Standard Grant: Public Deliberation on Gene Editing in Wild Populations

Hastings Center, Garrison NY

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a research project that studies two questions having to do with public deliberation about projects that are in development to use technologies to modify populations of wild organisms, in some cases by creating and releasing large numbers of modified individuals. The first question addresses what kinds of genetic-modification projects should involve public deliberation, and the second addresses how deliberation should be conducted when it is warranted. The overarching goal of the project is to develop politically legitimate and trustworthy decision-making processes for good use of technologies to modify populations of wild organisms, meaning processes that include mechanisms for incorporating society's values about what may and should be done to the shared environment. This project will offer recommendations to those in science and policy-making concerned about public deliberation, in addition to advancing scholarly understanding of public deliberation. In addition, it will generate products for educational use, thereby helping to educate the next generation of scientists about the governance challenges that surround emerging bio-technologies. Genetic modification projects that modify populations of wild organisms have significant potential benefits, risks, and uncertainties, both for human welfare and for aspects of the shared environment that are valued in themselves. The objective of this research project is to address two overarching questions about broad public deliberation: For what kinds of projects to modify populations of wild organisms should public deliberation be conducted, and where deliberation is warranted, how should it be conducted? Given the values at stake, it is essential to have guidelines concerning which projects require deliberative public engagement; it is essential to know when the public should have opportunities to think collectively and to have a voice concerning both whether and how such genetic-modification projects are to be implemented, including how broadly such deliberations should occur (only in communities where organisms might be released, or more broadly, even nationally or internationally). This research project will use case-based analysis by an interdisciplinary work group and it will provide a synthesis of the group's findings with pertinent literature. The results will advance the study of public deliberation; it will generate and disseminate recommendations about public deliberation to audiences in academia, science research, policy-making, and education. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.