Integration Workshop on Ethics

This integration workshop was initiated and prepared by partners KADK, UU, VUB, UGENT and UIO together with the project’s Independent External Ethics Board (IEEB). Preparation of the workshop occurred in the preceding months with all partners during the monthly partner meetings and in dialogue with the IEEB. This was an in-person workshop held at Utrecht University Museum on 22.11.2024.

Aims and objectives:
The emerging field of ELMs seeks to develop novel materials and technologies that raise complex ethical issues. The aim of this workshop was to expand the project’s ethical engagement beyond the concerns of lab focused biosafety.
The consortium defined three areas for framing our ethical discussion. These are defined below together with some initial topics.

      Material Technologies

• Regulatory frameworks – are current frameworks sufficient? Do ELMs require additional/amended frameworks?
• Safety and Unintended Consequences – how to ensure responsible deployment and montoring of evolving environmental impacts.
• Ethical differences in choices of underlying ELM technologies? Microbial v. Mammalian cells
• Engineering – the implications of initiating new dependencies
  
  
  Definitions and their Implications

• Materials v. Organisms v. Consortia // Natural v. Artificial – the ethical implications of naming Living, dormant, inert – different states, different ethics?
• Ownership and Responsibility – novel complexities due to the ability for ELMs’ ability to adapt
  
  
  Design, Participation and Interspecies Co-working

• Responsibility and Accountability – where do responsibilities lie for designing, monitoring, controlling, liability?
• Social Acceptance and Informed Consent – what are the ethical responsibilities in educating people on what ELMs are, allowing them to make informed decisions about their use in their homes, workplaces, and public spaces.
• Biocentric v Anthropocentric ethics – rethinking consent, equity, utility, aesthetics in interspecies interrelations.

Through the discussion it became clear that ELMs challenge conventional boundaries between organism and material, living and inert and distinctions between the natural and artificial. The necessitates a fundamental shift in ethical, regulatory and design paradigms. Through the discussion areas, it is clear that traditional frameworks fall short in addressing the dynamic, relational and novel nature of ELMs.

This prompts a call for adaptive, value-sensitive and participatory approaches. Ethical stewardship must evolve toward shared responsibility, emphasising transparency, precaution and ongoing care across the entire lifecycle of these materials. Public engagement should be reimagined as a generative and co-creative process, while design practices must move beyond anthropocentric models to embrace interspecies collaboration and respect.

The workshop has identified a rich and complex arena of positions and perspectives that point to the need for further enquiry and development of the ethical landscape in relation to ELM development and use in general. Key focus areas to address include: refining definitions, building flexible governance structures, institutionalising inclusive participation and fostering cross-disciplinary literacy to responsibly shape the futures these living technologies enable.