We are at the very outset of the Age of Biotechnology. This presses anew questions regarding the limits of the human person. What is the human species from the point of view of evolutionary biology? How malleable is this definition? Is there such a thing as a species? How does this compare to philosophical perspectives on the person? The questions above are not new, but they have acquired new urgency with recent advances in biotechnology. In ths symposium, six distinguished scholars discuss these and other pressing questions in two panels–the first addressing these issues in the practice of science and application of biotechnology in the world, and the second addressing these issues from the point of theory.
Cosponsored by the Program on Religion and Medicine at the University of Chicago,the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion, the Theology and Ethics Workshop, the Society of Catholic Scientists, and McCormick Theological Seminary. This program is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
Schedule:
Panel 1 — Praxis
Gaymon Bennett (Arizona State University): “The Algorithm and the Spirit: Big Tech and the Enchantments of Biotechnology”
John Novembre (University of Chicago): “The expanding scope for genetic discrimination: New genetic predictors and their challenges”
Stephen Meredith (University of Chicago): “Brave New World: Revisited – Revisited.”
Moderator: Victoria Prince (University of Chicago)
Panel 2 — Theoria
Paul Scherz (Catholic University of America): “Being Human as Being at Risk: The Shift from Genetic Determinism to Precision Medicine”
Willemien Otten (University of Chicago): “The dynamics between nature and human nature on perpetration and victimhood”
Jeff Bishop (Saint Louis University): “On the Being of Humans and the Being of Technology”
Moderator: Hille Haker (Loyola University Chicago)