Interdisciplinarity
        
            By Jonathan Kahn, Biopolitical Times guest contributor
             | 01. 24. 2011
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            In 2009, the director of the National Science Foundation gave a key note
 address at an interdisciplinary conference on synthetic biology 
sponsored by the National Academies. The director opened with the 
following joke:
 
  “A synthetic biologist and a social scientist await death 
at the hands of an executioner. The executioner asks the social 
scientist if he has a final wish. Yes, he says, I have some new findings
 on the societal and ethical dimensions of synthetic biology and I want 
to present them to the scientific community before I die. The 
executioner then turns to the synthetic biologist and asks if she has a 
final wish. Yes, she said, just shoot me before I have to listen to that
 lecture.”
 
  It’s a good joke. I have sat through many lectures over the years 
that make me sympathize with the synthetic biologist. Lest he offend 
anyone in the audience, the director quickly followed the joke with a 
disclaimer that certainly no one in the present audience harbored such 
sentiments. Nonetheless, the joke is instructive on several levels.
Synthetic
 biology is merely...
 
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
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