It may not sound interesting at first, but a new center at London’s Imperial College is taking into consideration the public impact of research. In “Synthetic biology gets ethical,” Nature News reports:
[Senior staff member and sociologist Nikolas] Rose’s team will train graduate students and staff to consider the social and ethical implications of their research. He says the centre will also work with government and industry to develop a suitable framework to regulate the products of synthetic biology, and to make intellectual-property claims.
SynBERC is a similar center based at the University of California, Berkeley. SynBERC’s Web site provides more information about the new and exciting field of synthetic biology.
HT: Bioethics.com.
