Team:UIUC Illinois/Human Practice/ethics

Liability:
These questions stemmed from the nature of introducing a genetic modified organism (GMO) into an uncontrolled environment. When considering our plasmid as a probiotic, the proposed delivery method was a yogurt containing our GMO. With this method, we faced questions such as, who is liable if our product is consumed by a human or who is liable in the event that a neighbor’s dog eats our product without the owner’s consent. Such questions parallel the concern of crop contamination due to GMO use by farmers. These are questions that everyone must face when introducing GMO into the consumer’s world. In our case, the answers are not readily available. Instead, liability depends on a number of things such as whether the probiotic is knowingly ingested or whether the probiotic was given to an animal on purpose. Liability often depends on the specific situation and factors. Questions concerning liability are crucial for the protection of not only the consumers, but those designing new GMOs.

Legality:
Concerns involving legality generally arose with the idea of actually marketing and selling our probiotic to consumers. The largest question of this type was whether or not this probiotic needed to be patented. Patenting of probiotics continually grows with the discovery of new probiotics and is essential when trying to introduce a new probiotic into society. Not only do patents allow the inventers of a probiotic to financially benefit, but patents also draw the interest of buyers or licensers, allowing the creator to more quickly get their product to the people it can help. Building off of the patent question, we wanted to know the legality of someone buying our probiotic, culturing the bacteria themselves and using it for their own purposes. After looking into this situation it became clear that a patent would firmly prevent this from happening. If a bacterial strain or probiotic is patented, it is illegal for that product to be used without the consent of the patent owner. This fact presents an interesting question: should a GMO creator patent their invention for the guarantee of financial benefits or should they refrain from patenting to allow for the uninhibited use of their discovery in future scientific exploration? This question is one that our group still debates.