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bio and synthetic bio might as well be unregulated
neither law makers or the public have a clue
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UPDATED: Synthetic Biology Doesn't Require New Rules, Biothics Panel Says
By Jocelyn KaiserDec. 16, 2010 , 12:00 AM
President Barack Obama's bioethics commission today released its final report on the risks and benefits of the young field of synthetic biology. Its conclusion: no new regulations are needed, but federal officials should be vigilant in case bigger risks arise in the future.
Obama called for the study in May after a team led by biologist J. Craig Venter reported that it had inserted a synthetic genome into a self-replicating cell. After three meetings, the 13-member commission's central finding is that synthetic biology offers promise for producing biofuels and new medicines but doesn't yet pose serious risks to the environment or health. "The upside benefits of this technology and our commitment as a country to intellectual freedom suggest no moratoriums. … No new agencies or laws are called for," says commission co-chair Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania.
Instead, the panel's 18 recommendations focus on dialogue and keeping an eye on the field. Within 18 months, a White House-level coordinating committee should publish reviews looking at funding, licensing policies, gaps in risk assessment, ethics education, and oversight rules for researchers. In addition, a private organization should create a fact-checking Web site that would correct exaggerations in the media about synthetic biology–such as claims that Venter created life. Venter's feat was "extraordinary in many ways, but "does not amount to creating life as either a scientific or moral matter," the report concludes.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/12/updated-synthetic-biology-doesnt-require-new-rules-biothics-panel-says
Craig Venter proposed a voluntary set of ethical regulations for synthetic biology.
>In 2010, the Venter lab announced that it had created the first bacterium with an entirely synthetic genome. This was reported to be the first instance of ‘artificial life,’ and in the ethical and policy discussions that followed it was widely assumed that the creation of artificial life is in itself morally significant. We cast doubt on this assumption. First we offer an account of the creation of artificial life that distinguishes this from the derivation of organisms from existing life and clarify what we mean in asking whether the creation of artificial life has moral significance. We then articulate and evaluate three attempts to establish that the creation of artificial life is morally significant. These appeal to (1) the claim that the creation of artificial life involves playing God, as expressed in three distinct formulations; (2) the claim that the creation of artificial life will encourage reductionist attitudes toward the living world that undermine the special moral value accorded to life; and (3) the worry that artificial organisms will have an uncertain functional status and consequently an uncertain moral status. We argue that all three attempts to ground the moral significance of the creation of artificial life fail, because none of them establishes that the creation of artificial life is morally problematic in a way that the derivation of organisms from existing life forms is not. We conclude that the decisive moral consideration is not how life is created but what non-genealogical properties it possesses.
Culted out baby
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3878377/
https://president.upenn.edu/meet-president/ethics-synthetic-biology-guiding-principles-emerging-technologies