Creating protocells will raise a number of important social and ethical issues. These include potential benefits to individuals and to society, potential harms including health and environmental risks, and violations of cultural, religious or moral prohibitions. It is important that these implications be considered carefully, and openly, as an integral component of scientific investigations of the practical construction of protocells.
Prof. Mark Bedau has led this component of the PACE initiative; and, in that context, has had a visiting affiliation with the DCU Alife Lab. Other members of the DCU team have also participated in this activity. A series of international workshops, reviewing the social and ethical implications of protocell research, have been organised:
1. Social and Ethical Issues in Protocell Research (Los Alamos National Laboratory, LANL, July 2005)
2. Social and Ethical Issues in Protocell Research: Risk and Responsibilities in an Uncertain World (European Center for Living Technology, ECLT, October 2005)
3. Social and Ethical Issues Regarding Protocells: Questions and Answers (ECLT, March 2006)
Arising from these workshops, an edited collection of papers is due to be published in book form, by MIT Press ("Social and Ethical Perspectives on Protocells", Mark Bedau and Emily Parke, Editors).
The following tentative, summary, recommendations have been proposed:
- Researchers should engage in open, honest communication, acknowledging legitimate public concerns; in this way, they can build an effective dialogue with the public, media and NGOs.
- Researchers must address both specific, identifiable, risks and general perceptions of risk.
- The technology is still at an early stage of investigation, and expectations should not be "hyped up".
- Researchers should attempt to explicitly identify development milestones which should trigger specific social & ethical controls or interventions.