Designer Babies Topic of Annual Weiss Lecture12:58PM / Monday, April 13, 2009
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Ronald M. Green, faculty director of the Ethics Institute and professor of religion at Dartmouth College, will deliver the annual Weiss Lecture on Medicine and Medical Ethics at Williams College.
The talk, "Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Code," will take place on Tuesday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m. in Griffin Hall 3.
Green envisions a future in which prospective parents engage in "cosmetico-genomics" — that is, they can genetically select embryos to ensure their children will exhibit particular traits.
Previously, genetic selection has helped eliminate the passage of various hereditary diseases; however, technology is becoming so precise that geneticists can manipulate any physical feature from eye shape to skin tone.
Despite contemporary fears and concerns, Green believes using genetic selection to control evolution will benefit the human race.
Green is the founding director of the Office of Genome Ethics at the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health and has served on NIH's Human Embryo Research Panel and the bioethics committee of the March of Dimes.
He has held leadership positions in numerous religious associations, including serving as president of the Society of Christian Ethics and secretary of the Academy of Religion, the country's largest organization of religious studies educators.
The author of seven books and nearly 150 scholarly articles, he studies topics in genetic ethics, biomedical ethics, and issues of justice in health care allocation.
Green has been a member of the religion department at Dartmouth since 1969, and received the Dartmouth Distinguished Teaching Award in 1980. A graduate of Brown University, he received his doctorate in religious ethics from Harvard University in 1973. |
