CRISPR: The History, Science and Ethics of Genetic Modification

CRISPR: The History, Science and Ethics of Genetic Modification

This event is co-sponsored by the Parr Center for Ethics and the UNC Center for Bioethics.

Eric Juengst is Director of the Center for Bioethics and Professor in the Departments of Social Medicine and Genetics at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine. He also directs the Research Ethics Resource for the NC Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute, supported by UNC’s CTSA award.

Dr. Juengst received his B.S. in Biology from the University of the South in 1978, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Georgetown University in 1985. He has taught medical ethics and the philosophy of science on the faculties of the medical schools of the University of California, San Francisco Penn State University, and Case Western Reserve University . From 1990 to 1994, he served as the first Chief of the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Branch of the National Center for Human Genome Research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and from 2005-2010 he directed the Center for Genetic Research Ethics and Law at CWRU, an NIH supported “Center of Excellence in Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Research.”.

Dr. Juengst’s research interests and publications have focused on the conceptual and ethical issues raised by new advances in human genetics and biotechnology. Since 1997 he has been the principal investigator of a series of N.I.H.-funded research projects examining the ethical and social policy issues that will be raised by the availability of genetic and genomic technologies. His current R01 project examines ethical and social implications of “Personalized Genomic Medicine”as a paradigm for health care.

Rebecca Walker is Associate Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a core faculty member in the Center for Bioethics and also holds a faculty appointment in the Philosophy Dept. Prof. Walker received her PhD in Philosophy from Stanford University in 1998 and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in bioethics and health policy at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities in 2001. She then held a visiting faculty position in the Philosophy Department at the University of Michigan before arriving at UNC in 2003. At UNC Professor Walker is a co-investigator in the Center for Genomics and Society and in the Healthy Voices Project that investigates longitudinal health and ethical implications of phase 1 clinical research. She is part of the Ethics Service of UNC’s Clinical and Translational Science Award, a member of the Hospital Ethics Committee, and on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Professor Walker’s research and publications have addressed: practical virtue ethics, concepts of autonomy in bioethics, the ethics of how we treat non-human animals, the allocation of health care resources, and ethics methods for investigating the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of advances in human genomics.