Re: [DIYbio] Re: Were the DIY CRISPR kits contaminated?

I like the food analogy but that's also flawed.

Of course if the chain of custody is interrupted then a company cannot be blamed.
But that's not always the case here (for example for the LGL), please do not forget that we are talking about different samples.

Let's look at the food analogy: what does it happen normally when some people get sick with a product bought at the supermarket? the entire lot gets withdrawn and all the people that have bought it are informed (when possible) and asked to return their product. You take a moment of pause, check everything, point down where the contamination happened. If there's something to fix, fix it and then start over.
IMHO, this would be a wonderful resolution for the this case.

Of course food doesn't have to be sterile, but there are thresholds, which are more or less strict depending on the danger connected to the contaminant. The problem is that the LGL and us did not find e.coli at all there. But let's not focus on this kit alone and think generally about such kits: do we need similar thresholds here? The product has to be devoid of any contaminant or not? Can we design a kit so that even if contamination is present, it is eliminated by some kind of selective media?


On Saturday, 23 December 2017 09:03:32 UTC+1, BraveScience wrote:

As soon as chain of custody of a given material is interrupted (material is open, seal is broken) how can a company be blamed for the state of it?

Here Nathan's analogy fits, that's the common practice in the whole food industry (in EU at least).

The "indignation" of the authority seems out of place and procedures applied non conforming to standard procedures in matter of sampling. Again, if you want to make sure that goods are free of contamination you should check an "untouched" lot before this reaches the customer.

On the other hand hinting to "EU biohackers" is IMHO not the correct way to frame this and a generalization. EU is not USA, there are many different countries here, the fact happened in Germany, that's a whole different story if compared to Denmark, Netherlands, Italy or whatever.