“Designer Babies: All You Ever Wanted to Know (and More)” Kicks Off Webinar Series on Genetics and Justice
The Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics at the University of Oregon recently hosted a series of virtual events on genetics and justice as part of their 2020-21 thematic focus Genetic Technologies: Identity, Equality, Ethics.
Bioethicist Françoise Baylis, the 2020-21 Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics, was in (virtual) residence for the month of February and presided as discussant for the series of webinars. She kicked the series off with her presentation Designer Babies: All You Ever Wanted to Know (and More), a discussion of the history and ethics of assisted reproductive technologies with particular attention to the complex questions raised by the prospect of heritable genome editing.
Subsequent panels included wide-ranging discussions of the social, ethical, and scientific aspects of genetic ancestry testing, eugenics, genome editing, and reproductive technologies. Video recordings of all of the events are available at the links below.
- The History and Future of Scientific Racism and Eugenics, with presentations and discussion by historian (and CGS Advisory Board member) Alexandra Minna Stern and anthropologist Jada Benn Torres
- Can Science Make Sense of Life?, featuring science and technology studies professor Sheila Jasanoff
- Building on the Code: How Genetic Technologies Benefit Biomedical Research and Human Health, with presentations by gene editing scientists Calin Plesa, Shoukhrat Mitalipov, and Chris Gemmiti
- Reproduction and Genetic Technologies, featuring philosopher Camisha Russell and stem cell scientist Paul Knoepfler
Upcoming events include a lecture by Naomi Oreskes, Can Science Be Saved?; a panel discussion on Genetic Tests and Human Futures: A Panel Discussion; and a presentation by Alondra Nelson, The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome.