Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 64-68 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Scientific American |
Volume | 317 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 1 2017 |
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In: Scientific American, Vol. 317, No. 4, 01.10.2017, p. 64-68.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
TY - JOUR
T1 - Reason on the ropes
AU - Hayhoe, Katharine
AU - Schwartz, Jen
N1 - Funding Information: ed to improve de sign and safety. “This puts the technology at risk of a knee-jerk morato- rium at the first sign of di culty,” he notes. To avoid that outcome, some research- ers are taking a new tack. Rather than dropping fully formed technology on the public, they are proactively seeking com- ments and reactions, sometimes before research even starts. That doesn’t mean political and social conflict will go away entirely, Delborne says, “but it does con- tribute to a context for more democratic innovation.” By opening an early dialogue with regulators, environmental groups and communities where the tools may be deployed, scientists are actually tweaking their research plans while wresting more control over the narrative of their work. Take evolutionary geneticist Austin Burt. In 2003 he published the first theo- retical paper on GE gene drives. Shortly after, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he and his colleagues launched a research project to see if gene drives could control Anopheles mosquitoes, which spread malaria. Back then, in the pre-CRISPR days, the technology was so speculative that doing outreach “didn’t seem worth taking up people’s time,” Burt says. Now that a working gene drive may be ready for regulatory assessment within five years, it’s essential to talk to communities where the technology may be deployed, he adds, “so we can make things that are going to be acceptable not just to regulators but to the public at large.” This push for reflection has especially come from those wielding the checkbooks. In 2016 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published Gene Drives on the Horizon: Funding Information: A mAjor threAt to the continuity of European science is the question of the U.K.’s membership in the 33-year-old E.U. frame-work for funding research. Horizon 2020, the program’s current installment, has a hefty budget of €80 billion to be allocated between 2014 and 2020; its successor, Framework Program 9, is pegged at €120 billion. The U.K. is one of its most successful participants and has received about 15.5 percent of Horizon 2020’s total awarded funds so far. Horizon 2020 is open only to E.U. member states or associated countries, such as Norway. If a non-E.U. country wants access, it must pay a share into the common pot based on its gross domestic product. The political mood in the U.K. is such that any payments to the E.U. post-Brexit will be aggressively opposed. Under Prime Minister Theresa May, the government has tried to reassure scientists by saying any potential loss of funding would be matched with homegrown money. But scientists are not buying it. “Looking at the state of the British economy, this funding will likely not be replaced in the same way,” Söldner-Rembold says.
PY - 2017/10/1
Y1 - 2017/10/1
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85048794346&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/scientificamerican1017-64
DO - 10.1038/scientificamerican1017-64
M3 - Article
C2 - 29565864
AN - SCOPUS:85048794346
SN - 0036-8733
VL - 317
SP - 64
EP - 68
JO - Scientific American
JF - Scientific American
IS - 4
ER -