The health and societal hazards of human biotechnologies

Day: Friday, April 22   Hour: 2:15 - 3:00 pm

By: Stuart A. Newman

In the space of 30 years the field of developmental biology has gone from an obscure backwater of science to a presumed cornucopia of balms and elixirs for restoration of human health and improvement of the species: stem cells, cloned embryos, human-animal chimeras and designer babies. This talk will describe the social forces that led to this state of affairs and provide a scientist’s perspective that looks beyond the hype to the limitations of these technologies, their proneness to error, and their potential to blur the boundary between the human and the manufactured. <<Back to Conference program