Of Microbes and Men (Synthetic Biology) (Essay‪)‬

It is a cliche in commentary on synthetic biology that there is no universal agreement on what synthetic biology is. Some see it as an incremental extension of earlier genetic technologies for modifying organisms. Others see it as the beginning of real genetic engineering, on the grounds that what has passed for "genetic engineering" up until now has been too haphazard to merit the term. The very grandest definitions of the field, on the other hand, do not limit it to any particular technology; they describe the field simply as a matter of designing and constructing biological systems for useful purposes. (1) Given the disagreement about what synthetic biology is, we might expect a similar range of views about whether it should be done. Some of the earlier, simpler technologies for genetic engineering struck some critics as deeply troubling, on grounds that they represented an intrinsically unattractive change in the human relationship to nature, while others found them entirely unexceptionable. On the face of it, if synthetic biology is real genetic engineering, then there should be an even deeper rift about synthetic biology. But in fact, there may be an emerging consensus, articulated by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which found that "opposition to synthetic biology at present on such grounds alone [that is, on grounds that it is intrinsically troubling] does not adequately reflect the relationship of this technology to previous scientific activities and the current limited capabilities of the field," but that the concern should be "revisited periodically as research in the field advances in novel directions." (2)