Team:Montpellier/Human Practices
The Project with the Public
Public’s opinion
During our project we had the occasion to talk about our research to a lot of different people (more information can be found in our Education and Public Engagement page). Those discussions were informative about the view people could have about synthetic biology and our project. Some of the main concerns can be found on Figure 1.
Survey
By having the idea of our project, we immediately realised that we needed a way to introduce our project to the non scientific community. Moreover, in order to integrate our project into society, we first need to know what the people want, and also, how deeply they know the subject.That’s why we first created a survey asking questions about contraception, hormonal treatments, the use of genetically engineered organisms and consequences on the environment.
We wanted to have an overview of the perception of contraception and genetically engineered organisms by the general population. We developed a poll to probe as much people as we could: our survey was answered by 1163 people in both English and French. In the poll we are asking general questions about people, their contraceptives mean, their satisfaction about it. Then we went further with question about GMOs and their perceptions, then asking their view about a contraceptive mean such as ours.
The survey was mainly answered by women (Figure 2).
The people that answered the poll were fairly young with an over representation of people between 18 and 25, over 50% of the poll responders (Figure 3).
We also have an over representation of people with high level of education (Figure 4).
And finally nearly all probed people were from France (Figure 5).
Then knowing our population sample we asked their contraceptive mean (Figure 6).
This was more or less representative of the general population of France, except for the so called “natural method”. We discovered that militants of this method heard about our project, and decided to make their voice heard about how they disprove it. We wanted to notify this only because they were over represented in our poll (about 20%) compared to the French population (3%) and hence could biased our poll. As a note the “natural method” is based on temperature measurements and self-assessment of the viscosity of vaginal secretions…
COMMENTAIRE JEROME
Contraception Satisfaction
We then asked the amount of satisfaction on their contraceptive means on a scale from 1 to 5 (giving a median of 3), the general average was of 3.74 out of 5 wish reflect a good overall satisfaction. But they were some disparities. We studied especially the most common ones: male condoms and pills. For condoms the satisfaction was of 3.34, which is quite high compared to other method. Whereas for the pill it was 2.26. Showing that the pill isn’t a very satisfactory contraception method. Furthermore 20% of the women using pills or other hormonal means have some form of medical issues or contraindication. So there is actually a place for some new non-hormonal contraceptive mean such as our project.
Impacts of Hormones
After that we asked if they think hormones had impact on the body and our environments. 97% believed it has an impact on the body, but only 85% agreed it had an impact on the environment. We studied those other 15% and discovered they had a lower educational level than the rest of the population, suggesting their belief resulted on a lack of access to information.
GMOs Opinion
We also asked about general view on GMO, and 50% of people think it is dangerous for health and the environment, 18% think it is a useful process, and the rest agreed it depends on the applications and the genes implanted. By isolating data of the younger part audience (18-21) we discovered that they were more inclined to think it is a useful progress 26% (+9 points). However this showed that half of the French population still believes that modified organisms are harmful not matter their application. This was quite a surprise to us because, even though we knew are country to be historically opposed to the use of GMOs we didn’t think the proportion was still this high in 2018.
The Project
Finally we wanted to see the perception of our project from 1 to 5 again, and it turned out it was around 2.95, just above average which is quite reasonable as it’s a bit controversial to propose a contraceptive mean using GMOs. We concluded there is a place for a new non hormonal contraceptive mean for a part of the population but that still a majority was probably not really aware of what modified organisms were and how they could serve their health and environment in many different ways.
Conclusion
This polled changed our view of how we should talk about our project, knowing how bacteria and their microbiome was a prerequisite for people before they could understand the extents of our project. This is why we decided to bring something to the science popularization movement. We wanted to create something that could explain to people how the female reproductive systems work, how contraceptives method do but also what synthetic biology is and present our project. We conducted different projects to fulfill this goal that we are presenting in the following sections.
Interaction with professional gynecologists
During our journey, we were able to discuss our project with a few french Gynecologists having different points of view about our project:
- Elisabeth Paganelli, Tours
- Claire-Noëlle Collardey, Paris
- Olivier Cherici, Montpellier
- Laurent Vandenbrouck, Montpellier
According to them, the scientific world knows well about probiotics, and their use is not an innovation. What is an innovation is to use genetically engineered lactobacillus as a probiotic. It is also necessary to turn to non-hormonal contraceptives, since people tend not to want it anymore says Dr. Elisabeth Paganelli.
However, the use of such bacteria raises different problematics such as potential noxious effects for the vaginal flora and the vagina. The use of the Antimicrobial Peptides coupled to Antisperm Antibodies could increase vaginal irritations and therefore rising the chances to get a Bacterial Vaginosis.
In addition to that, people's vision toward GMO is quite bad (and especially in France) “That's why a product like Vagineering should get a very strong marketing and brand associated” said Paganelli. And the fact that the product is, obviously, reversible should be made very clear from the beginning.
According to Dr. Laurent Vandenbrouck, the vaginal microbiota renew itself around every 3 months, so there is a necessity to find an adequate gallenic formula.
All gynecologists agreed on the fact that the world needs new contraceptives and that the scientific community should work on new alternatives to hormonal contraceptives.
In conclusion, we highlighted a lack of knowledge and research around the vaginal flora. For a project such as Vagineering to really exist and be proposed, it is essential that non-scientific people better understand what is the microbiota and synthetic biology.
In addition, there is a lot of concern about our project. Indeed, there is a fear of a problem of reversibility and spread of bacteria. However, the project is largely supported, showing the interest of new ways of contraception.
Popularization
As it is probably one of the most important aspect of our project, since it directly applies to the Public life style, we decided to create different tools for the people to understand better, and make their own point of view of our project.
How? By interviewing them, knowing what could be their questions. Educate them about the vagina and its flora, contraceptives and everything about it, and synthetic biology and its possible application for women health.
A Comic Book: Integrate our project into society
As you saw earlier, more than 1000 people answered to our survey. The idea is that following the survey, people can give feedback and ask questions. So, we wanted a way to answer to their questions in an educative way.
With the help of the artist @Minskiga, we created a popularization comic book.
This comic book has 2 main objectives:
- The first one is to answer to the community questions about contraceptives and synthetic biology applied to it.
- The second one i to create a path between scientific knowledge and a lay audience through a storyline.
We also want our comic book to be accessible for every level of education starting from 12 years old.
Steps of creation
- Storyline: who will tell the story? What questions to answer?
- Bibliography: find the papers that talk about our subject and go deeper and wider.
- Drafting a storyboard: the human practices team drew all the storyline.
- First correction: English spelling and scientific corrections. We also discussed the point of view of our comic book.
- Artist work: We then sent the storyboard to Minskiga, and she started her hard work !
- Finding a Name
The relationship between us and the artist
Minskiga is an artist student who hasn’t any biology education and therefore will have her own perception of scientific words.
Since she is living in a different place than us, we saw her only a few times during the summer.
It is necessary for the artist to well understand the subject in order to popularize it.
As you can see in this example, Minskiga first understood that Lactic acids were producing bacteria in the teen vagina.
However, this is the exact contrary : Lactic bacteria produce lactic acids.
⇒ We had to discuss about exactitude of her drawings, and we still are modifying pages.
The relationship between the artist and the public
Minskiga uses her art skill to describe something that some non educated person will not obviously understand through scientific words. And she give an illustrative answer to a question. It’s actually reading a comic book instead of reading a scientific paper.
We created characters for the public to identify themselves in the story.
 |
 |
 |
| Minskiga | Vulva | Bacterium |
| She’s the Artist that creates the comic book. She met a team of young scientists and she wants to share their knowledge | She’s minskiga’s friend and she knows a lot about vulva anatomy and microbiota | It’s one of the bacteria living inside a microbiota ! |
Answering questions from the survey and social networks feedback through the comic book
Through social networks and our survey, people asked us a lot of questions about our project. We used those questions to build a storyline and answer to most of them.
Here, we give a possible definition of sexes and gender identity.
***********mettre en page question ==> dessin ==> réponse**************
Bibliography
For each and every pages of the comic book, we had to search and confirm informations in scientific papers. As we will provide knowledge to non educated people, we need to have sources for everything we said.
However, our comic book is made for the people to start a reflexion about contraception and synthetic biology. The knowledge we give is therefore not exhaustive.
| Page | Information | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Vaginal microbiota | Huang, B., Fettweis, J. M., Brooks, J. P., Jefferson, K. K., & Buck, G. A. (2014). The changing landscape of the vaginal microbiome. Clinics in laboratory medicine, 34(4), 747-761. |
| 9-10 | Environment affecting the microbiota | Fashemi, B., Delaney, M. L., Onderdonk, A. B., & Fichorova, R. N. (2013). Effects of feminine hygiene products on the vaginal mucosal biome. Microbial ecology in health and disease, 24(1), 19703. |
| 11-13 | Infectious diseases | Couic-Marinier, F., & Pillon, F. (2017). Prise en charge d’une mycose vaginale. Actualités Pharmaceutiques, 56(568), 14-16. Petrova, M. I., van den Broek, M., Balzarini, J., Vanderleyden, J., & Lebeer, S. (2013). Vaginal microbiota and its role in HIV transmission and infection. FEMS microbiology reviews, 37(5), 762-792. |
Conclusion
This comic book is the result of more than 3 months of work, and still needs to be improved. Therefore pages will being modified again before its release. But it will be uploaded very soon. You can find out more about this project in our Public Engagement page !
What’s next?
We want to edit and publish this comic book. Indeed, Minskiga did, and is still doing a very hard work on the project, and we are proud of it. So, after the presentation at the Giant Jamboree, we will try to print the comic and license it.