SFIS Speaker Series with Sarah Hartley: Should We Create Gene Drive Squirrels?

Gene drive is a new and very powerful biotechnology that scientists hope will help solve some of the biggest biodiversity and conservation challenges facing society. Gene drive has the potential to change entire wild species. This power is what makes it so attractive and so controversial. In 2019, researchers at the University of Edinburgh proposed using gene drive technology to remove invasive grey squirrels from the UK. Grey squirrels are popular wild mammals in the UK, but they are labelled an invasive species. Drawing on anticipatory focus groups, we explore six prominent ‘matters of concern’ for stakeholders in the UK. We use these matters of concern to develop a heuristic to broaden out the governance of genetic technologies that are imagined by their developers to solve environmental problems. Our argument is that using this heuristic to guide knowledge-focused engagement would be a productive way to shape and govern gene drive trajectories. We drew on this social science research to develop a film that conveys the complexity of the problem of grey squirrel control and invites people to think about whether scientists should develop gene drive squirrels or not. This presentation involves a short film screening and discussion of the heuristic and its value for governance.

Biography

Sarah Hartley is a Professor of Technology Governance at the University of Exeter Business School, Director of the Centre for Responsible Innovation, and a Co-Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Environmental Intelligence. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist specialising in the governance of emerging biotechnologies and AI with a focus on stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production, and an expert on gene drive technology governance.