Robert Klitzman, MD
Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the Bioethics Master’s Program at Columbia University
With John Donvan, host of Intelligence Squared US
Abstract: eu·gen·ics /yo͞oˈjeniks/ noun is defined as the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as ‘desirable’. It has largely been discredited due to the culmination of horrors under its cover in the first half of the 20th century. But since the first “test-tube baby” born over 40 years ago, we as a society are forced to reevaluate our moral standing yet again with trepidation. Parents can now choose race, sex, eye color, and other 'desirable' genetic characteristics aided by a largely unregulated and commercially available set of tools called Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs). And now with the boundless power of CRISPR enabling gene-editing directed at germ cells, we have the potential to alter future generations, even the human species as a whole.
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Co-sponsored by the Yale Club and Princeton Club of Washington, DC
Location and Address
Online