4.8 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2023
⏱️ 67 minutes
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This talk was given on October 5th, 2022 at Dartmouth College. For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., completed his Bachelor’s Degree (B.S.E.) in Bioengineering, summa cum laude, at the University of Pennsylvania, and then earned his Ph.D. in Biology from M.I.T. in the laboratory of Professor Leonard Guarente, where he was a fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). He was ordained a priest in the Order of Preachers in May of 2004. He completed his Pontifical License in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) in Moral Theology, summa cum laude, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, in 2005, and a Pontifical Doctorate in Sacred Theology (S.T.D.), magna cum laude, at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, in 2015. Fr. Austriaco currently serves as Professor of Biological Sciences & Professor of Sacred Theology at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines. Before this position, he was Professor of Biology and of Theology at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. His NIH-funded laboratory at Providence College is investigating the genetics of programmed cell death using the yeasts, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida albicans, as model organisms. Papers describing his research have been published in PLoS ONE, FEMS Yeast Research, Microbial Cell, Cell, the Journal of Cell Biology, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, among others. In philosophy and theology, his essays have been published in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, Theological Studies, Nova et Vetera, The Thomist, Science and Theology, and the Linacre Quarterly. His first book, Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics, was published by the Catholic University of America Press in 2011. It was recognized as a 2012 Choice outstanding academic title by the Association of College and Research Libraries.
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0:00.0 | Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast. |
0:07.0 | 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 Tomistic Institute chapters around the world. |
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0:22.6 | visit us at Thomisticinstitute.org. |
0:25.6 | My goal here this evening is to really do two, three things. |
0:36.6 | It's going to do three things. So we're going to be talking about three things it's going to do three things so we're going to be |
0:40.1 | talking about science I'm going to try to give you an update on CRISPR basically |
0:45.8 | some of the coolest stuff that has happened in the last year has really demonstrated |
0:51.2 | the utility of CRISPR for medical interventions and therapeutics. |
0:55.0 | And I want to illustrate some of that for you. |
0:57.0 | And then we're going to be talking about some distinction, so trying to handle the ethical questions that are raised by CRISPR. |
1:06.0 | And then when we talk about ethics, I'm going to contrast two different approaches to ethics, an ethics of dignity |
1:12.6 | versus an ethics of autonomy. And those are the two predominant approaches to ethics in the West today. |
1:20.6 | Okay, so it's an ethics of dignity and ethics of autonomy. And I want to just simply talk about what dignity implies and why there is such a dispute |
1:30.1 | between, say, faith-based ethics, which are usually grounded in an ethics of dignity, and more secular |
1:36.9 | accounts which promote autonomy. And so the question is, how do you even understand and appreciate the similarities and |
1:45.8 | the differences between the two and how do you resolve the apparent tensions between the two? |
1:50.8 | And then we'll talk very specifically about applying in this case and ethics of dignity |
1:56.3 | to the questions raised by CRISPR. |
1:58.7 | And we're dealing here with not only just genetic engineering |
2:02.2 | for therapy, but also the genetic design of children. So what sort of ethical concern should |
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