Team:Michigan/Human Practices
Human Practices
Our Human Practice work focused on allowing students of all ages to interact with knowledgeable experts, and discuss topics related to our research, like genetic engineering and CRISPR. As a team, we are excited about the possibilities of synthetic biology, and wanted to ensure that the ethics surrounding CRISPR and gene editing are addressed. We need to recognize the potential for unexpected side-effects and consider the social impact and response of our construct. Through our work, we created unique spaces of dialogue and education between scientists and the public to address these concerns and take into account various actors’ perspectives for our research and future work. We taught bioinformatics to high school students, hosted a panel on the “Ethics of Genetic Engineering” and a science workshop at a children’s science center, where we learned how to approach people of all ages with knowledge on “hot” topics such as CRISPR.