Thank your for your useful overview of the security and intellectual property (”IP”) issues surrounding synthetic biology.

With respect to security, I don’t think it’s fair to say that “[v]irtually all reports…have come from the synthetic biology community or from a proponent’s or an opponent’s view.” For example, my project at Berkeley took an extended look at what the community could do to improve security at a grassroots level in 2006. http://gspp.berkeley.edu/iths/UC%20White%20Paper.pdf. Instead of arguing that the Sloan study is biased — in fact, I think they tried hard to avoid that — it would be much better to notice that there have been multiple serious studies already and that they almost always arrive at very similar recommendations. Certainly, it would be nice to have new studies and these should be as “objective” as possible, but it would be much better to start implementing the steps that everyone knows and agrees on. Encouragingly, the gene synthesis industry has already announced roughly half dozen initiatives along these lines. http://www.ia-sb.eu/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/iasb_report_biosecurity_syntheticbiology.pdf.

On the IP side, the article misses a very important point. Synthetic biology was designed in conscious imitation of how the software and electronics industries build products from standardized parts. While this was done for technology reasons, the choice also carries with it the same economic “tipping” dynamic that gave us the Microsoft monopoly (but also LINUX). http://www.nature.com/msb/journal/v3/n1/pdf/msb4100161.pdf.This has several implications. First, synthetic biology parts could be open or Windows-like, both futures are possible and stable. Second, government money is important. When Bill Gates cornered the software market he at least had the decency to use private money. Why isn’t the Department of Energy, for example, requiring grantees to make their parts open? Finally, the clock is ticking. “Tipping” wars almost always get settled early in each industry’s history and today’s synthetic biology companies are already pursuing the closed parts strategy. So unless open source takes root in the next few years, we are going to end up in a world of proprietary parts. This will be a disaster for consumers — patented parts mean high prices. Medicine is already expensive enough.

These are wonderful public policy issues to talk about and there is much more to learn. The danger, though, is that all the talk will replace action. We know many things already. We also know that some decisions can’t wait.