A Splice of Life

November 30, 2018

“The genie is out of the bottle,” says George Church, and he should know. Dr. Church at Harvard Medical School has been a respected keeper of the keys to the miracle, or monster, that is gene editing. It is bio-medicine’s new-found power not just to read the human blueprint, but to rebuild, cell by cell, the evolved model of mankind. And now a rogue Chinese scientist, Dr. He, has shown the world how not to go about it - he worked in secret, without the consent of his patients, then unborn, who weren’t even sick, and haven’t yet been seen. Dr. He has shocked the medical chieftains, East and West. Yet they dream the same dream: better living through bio-chemistry, inside the chain of human reproduction.

Guest List

Jeantine Lunshof: Research Scientist-Ethicist at MIT Media Lab, Assistant Professor of genetics at the University Medical Center Groningen, and Ethics Consultant to the Department of Genetics, Church Lab, and the Center for Excellence in Genomic Science and Center for Genomically Engineered Organs (CGEO) at Harvard

Sheila Jasanoff: Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School

Daniel Kevles: Professor of History, History of Medicine, and American Studies at Yale

 

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