September 30th

Prof. Jennifer Doudna and Dr. Edze Westra are known for their work on CRISPR-Cas, a defense system present in many bacterial species. The potential applications of these systems may have a tremendous impact on medicine and biotechnology. CRISPR-systems allow for editing of DNA, the genetic code in humans, animals and plants. A gene causing disease could simply be replaced by a desired variant allowing for example a potentially incurable disease to be tackled, or plant breeding to be accelerated towards specified targets. This raises big ethical issues; Are scientists allowed to pursue these endeavors? Can we oversee the impact and risks of this technology? And if we decide to edit genomes, what are our ethical limits?

Schedule:

15.00 Room C1040 opens
15:30 – 17:15 Welcome by John van der Oost, lectures by Edze Westra and Jennifer Doudna and a debate moderated by Philip Macnaghten.
17:15- 18:00 Drinks in The Spot (Orion)