Creation (19 page)

The creativity built into the BioBricks Foundation, and synthetic biology in general, fosters a different ethos from the field of genetic modification that preceded it. It also has an engineering principle at its heart. Both of these aspects build up the case for seeing synthetic biology as an industrial revolution at its inception. Yet science occurs as part of culture, not distinct from it, and, as we have seen with the emerging issues of ownership, these new biotechnologies face not just scientific or practical problems, but the challenges of bringing them into society.

The Case for Progress

“It is easier to fixate on the threat than embrace the opportunity.”

Rob Carlson, 2011

T
he threat of violence was not fulfilled. In fact, what was billed as being an event marked by vandalism and direct action turned out to be, by all accounts, much like a pleasant family day in the English countryside. On May 27, 2012, following a few weeks of publicity, negotiation, and public pleas, the clash between anti-genetically-modified-foods activists and scientists happened on a sunny Sunday in the green fields of Rothamsted, Hertfordshire, featuring ice cream, singing, and some attempts at rousing rhetoric. The activists Take the Flour Back had declared in their propaganda that there isn't enough scientific data to support farming GM (genetically modified) crops, and that trials of GM wheat in Rothamsted's fields should be halted and the crops destroyed. They had declared that on this day they would “decontaminate” the fields of GM wheat, as has happened on several occasions in the last few years in the United Kingdom, meaning that they would rip out the experimental crops and raze the fields. The scientists leading the trials publicly pleaded and debated with them, but the plan of direct action stayed in place.

The wheat in the field carries several genetic modifications. Some are for lab administrative purposes (so that the functional experimental seeds can be selected from others). The main man-made gadget, however, is the introduction of a genetic circuit that produces the chemical (E)-β farnesene, or EβF (which, coincidentally, is very closely related to the chemicals being made for synthetic diesel mentioned in chapter 8). EβF acts as a Klaxon for aphids, a pheromone they pump out when being assaulted by predators such as ants; it tells other aphids to head for the hills. Aphids produce EβF themselves, but in a classy evolutionary move more than four hundred plants that aphids like to occupy also produce it, as a sort of
BEWARE OF THE DOG
sign on a canine-free house. Not only does it repel the aphids, it also prompts them to give birth to winged offspring, which can flee the perceived threat of danger. The experimental wheat has been created to produce EβF with the specific purpose of reducing the amount of aphid-slaughtering pesticide that farmers normally need to use.

One earlier study had shown that EβF-engineered wheat had little or no effect on repelling aphids, but that was under lab conditions, which can be qualitatively different from plants in an open field. The Rothamsted trial was designed as an attempt to address that exact question. A plaintive plea in an open letter by the scientists conducting the research pointed out that what Take the Flour Back had planned was “reminiscent of clearing books from a library because you wish to stop other people finding out what they contain.”

Despite the decidedly nondramatic unfolding of events in Rothamsted that day, Take the Flour Back remained unrepentant and issued a statement afterward saying,

We wanted to do the responsible thing and remove the threat of GM contamination; sadly it wasn't possible to do that effectively today. However, we stand arm in arm with farmers and growers from around the world, who are prepared to risk their freedom to stop the imposition of GM crops.

This small saga reflects the state of play in the public perception of modern biotechnology, and in many ways its entire forty-year history. Take the Flour Back is vocal and noisy, and generates plenty of publicity. But it is difficult to gauge to what extent this group of activists genuinely echoes the public mood or the numbers of the farmers with whom they claim solidarity. In many ways they draw inspiration from the Luddites. Though the name has evolved to refer to anyone who rejects technology, the first Luddites were artisan cloth makers who felt threatened by the advent of new mechanical looms. In the space of a few years at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they met by moonlight on the Yorkshire moors in northern England, broke into factories, and smashed up the looms that had taken their jobs.
¹

For opponents of genetic modification, this kind of direct action is rare, but not unheard of: Take the Flour Back's website claims that “between 1999 and 2003 at least 91 GM trials were damaged or destroyed.” The sentiment behind this has roots as old as the technology itself, as we shall see below. In the United Kingdom the potential introduction of genetically modified food during the 1980s was met with horror from campaigners, some of whom felt that to mess with nature in such a way was morally and intrinsically wrong. The press fueled the revulsion by creating the term
frankenfood
—a peculiar portmanteau moniker, given that Dr. Frankenstein was the creator of Mary Shelley's unnamed monster, not the monster itself. Yet labels like that have power. Just as the 1972 thefts at the Watergate building in Washington DC inexplicably gave the press the green light to forever affix the suffix -
gate
onto any political scandal, in the last few years we have had headlines with frankenmice, frankenfish, frankenbugs, and frankencrops in reference to anything genetically modified.

As synthetic biology grows scientifically, it is drawing attention from all quarters and inheriting the antagonists of generic genetic engineering. In order to address the concerns and ire that synthetic biology raises, we therefore need to look at the much broader picture of the public perception of biotechnology in general, and its short but world-changing history. We are beginning to see groups that have historically led the charge against GM, such as Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC) and Friends of the Earth, taking very specific aim at synthetic biology and publishing pamphlets alleging that the products of synthetic biology are untested, poorly understood, and that they threaten all manner of human and ecological scenarios. Immediately following the publication of Craig Venter's Synthia (it was in fact ETC that bestowed
Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0
with that more friendly nickname), President Obama commissioned a report from synthetic biology experts to assess any potential threats, challenges, and benefits from the whole field. The report, published in late 2010, addressed many of the issues by consulting with various publics and professional scientists, and drew up five categories by which to observe its progress: public beneficence, responsible stewardship, intellectual freedom and responsibility, democratic deliberation, and justice and fairness.

In assessing with these criteria, the commission decided that existing regulation was sufficient to allow synthetic biology to grow safely for the maximum benefit, while minimizing any potential threat. The principle of “prudent vigilance” is cited, which roughly translates as “let's keep a close eye on this.” However, it also recommended openness and innovation through sharing, recognizing the open-access, patent-free ethos of the BioBricks project described in the previous chapter, and a coordinated approach across the whole field. It was a stimulus to a whole field that acknowledged the potential of synthetic biology and strove to nurture its growth.

Yet not everyone saw it like that. The commission drew considerable ire from campaigners. In response, fifty-six organizations led by ETC and Friends of the Earth immediately published an open letter to the presidential commission decrying the report for

ignoring the precautionary principle, lacking adequate review of environmental risks, placing unwarranted faith in “suicide genes” and other technologies that provide no guarantee against the escape of synthetic organisms into the environment, and relying on industry “self regulation,” which is the equivalent of no independent oversight.

Regulation for genetic modification is needed and does exist. In the United States three federal agencies rule over the use of GM plants: the United States Department of Agriculture presides over the possibility of crops becoming weeds; the Food and Drug Administration is the authority on their entering and subverting the food chain; and the Environmental Protection Agency judges plants with pesticide powers.

In 2012, the GM opponents increased their numbers to a coalition of 111 activist groups and put together their own report, which further denounced the field of synthetic biology. That number may sound like a lot, but many of these organizations are small groups of a handful of individuals, so it is difficult to assess how representative their view is of the general population. Again with charged language and robust assertions, their conclusions were that more oversight and more regulation were needed, and that there should be a full moratorium on the release and commercial use of synthetic cells.

It might be useful to look here to the origin of biotechnology to help understand the context in which this opposition is rooted. The epicenter of synthetic biology is at Stanford University, where the BioBricks Foundation is headquartered, and in the mid-1970s it was also the birthplace of the founding technology. The discovery of restriction enzymes, those bacterial cut-and-paste tools with which this whole story began, had enabled an experiment by Paul Berg where he cut out parts of the genome of one virus and inserted them into another. This baby step into the world of genetic engineering earned him a Nobel Prize in 1980. Yet he was cautious about the implications of this new technology; he held back from completing the experiment for fear of creating a monster and putting his colleagues and the wider public at risk. Instead, Berg called for a moratorium on this infant field. In 1975, at the behest of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, he and others drew together a small international conference in Asilomar on California's Monterey Peninsula.

The Asilomar meeting is now regarded as a paragon of scientific responsibility when dealing with new and dual-use technologies, that is, new tools that have the potential to be used for both positive applications and by malefactors. The background culture in which it occurred featured the paranoid terror of blockbuster films such as
The Andromeda Strain
, in which an alien microbe caused madness and death indiscriminately, tapping into society's post-Watergate anxiety. Berg and others who were beginning to tinker with genetic code met with a sense of open caution in discussing where to go next. Journalists, lawyers, and scientists also convened, and together they hashed out the arguments over several days. In the end they drew up guidelines that suggested new research, open dialogues, and drawing on expertise from experts beyond molecular biology, such as in infectious diseases and microbial ecology. They concluded that the “new techniques, which permit combination of genetic information from very different organisms, place us in an area of biology with many unknowns.” That is a sentiment that applies as much today as it did then. In fact, the nature of science in general should foment by definition a culture filled with unknowns. But the sense of potential harm was judged to be outweighed by the potential benefits, and they recommended qualified progress:

It was agreed that there are certain experiments in which the potential risks are of such a serious nature that they ought not to be done with presently available containment facilities. In the longer term, serious problems may arise in the large-scale application of this methodology in industry, medicine, and agriculture. But it was also recognized that future research and experience may show that many of the potential biohazards are less serious and/or less probable than we now suspect.

However, the ideological rift between biotechnologists and their opponents was formalized shortly afterward. Just as in 2010, in 1978, not long after Asilomar, public opposition to the way genetic engineering was progressing began to emerge. There was also a falling-out of various scientists with environmental activists, including Friends of the Earth, with whom they had previously been allies. The terms were much the same as they are today: the degree of regulation required to enable safe progress in DNA-splicing research.

As the battle began, an anonymous scientist expressed the sentiment that “some of the environmental lobbies are in business to peddle paranoia,” and that their behavior was merely thuggish. “I fear,” James Watson told
Science
in 1978, “that such groups thrive on bad news, and the more the public worries about the environment, the more likely we are to keep providing them with the funds that they need to keep their organizations growing.” Another scientist suggested, this time off the record, that “these private agents of the public interest are not elected, nor are they necessarily in touch with the views of rank-and-file members of the groups they speak for.” It is quite possible that the same situation exists today, with popular support being garnered by shock tactics, publicity stunts, and emotive assertions rather than an attempt to engage in an honest and public dialogue, as we have seen in Rothamsted, and will see later in this chapter.

Paul Ehrlich, a prominent scientist and until that point a member of Friends of the Earth, reiterated the view that “the potential benefits from recombinant DNA research are so great that it would be foolhardy to restrict such research largely on the basis of imagined risks.” It is true that no successful acts of bioterrorism have occurred since Asilomar, and we will come to that shortly, but as the industry of genetic engineering bloomed and mutated into synthetic biology, the potential problems remained the same, and access to the technology is considerably easier now than it was in the mid-1970s. In 1975 you could fit every single expert on recombinant DNA into a decent-size pub, let alone a conference center. The same technology has now been democratized to the point where everyone who has ever performed DNA manipulation would populate a small country. Romanticizing the past is probably not very helpful, but it seems that the climate in which the birth of molecular biology took place was significantly different. Biotechnology was a neonate then, not the scientific and commercial behemoth that it is today. A U.S. presidential report in April 2012 put the revenue of the nation's “bioeconomy” in 2010 at $100 billion. It is only set to grow.