Team:Aix-Marseille/Human Practices
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Human Pratices
Here we present what we think can be rewarded as a Special Prize for ARBO-BLOCK project. On this page, you will know more about our public survey which impacted the directions of our project. You can also follow this linkto know how interviews with specialists helped us to rethink ARBO-BLOCK.
Using synthetic biology to address real-world problems requires thoughtful engagement with the world.
Throughout the year and throughout metropolitan France, epidemiological surveillance of Chikungunya, Dengue, and Zika is based on mandatory reporting of probable and confirmed cases. During the period of activity of the vector Aedes albopictus, from May to November, approximately, and in the departments where it is established and active, this surveillance is "reinforced" and the entire PACA region is concerned by this surveillance.
This surveillance is organized by the Regional Health Agency (ARS), which involves the EID as a demoustication agent. Approximately 80% of arboviral infections are asymptomatic, and 20% manifest themselves in the form of influenza-like syndromes.
Our wish is to reduce the number and the emergence of zoonose clusters (diseases transmissible to humans) in France and in the world. We have several objectives, the first being to find a technological solution to our problem without killing all the mosquitoes that are essential in the ecosystem. Indeed, we have to find the perfect balance between biodiversity and health risks. During our project, we were able to meet with professionals who guided us in our research and allowed us to improve our system while respecting this benefit/risk balance.
Our team was committed to provide community engagement activities that are inspiring and fun, as well as educational and interactive. School children were introduced to Synthetic Biology via public events with experimental activities around DNA and lab equipment discovery (Science Village, Lumexplore Festival...). A more informed audience was targeted through conferences and stands at the Biotechnology Forum and events organized on campus. Overall, all these interventions helped educate the youngest one about Synthetic Biology and bring a wider vision of GMOs to an older public.
Survey
When we started the project, we wanted to find out the public's knowledge about tiger mosquitoes, arboviral diseases, their diagnosis and treatment procedures. Do they know that tiger mosquitoes are highly present in France? That there are more and more cases of arboviral diseases in France?
So, in order to get the opinion of the general public on our project, we conducted a survey that we diffused on our different social networks in English and in French. We were able to collect the opinions of 189 people, mainly living in France. As the sample size was small, the results obtained should be considered with caution. Yet, it is still fairly representative of the population, from an age and gender point of view (Chart 1 and 2). In terms of profession, the majority of respondents are students or executives, however, a large panel of professions are still represented (Chart 3).
This survey is divided into several parts. After collecting information on the respondents in order to be able to make a more precise analysis of the data collected, we made an inventory of their knowledge about tiger mosquitoes and arboviruses. Then, after having presented our subject and justified our choice to kill only mosquitoes, we asked them their opinion on different aspects of our project.
In this survey, we first assessed whether the general public was aware tiger mosquitoes have now spread across the vast majority of the globe and no longer confined to Asia and tropicals. Of those surveyed, 59.3% were aware of their widespread. The results were rather homogeneous with respect to age. However, we notice, among people living in France, a large difference between people living or regularly frequenting regions where tiger mosquitoes are present and the others (Chart 4). This result led us to assume that the communication made by communities and associations in particular allows an effective collective awareness.
Regarding arboviruses, 76.2% of the respondents do not know what they are. However, the different events in which we participated showed us that the general public knows the name of the different viruses thanks to the media but does not know the family of these viruses. This result, corresponding to what we expected, allowed us to conclude that a communication showing that our project acts on a set of viruses belonging to the same family would be interesting.
The opinion of the general public on our project.
Unlike what we may have been told when talking about the project around us or at events 74.9% say they are in favor of killing only virus-carrying mosquitoes. This figure, which we imagined to be much lower, shows us the power and effectiveness of good communication and scientific popularization.
Some people have raised the problem that it is not only tiger mosquitoes that spread diseases, this is also an issue that we have discussed in our meetings, so it would be interesting to extend the research, in the long term, so that the project is applicable to all species of mosquitoes.
GMOs are a subject that is much debated in France, and the French are often very reluctant to use them. An Insee study published in 2017 (1) shows that in 2016, 51% of French respondents think that GMOs represent a high risk for the environment (against 50% for nuclear power plants). We therefore asked the people responding to our survey about this.
The respondents were asked to rate from 1 (very dangerous) to 5 (not very dangerous) the dangerousness of GMO bacteria (Chart 5). 78.9% of the people gave a score greater than or equal to 3, so this figure does not show a very great mistrust of GMOs, but it would be necessary to question a larger panel to be really sure. On this question, we notice that young people, 25 and under, are more confident in GMOs than older people (Chart 5). However, the idea of dispersing these bacteria in the environment is more worrying in all age categories (Chart 6). Even so, 83.8% of people said they would be willing to visit places where our bacteria had been dispersed. These results show once again the importance of scientific popularization essentially around biocontainment because it is imperative that the general public has confidence in our project to be able to hope one day to market it.
