Page - 92 - in Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies - Conference Proceedings of the 17th STS Conference Graz 2018

conversation on gene editing, e.g. in the UK the Nuffield Council (Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2016) or the Royal Society (Van Mil, Hopkins, and Kinsella 2017). In Germany major societies (Leopoldina, Acatech, and Union der deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften 2015, Reich et al. 2015, Acatech 2017), as well as the national ethics committee (Deutscher Ethikrat 2017), picked up the topic.1 Nevertheless we argue that the narrow focus of the debate seeks to produce public opinion in a strategic way, and by doing so, prevents alternative narratives from surfacing in the debate. We are confronted with a dilemmatic situation: If we look at the many events that make genome editing a topic, there is no shortage of "information". German media additionally regularly use the technology as an occasion. Interestingly enough – at least in the beginning – a technique as such is up for negotiation. In this sense, CRISPR makes the front pages. If we look at the different applications (see figure 1), we can still see that gene-drive systems more or less take up a blank space. Figure 1: Areas of application between 2013 and 2018, own collection. Out of 206 articles in the field, only four focus on the gene-drive-systems exclusively. It usually only appears as a marginal note, often without using the term "gene drive". In general, it can be stated within the media discourse that a general moral problem situation is followed by an eudaimonistic one that concerns “good life”. These are two different normative discourse strands which follow other normative premises or can be located in different value horizons – concerning the genre or the good life.2 1 Events of German Ethics Council in 2017: http://www.ethikrat.org/veranstaltungen/jahrestagungen/zugriff-auf- das-menschliche-erbgut; http://www.ethikrat.org/veranstaltungen/weitere-veranstaltungen/gene-drive, 2018: http:/ /www.ethikrat.org/veranstaltungen/jahrestagungen/des-menschen-wuerde-in-unserer-hand 2 This consideration was presented at the autumn meeting of the German Ethics Council in 2017. [http:/ /www.ethikrat.org/veranstaltungen/weitere-veranstaltungen/gene-drive]. 92