Recently, a “DIY” COVID-19 vaccine has attracted national attention. The identification of this effort as “DIY” and “citizen science” once again raises important questions for those involved in community bio.
At past Bio Summits, participants have worked to define “community bio” and to distance themselves from other monikers and their associations with controversial forms of self-experimentation. Even so, significant overlap persists between community bio, biohacking, and DIY-bio (to name a few), and those following this new story have connected the experimental vaccine to much broader practices, implicating community bio in the process. As community bio takes up questions of governance at GCBS 4.0, this breakout session seeks to generate a discussion about persistent fundamental questions within community bio, including the central question: “Who is the community?”
The organizers, members of the Open Insulin Project’s “Open Insulin in Society” working group, will discuss their experiences with questions of democratic participation and inclusion. They invite others who identify with community bio to share the ways they have encountered these questions within their projects, efforts, organizations, and laboratories. Topics for the discussion may include: who is invited to participate in community bio and the forms this participation takes; how to address power and resource disparities within community bio; and the relationships between openness, inclusion, and ownership.
Led by Andy Murray
ZOOM ROOM: CHLOROPLAST