;
Planned to include a kill switch into our bacteria,so our bacteria would "self-destruct" before they have a chance to come into contact with potentially pathogenic bacterial strains.
Examples of ethical risks
Making investors take a more risky decision than they are ready to make by overselling our technical capabilities and downplaying the challenges of engineering biology;
Neglecting opportunity costs by trying to develop a solution for a minor problem using an exciting but expensive new technology, instead of spending effort on solving more significant issues.
Examples of strategies to reduce ethical risks
A realistic and thorough risk analysis of our project and their clear communication in our business plan ensures that investors are fully aware of the (economical) risks associated with our project;
We analysed the impact of our project in the broader context of Climate Change, and used surveys and interviews with the general public to ensure that we are solving a significant problem, without losing sight of the larger societal issues.
Examples of future work
Consultations with experts in sustainable consumption to ensure our project maximises its positive impact;
Consultations with experts in enterprise to ensure clear communication of risks associated with our project.
Conclusion
We considered a broad spectrum of risks, reflecting on our project in a broader societal context;
We developed a plan to reduce risks and communicate risks;
We planned future work to reduce risks associated with our project in the long term.
