Introduction: Understanding challenges and addressing concerns about the implication of genome editing in the public domain.
With the rapid advancement of gene manipulation technology, the community is hopeful towards its vast potential. Riding on this wave, our team wanted to explore how we can harness the strengths of genome editing and yet remain vigilant to its pitfalls. Our project works on a fundamental ideal that applications will impact the society at whole, thus in order to optimize the public’s acceptance, we investigated the impacts.
In our Human Practice, we will share our commitment to understand public opinions, to practice responsible Science and to engage key stakeholders. To establish relevance, we started the process with #CasAsks where a survey was published to gather public opinion and perception on genome editing. Using the data gathered from our survey as the basis, we took #CasAsks one step further to consult expert opinion on genome editing. These experts include current scientists with strong knowledge of genome editing and Bioethicist to understand the societal impact further. This affirmed our choice to zoom into RNA editing.
Concurrently, we rolled out a multipronged public engagement effort in view of the misconceptions we collected during the survey. Our pubic engagement effort is broken down into three unique and yet concerted approach: #CasTalks (videos targeted at public), #CasTeaches (outreach talks targeted at students) and #CasWrites (discussion essays targeted at critical thinkers).
Together, these four components of our Human Practice will provide the public with a more in-depth and holistic understanding on the topic of genome editing in both the scientific advancement and its societal impact.
Integrated Human Practices
Integrated Human Practices was extremely valuable in shaping our project. In order to obtain the focus of our experimental design, we carried out a holistic ground research, considering the various stakeholders. From our multifaceted perspectives, we uncovered that the main hindrance of the public, for the hotly discussed CRISPR-Cas9 system, is attributed to the ethical concerns, which stems from the permanent alteration of the genome. Thus, we identified RNA editing as a safer and more relevant option and this helped in our choice to tackle RNA editing in our project. In response to opinions from key stakeholders, we launched a multi-pronged engagement to practice responsible Science.
We identified 3 main statements that drive our human practice: perception, risk,engagement.
The timeline of our Integrated Human Practice Process will illustrate how our project evolved over time and with the input from our valued stakeholders.
Theoretical Framework
Our Integrated Human Practice is based on the interaction between various stakeholders on the topic of genetic engineering. Science is a social institute that is completely influenced by other institutions – mainly economical frameworks, legal systems, religion and the research community. How will we integrate genetic engineering into the society? We aim to dissect the sociology of Scientific knowledge – focusing on the social conditions of Science, with the social structure and processes of scientific activity. Our ultimate objective was to act as a bridge between the stakeholders by shaping the direction of our project and designing methods to communicate Science more efficiently.
Timeline
Figure 1.
Perception
To gain extensive insight into the differing perspectives of stakeholders, we first identified the stakeholders involved in our project.
