A broad coalition of organizations from around the world released the first global civil society declaration to outline principles that must be adopted to protect public health and the environment from the risks posed by synthetic biology and to address its economic, social and ethical challenges.
Until these governance principles are in place, the coalition is calling for a moratorium on the release and commercial use of synthetic organisms and products on the grounds of the dangers posed by this “extreme genetic engineering” which writes genetic code to create new genes, genetic traits and possibly entire life forms from scratch.
The full report is available for download at: www.foe.org/principles-for-synthetic-biology
