What is synthetic biology? What are the new ethical questions brought up by synthetic biology?
Gathering voices that were mentioned in the 2009 publication “Ethics of synthetic biology” by The European Group on ethics in Science and New Technologies to the European Commission, it becomes clear that synthetic biology is based on the breakdown of properties of living organisms into building blocks that can be arranged and modified and combined to create or design a new (synthetic) organism to fulfill certain tasks 1. One of the differences compared to classical transgenic organisms, which are usually based on altered naturally occurring genes that are introduced to a genome of naturally occurring organism, is the fact that synthetic biology can be based on the introduction of synthetic units into synthetic cells that are based on minimalistic genomes. However, drawing a line between transgenic and
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While synthetic organisms present certain characteristics that are usually linked to our understanding of life (such as “homeostatic physiological mechanisms, a nucleic acid genome and protein-based structure, and the ability to reproduce” 2), they also exhibit characteristics that are linked to machines (“modular construction, based on rational design principles, and with specific applications in mind” 2). So on what ethical and moral basis should synthetic organisms be treated? Given the fact, that we already use (transgenic) microorganisms such as bacteria and that we usually do not attribute a moral right to live to them, this could already be an answer regarding to synthetic microorganisms. Another intriguing question, that does not have a satisfying answer yet: What about a “machine” that is based on human cells, developing human-like patterns (e.g. a computer working with a “human” nervous