Study On Ethical Evaluation Of Synthetic Biology

As a new high-technology,synthetic biological has a wide range of applications;while focusing on the development of the synthetic biological,it is necessary to carry out the ethical evaluation of synthetic biological.This paper uses the qualitative research method to analyze the ethical problems caused by synthetic biological.The first chapter encapsulates the definition and characteristic of synthetic biology,and the current development situation in China.A review on the study of the ethical perspective of domestic and foreign synthetic biological points out the shortcomings of the existing research and research focus in this article.This chapter laid the foundation for the analysis of the ethical issues in follow chapters.The second chapter mainly analyzes the philosophical thinking and ethical issues caused by synthetic biology.First,synthetic biotechnology further enhance the capability that human control the nature and interfere in the natural evolution.Life is simplified as the machine which is built by engineering “biobricks”.This would impact greatly on the traditional concepts of life and evolution.Second,the development of synthetic biological may lead to the social injustice.On the one hand,because of the complexity of synthetic biology,the public in developing countries cannot enjoy the benefits of the development of synthetic biology as the public in developed countries.On the other hand,the lack of fairness of the government decision-making,the use of unreasonable biological patent system to obtain monopoly profits will infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of the public.Third,Synthetic biological underlying biological safety risks and biological security risks.The former mainly refers to the leakage of toxic and harmful substances which would do harm to human health and ecological environment,as well as the risk of synthetic material contamination polluting natural gene bank.The latter means dangers of abuse of synthetic lethal and virulent pathogens for terrorist attacks,bio-war,or maleficent uses(‘garage terrorism',‘bio-hacking'),particularly if knowledge and skills on how to produce such pathogens are freely available.In view of these ethical issues,we need to carry out ethical evaluation for regulating the development of synthetic biology.The third chapter try to build a system of principles which include responsibility principle,fair principle,prevention principle and effectiveness principle about ethical evaluation of synthetic biology.Responsibility principle and fair principle could provide value guidance for stakeholders' action.The prevention principle can reduce the ethical risk of synthetic biology.And effectiveness principle is an important basis for evaluating the industrialization development of synthetic biology.The fourth chapter is to explore the mechanism of public participation in the evaluation of synthetic biological ethics and the ethical review mechanism of the synthetic biological development.Public participation in the development of synthetic biological governance,contributes to the protection of the fairness of the policy,supervises the government's decision-making process and the operation of enterprises effectively.The public participation in China could draw on European effective methods such as “public survey” and “community electronic conference”.Ethical review mechanism has played a role of "filter" and "firewall" in the process of synthetic biology's development.The ethics review is not only essential in human medical research,but also in application of scientific research projects and the authorization of synthetic biology's patents.In addition,the ethical principle education and training for synthetic biology researchers should be incorporated into the ethical review system.The fifth chapter summarizes the research of this paper and points out the deficiency.In a word,the study of this article is not comprehensive enough.In the further study,I will be more concerned about the evaluation criteria,evaluation of the subject and object system.