Opportunities and Ethics of Editing Genomes: A CRISPR-Inspired Conversation

Recent reports of the first babies to be born with CRISPR-edited genes have sparked widespread condemnation and calls for action. These concerns will be top of mind when world-renowned scientist Jennifer Doudna, co-inventor of CRISPR, speaks at Stanford on Thursday, Jan. 24, as part of the Arrow Lecture Series on Ethics and Leadership.
Doudna, a professor of chemistry and molecular and cell biology at U.C. Berkeley, rocked the research world in 2012 when she and her colleagues announced the invention of CRISPR-Cas9, a technology that uses an RNA-guided protein found in bacteria to edit an organism's DNA quickly and inexpensively.
Following her lecture, Doudna will have an on-stage conversation with Political Science Professor Rob Reich, faculty director of the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, and Kelly Ormond, a professor of genetics at Stanford's School of Medicine and faculty member of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.
Doudna is the co-author with Sam Sternberg of “A Crack in Creation,” a personal account of her research and the societal and ethical implications of gene editing. Doudna has received many other honors including the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Arrow Lecture Series, presented by the Center for Ethics in Society, honors the late Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, the Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, Emeritus.
This event is co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.