Biofilm from the 2004 Synthetic Biology competition WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, JEFF TABOR AND RANDY RETTBERG
On Tuesday (March 12), the environmental activist organization Friends of the Earth called for a moratorium on the release of synthetic biology organisms or products into the environment. The call came from a report put together by 111 environmental organizations from around the world.
In 2010 the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethics found that synthetic biology was still in its infancy and therefore posed few risks. While the Commission did release a list of 18 recommendations for the development and oversight of the field, many have yet to be completed, despite a 2012 deadline for some of the recommendations. Friends of the Earth, which calls synthetic biology “extreme genetic engineering,” prepared its report in response to the assertion that little or no government ...
