Biotech Beyond Conventional Containment

The regulation of biotechnology in the U.S. has long been characterized by ambiguities, uncertainties, inefficiencies, and gaps (U.S. OSTP). In recent years, the scientific community has increasingly reflected on its role in producing this suboptimal system. One reason for the status quo: for decades, ideas about governance have been geared toward maintaining separation between genetically engineered organisms and the “natural” world. 

For better or worse, when the fledgling biotech industry convened at the 1975 Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, the scientific community rallied around physical containment as a solution to the potential risks of genetic engineering. The goal, as one scholar puts it, was to “offset any uncertainty about the hazards of rDNA constructs with the certainty that they would not escape the lab” (Hurlbut 2015). 

Today, contemporary frameworks for biosafety still tend to rely heavily on concepts of physical separation and technological containment. While some biotech applications are still created for use in confined settings, many of the field’s most promising innovations are not. In a world where biotech applications are increasingly developed for deliberate dissemination into the environment, the parameters for responsible innovation must be revisited.