Interview: Drew Endy

Siegel, Jonas

doi:10.2968/063003008

Cited by 3 publications

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“…However, Endy, alongside a few other salient figures in synthetic biology such as George Church (Harvard), Ron Weiss (Princeton) or Christina Smolke (CalTech), repeatedly advertise synthetic biology as an addressable object employing terms such as design, standardisation, collaboration and communication. Like Venter's output, Endy's writings, lectures and addresses comprise essays, opinion pieces and interviews scattered across popular science and public scientific journals such as Scientific American (Baker et al, 2006), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Siegel, 2007), Wired (Morton, 2005), Nature (Endy, 2007) and Science (Endy, 2008), and quasi-public events such as the conference of the Long Now Foundation, Berlin's Chaos Computer Club Congress (the most well-known computer hacker conference in Europe), as well as numerous online videos, comics, websites and blogs.…”

Section: Possibility Of An Objecting Synthetic-biology Publicmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Validating to Verifying: Public Appeals in Synthetic Biology

Mackenzie

2013

Science as Culture

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Synthetic biology provides a vivid and richly entangled contemporary example of a science being made public. A science, however, can be made public in different ways. A public could validate, legitimate, de-legimate, object to, verify, confirm or dissent from science. Practically, scientists could publicise science-in the mass media-or they could make science public. The contrast between high-profile, media scientists such as J. Craig Venter, and community-based participatory mechanisms such as OpenWetWare allows us to see how these alternatives play out in practice. While it is easy to criticise and dismiss the public-relations oriented promotion of synthetic biology by figures such as Venter, how should we evaluate the open participatory mechanisms of a social media effort such as OpenWetWare? I suggest, drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers and Michael Warner, that the case of synthetic biology is interesting because many synthetic biologists commit themselves to making it public, and making its public-ness part of how it is done. They place hope in publics to make the science viable. At the same time, however, the publics who are welcomed into OpenWetWare are largely confined to validating the coordination mechanisms on which the claim to public-ness rests. Whether publics can do more than validate synthetic biology, then, remains a question both for publics outside and inside this emerging scientific field. And whether the alternatives of validation or participation themselves adequately frame what is at stake in the emergence of fields such as synthetic biology remains debatable.

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Section: Possibility Of An Objecting Synthetic-biology Publicmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Validating to Verifying: Public Appeals in Synthetic Biology

Mackenzie

2013

Science as Culture

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Barriers to Bioweapons: Intangible Obstacles to Proliferation

Ouagrham-Gormley

2012

International Security

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Although the issue of knowledge diffusion has been at the heart of nonproliferation research and policies, no study in the political science field has thus far systematically identified the mechanisms that allow the acquisition and efficient use of specialized knowledge related to bioweapons. This analytical gap has led to the commonly held belief that bioweapons knowledge is easily transferable. Studies of past weapons programs, including the former U.S. and Soviet bioweapons programs, show that gathering the relevant information and expertise required to produce a weapon is not sufficient to guarantee success. The success of a bioweapons program is dependent on intangible factors, such as work organization, program management, structural organization, and social environment, which can enhance the advancement of a program or create obstacles to progress. When assessed within smaller state and terrorist bioweapons programs, such as those of South Africa and the terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo, these intangible factors produce the same constraining effects as in larger programs. More important, intangible factors have a significant effect on covert programs, because clandestinity imposes greater restrictions on knowledge diffusion. By taking into account these intangible factors, analysts and policymakers can improve their threat assessments and develop more effective nonproliferation and counterproliferation policies.

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Dual-Use Research and the Myth of Easy Replication

Ouagrham-Gormley¹

2013

J. Disaster Res.

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Since 2000 a number of controversial research projects have raised concerns that states or terrorist groups might use published research results to replicate the work for malevolent purposes. The issue came into greater focus in December 2011, after it was revealed that the U.S.-based National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity had requested one U.S. and another Dutch lab to halt publication of work describing what was done to enhance the transmissibility of the H5N1 flu virus to mammals. In spite of a decade of debate and policy development to prevent bio-attacks and the misuse of dual-use research, little effort has been made to determine whether scientific publications can indeed help replication by untrained individuals. This paper taps into the extensive science and technology literature and recent studies in the security field, to show that replication of scientific work is inherently difficult and probably inaccessible to untrained individuals. The paper also offers new policy options designed to more effectively prevent the misuse of dual-use research.

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Interview: Drew Endy

Abstract: The natural world is simply wondrous, unless you're bioengineer Drew Endy. Then it's also inefficiently designed.

Cited by 3 publications

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From Validating to Verifying: Public Appeals in Synthetic Biology

From Validating to Verifying: Public Appeals in Synthetic Biology

Barriers to Bioweapons: Intangible Obstacles to Proliferation

Dual-Use Research and the Myth of Easy Replication

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