The President’s Bioethics Commission Misses the Mark on Synthetic Biology: “Prudent Vigilance” a Poor Substitute for Precaution

On November 16 and 17, President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues announced its draft recommendations on the oversight and regulation of synthetic biology. These recommendations were the long awaited response to Craig Venter’s announcement in May 2010 that he and his team had created the world’s first organism with a fully synthetic genome.

The Commission’s study supporting these recommendations, requested by the President after Venter’s announcement, researched the implications of synthetic biology, including potential benefits and risks of the emerging technology. After two public meetings - one in July and one in September - the commission used its third and final public hearing on synthetic biology to announce and discuss its draft recommendations. The recommendations have not yet been posted officially, but we have transcribed them from the webcast of the November meeting, and are making them available here.

The Commission should be applauded for adopting an open and transparent deliberation process when reviewing synthetic biology. All meetings were open to the public and available as live and archived webcasts. The Commission also intentionally reached out to civil society groups and the public to submit comments throughout its deliberative process.

Nonetheless, the nineteen draft recommendations released in mid-November are far from the precautionary policies needed to protect the environment and public’s health from the novel risks posed by synthetic biology. Instead of looking to the precautionary principle, the Commission coined its own approach to emerging technologies, which it terms “prudent vigilance.” The precautionary principle, which would require that products of synthetic biology are shown to be safe before being released into the environment, has legal precedence in a number of international treaties and conventions, such as the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. “Prudent vigilance,” as described by the Commission, has no legal standing and appears to be not much more than “business-as-usual” with a few soft recommendations to be careful as synthetic biology races forward.

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