The Challenge and Opportunity of Genome Editing | William Hurlbut, MD

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2022

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This lecture was given on May 1, 2022 at Brown University. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: William B. Hurlbut, MD, is Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Scholar in Neurobiology at the Stanford Medical School. After receiving his undergraduate and medical training at Stanford University, he completed postdoctoral studies in theology and medical ethics, studying with Robert Hamerton-Kelly, the Dean of the Chapel at Stanford, and subsequently with the Rev. Louis Bouyer of the Institut Catholique de Paris. His primary areas of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing biomedical technology, the biological basis of moral awareness, and studies in the integration of theology with the philosophy of biology. He is the author of numerous publications on science and ethics. He has worked with NASA on projects in astrobiology and was a member of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Working group at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. From 2002-2009 Dr. Hurlbut served on the President’s Council on Bioethics. He serves as a Steering Committee Member of the Templeton Religion Trust.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This talk is brought to you by the Tamistic Institute.
0:03.2	For more talks like this, visit us at tamistic institute.org.
0:11.1	So a few years ago, I gave a talk at a conference at Harvard, and it was, this is the poster from the conference,
0:20.7	editorial aspirations. human hands, what
0:25.6	Aristotle called the tool of tools, the symbol of our distinctive body form and our unique
0:32.6	capacities of mind, our comprehension, our creativity, and our control over the world in which we dwell.
0:40.0	And nowhere are these powers more dramatic than in our recent advances in genetic editing.
0:47.3	Those hands are turning now to operate on our very selves.
0:53.3	We're an amazing moment in human history.
0:56.0	70 years ago, Aldous Huxley,
0:58.0	anticipating, oh, thanks,
1:02.0	anticipating the transformation of human life
1:06.0	through advances in biology
1:08.0	as the final and most searching revolution asserted this really revolutionary
1:13.6	revolution is to take place not in the external world but in the souls and flesh of human beings.
1:22.6	In the decades since the first publication of Brave New World,
1:31.9	amid the accelerating pace of discovery and genetics,
1:35.0	developmental biology, and the laboratory production of life,
1:40.4	there's been an increasing appreciation of Huxley's prescient concerns, yet throughout this period,
1:42.3	limitations in the tools and techniques for specific and efficient modification in genomes have been a major constraining factor for advances in general biotechnology.
1:57.0	In other words, it was the kind of bottleneck.
2:00.0	Now, however, with CRISPRCast 9 and related technologies,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Thomistic Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Thomistic Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.