Biotechnology and Society Group, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
Adv Biochem Eng Biotechnol. 2020;173:121-141. doi: 10.1007/10_2019_100.
In this chapter we aim to give an overview of the main societal and ethical issues that are currently voiced around industrial biotechnology. We will illustrate this with some recent cases, such as the development of synthetic artemisinin, synthetic vanillin and vegetable oil produced by engineered algae. We show that current societal and ethical issues in industrial biotechnology centre on the following five themes: sustainability, naturalness, innovation trajectories, risk management and economic justice. In each of these themes, clashing public opinions fuel the public debate on the acceptability of new industrial biotechnology. In some cases this has led to the failure of otherwise promising innovations. In the last part, we provide suggestions on how to deal with these ethical and societal aspects based on the approach of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI).
在本章中，我们旨在概述当前围绕工业生物技术提出的主要社会和伦理问题。我们将用一些最近的案例来说明这一点，例如合成青蒿素、合成香草醛和工程藻类生产的植物油的发展。我们表明，当前工业生物技术中的社会和伦理问题集中在以下五个主题上：可持续性、自然性、创新轨迹、风险管理和经济正义。在这些主题中，公众意见的冲突激发了公众对新工业生物技术可接受性的辩论。在某些情况下，这导致了原本有前途的创新的失败。在最后一部分，我们根据负责任的研究和创新（RRI）的方法，就如何处理这些伦理和社会方面的问题提出了建议。
