Reflection
It feels very comforting and touching to reflect on our entire project at once. Remembering every little thing that we did and realizing that they've all grown into what we now call The BioPank Project, it's a feeling hard to properly describe.
Since we started to think about a 'project to be', an idea always present was the will to ensure our values. With this, we understood that no matter which problem we would focus on solving, we had convictions that would follow us in our path. It can be said that we had as our cornerstone: Latin-American integration and Synthetic Biology propagation.
But, more than this foundation we also have other specific values that inspired our project, once we already knew that it was BioPank. Such as sustainability, human-animal-environmental well-being, respect, ethics, collaboration, approachability, and innovation. From this, we were able to always consider the context we're working on, our possibilities, and how far we could go.
Our initial goal was to contribute to the fight against leishmaniasis in Foz do Iguaçu. We imagined several ways of doing so, and with the progression of BioPank, we were able to choose the best alternatives and work with what we had. That being said, we believe that we reached our priority goal by adjusting our plan when necessary, keeping in mind our values and what really mattered to us.
Responsibility
To be part of the iGEM competition is not only an achievement but also a responsibility. It means to carry knowledge, virtues, and greatness. To share our experiences with BioPank was also to talk about the world's most significant synthetic biology competition. Telling people that iGEM existed and seeing how they reacted was so valuable to us because, in those moments, we were reminded of the great thing we were doing.
Another frequent subject in our sharing moments was the transparency of our intentions. At all the meetings we did to present BioPank, we highlighted that our solution wouldn't necessarily be implemented, that to make it happen in the ways we intended, we'd need a few more years. We also made sure to say that we weren't, at least at that point, selling a finished product or ending leishmaniasis once and for all.
These experiences showed us how important it is to be honest about what you want to and what you can do. We understood our limitations, they being knowledge, time, or structural ones, and figured out how to deal with them.
| Limitations | How we dealt |
|---|---|
| Knowledge | Talked with a team member, called specialists. took time to clear our heads |
| Time | Listed priorities (in all fronts, at all times) |
| Estructure | Tried to suit our labs, seek lacking lab materials, seek other labs to do our experiments |
The team is always trying to see what's best for the project and the best ways society can make use of it, understanding who might be interested in BioPank and how it can affect different communities. For that, we decided on answering a few provocations brought by iGEM, as below.
Which communities will be most interested in or most affected by our project?
We believe the most directly interested in BioPank are regional governments such as Foz do Iguaçu, Puerto Iguazu, and Ciudad del Este city halls. Indirectly companies and institutions from the triple border could be interested in forming a robust scientific scene. The communities most affected by our project are dog tutors who would be less worried about their pets, vulnerable populations with the transmission risk diminished, and the very own dog population* that would gain from the interruption of the disease cycle.
Which communities will be left out or negatively impacted if our project succeeds?
Our project would leave out people who already have Leishmaniasis and, in part**, the dog population that is already infected. The only ones that would be negatively impacted, that we could think of, are the sand fly and leishmania populations.
Responsivenes
How can we use our Human Practices work to inform our team's ethical, technical, safety and/or communication decisions?
The Human Practices (HP) work is an integrating part of our solution, meaning that it shares along with our engineering work the critical matter of ending Leishmaniasis. Through this front ,BioPank was able to, at the same time, grow from the real needs of our community and respond to these needs, reporting our updates.
Our project dialogues with vets, students, professors, business people, councilors, residents, public and private institutions. All these exchanges helped us thinking and rethinking, writing and rewriting BioPank into its best. You can check how we did it here!
At the same time the actions we managed in HP showed not only that we cared about asking but also about doing. In every activity we did we told our public about BioPank's why's and how's, about the need to overcome Leishmaniasis and all the caution we had dealing with this.
Our Human Practices actions speak for themselves, and we like to think that they tell beautiful things. We hope you enjoy getting to know what we did.
It would be interesting that, in the follow up of the BioPank implementation, we could keep up (long term) with the Foz do Iguaçu dogs population and maybe work with castration campaigns, because the success of our solution can increase the city's dog population.
'In part' because, in the disease cycle, the sandfly bites the dog several times, increasing the parasitic load, even in already infected dogs. Once the transmission of leishmania is diminished, these dogs could take longer to present clinic symptoms of leishmaniasis, delaying the disease and living longer and better.