Human Nature and Biotechnology | Professor Stephen Meredith

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2023

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stephen Meredith is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Departments of Pathology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Neurology. He is also an associate faculty member in the University of Chicago Divinity School. He has published more than 100 journal articles, focusing on the biophysics of protein structure. Much of his work has been the application of solution and solid-state NMR to the study of amyloid proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease. He has also published articles on literature and philosophy in diverse aspects of medical humanities and bioethics. His teaching includes courses to graduate students in biochemistry and biophysics, medical students, and undergraduates and graduate students in the humanities, including courses on James Joyce’s Ulysses, St. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Dostoevsky (focusing on Brothers Karamazov), Thomas Mann and David Foster Wallace. He is currently working on a book examining disease and the theological problem of evil. Other current writing projects include a study of James Joyce and the problem of evil.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Timistic Institute podcast.
0:06.0	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.0	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.0	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:22.5	to mystic institute.org.
0:28.5	Thank you.
0:29.3	Thank you very much for that lovely introduction.
0:32.2	And I want to first start by thanking Trinity and Livy and Leo and the other people in the
0:39.4	Thomistic Institute at Baylor who invited me and brought me down here to talk with you.
0:47.3	And I want to thank you also for bringing me in the middle of a cold wave.
0:52.3	I'm told it was a lot hotter. That's frightening to think about.
0:57.0	But, you know, we, okay, let me see if I can work this technology.
1:04.0	Okay, so human fragility, vulnerability, this topic I am told by Libby was going to be a theme running through the talks this year.
1:19.6	And I think this is something that we never really make sense of.
1:24.6	The broader question of death and suffering as to disease, maybe this is just how it is with biological creatures.
1:33.3	We are in some sense, not only, but in some sense, sophisticated machines, and machines don't last forever.
1:42.3	They break. But that doesn't really help us very much. And in the meantime, there's suffering and even the suffering of little innocent children. So I'm going to start with a couple of anecdotes that may speak to the mixed blessing of biotechnology.
2:01.9	When I was in the seventh grade, I arrived in the schoolyard one day, and one of my classmates
2:07.4	bounded up to me with a big smile on his face and said, guess what?
2:12.5	Jeffrey F. croaked.
2:15.0	Now, this wasn't in very good taste.
2:21.8	But what he was dealing with was his own discomfort.
	...

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