18.4 Tooard Responsible Research and Innovation RRII)in Synthetic Biology 395It is believed that guidance on responsible ethical assessment is needed to be
vigilant about the harms of an emerging technology and prepared to revise the
policy while necessary. This calls for a broad-based ethical framework for SB. A
couple of key ethical principles relevant to the social implications of SB should be
taken into consideration to evaluate SB and its potential risks and benefits, such
as public beneficence, responsible stewardship, intellectual freedom and respon-
sibility, democratic deliberation, and justice and fairness [95]. To apply this
broad-based ethical framework to SB, public dialogue on ethical issues of SB is
one of the key components. The model developed based on the frames and com-
parators will be applied to these public dialogue events to provide the partici-
pants accurate yet understandable information about the topics.
18.4.6 Governance
Harmonious models for RRI integrating public engagement, gender equality, sci-
ence education, open access, and ethics can be built with proper governance.
The policy makers are the ones who should take action [76]. To clarify the role of
authority in regulation of SB, the European Academies Science Advisory Council
investigated the scientific and governance implications of SB [69]. It is still in
debate if specific policy for SB is needed to advance the field or this would create
additional obstacles to the growth of the field. Already there have been govern-
ance implications for biosafety and biosecurity, as it “remains an extension of
recombinant DNA technology and the scientific community commits to devel-
oping voluntary codes of conduct” [69]. The EC and member states should sup-
port education and training programs of SB, while the societal and scientific
community should be involved in the continuing debate to balance the self-
governance and regulation. It was also suggested that the EC should build a
robust governance framework and raise the governance issues internationally,
particularly in the areas of research funding, ethics and human rights, and bios-
ecurity, as well as trade and IPR [68]. It is believed that the right governance tools
will help the responsible use of SB to promote scientific advances that would
benefit the whole society and the environment.
A report from a workshop organized by ERASynBio on public dialogue and
governance suggested that governance of SB should be based particularly on
three principles: participation, transparency, and accountability (see http://www.
erasynbio.eu). These principles should then be implemented at all levels of the
ERA-net – from strategies to individual projects. These principles should be
reflected in the calls and in the evaluation processes. The EC expert group
provided opinions on how to implement RRI regarding to governance aspect (as
listed in Box 18.1):
To enable continuing RRI, the policy makers have called for collaboration with
all stakeholders. This includes calling from funders on collaborative projects for
researchers from the natural and social sciences. The convergence of both sci-
ence aims to enhance both the scientific quality and the extent how social and
ethical considerations are integrated [96]. The expert group of EC suggested that
the societal stakeholders should be not only get involved in the projects but also
get involved in the funding evaluation processes [65].