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Biosecurity and Open-Source Biology: The Promise and Peril of Distributed Synthetic Biological Technologies.

In this article, we raise ethical concerns about the potential misuse of open-source biology (OSB): biological research and development that progresses through an organisational model of radical openness, deskilling, and innovation. We compare this organisational structure to that of the open-source...

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Published in:Science & Engineering Ethics Vol. 21; no. 4; pp. 1065 - 1084
Main Authors: Evans, Nicholas, Selgelid, Michael
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Aug2015
Subjects:
Biosecurity
Biological research
Biotechnology ethics
Open source software
Bioterrorism
Deskilling (Labor)
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:In this article, we raise ethical concerns about the potential misuse of open-source biology (OSB): biological research and development that progresses through an organisational model of radical openness, deskilling, and innovation. We compare this organisational structure to that of the open-source software model, and detail salient ethical implications of this model. We demonstrate that OSB, in virtue of its commitment to openness, may be resistant to governance attempts.