As an emerging scientific field focusing on the manipulation of DNA, synthetic biology has received attention in relation to questions of ethics, and some funding organizations and outside organizations have demanded that the science be regulated by a code of ethics. What is a code of ethics, and what can an ethical framework for synthetic biology look like? Should there be a specific "synbioethics" as opposed to a "bioethics?" What documents and events in the past can and have informed this code of ethics?