Welcome to Socrates. In the studio, we are in New York City, and my guest today is Dr. William Hurlbutt, who is, let me see,

senior research scholar and adjunct professor in neurobiology at Stanford University. He was earlier in the century on the

President's Council on Bioethics under the presidency of George W. Bush. He heads up something

called the boundaries of humanity, humans, animals, and machines.

We'll be talking about that today.

The larger question we want to ask today is what is a human and what are the boundaries,

or are there boundaries of humanity?

So Dr. Holbutt, welcome.

Thank you. Great to be with you.

What is the boundaries of humanity, humans, animals, and machines?

I know it's a project. What is it?

Well, it's a multi-year, multi-million dollar project at Stanford that I lead, and the whole name is the boundaries of humanity, humans, animals, and machines in the age of biotechnology.

So it's an effort to contend with the challenges, the opportunities, and the dangers of our advancing technologies to help guide our civilization to use these new powers for positive purposes

and not to relinquish or diminish what is special about our human nature.

I think it should be said at the outset just to frame things

that just because we can do something through advanced science, let's say, doesn't mean we ought to do that something.

And those questions became particularly pointed, or the larger question became pointed 20 plus years ago.

I remember George W. Bush had just become president, and the question of stem cell research,

fetal stem cell research, came up. And I guess that's when you first came to my attention. You were

our guest at Socrates in the city 20 years ago. It's amazing to think of it. But that was, I guess,

the big question, the big bioethics question of the time. But it leads to all kinds of other

questions. I want to get into that in the time that of the time. But it leads to all kinds of other questions.

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