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You’ve heard of ‘Designer Clothes?" How about "Designer Kids?" Take your choice — girl, boy; smart, tall; beautiful, graceful; musical, mystical; ambitious, ambidextrous? Gene therapy is the treatment of disease by altering human DNA, which are the special molecules in all our cells that carry all genetic information. Gene therapy may sound like a normal medical advance. It is not. The restructuring of our genetic material, with the power to heal and cure, is a revolution. But what’s the difference between genetic therapy and genetic enhancement, between curing old diseases and creating new bodies?…. But if we intervene, and adjust human genes, do we impact, and alter human evolution? 

Participants: Anderson, Ayala, Nuland, Stock, Tobin

 

	W. French Anderson is Director of the Gene Therapy Laboratories at the University of Southern California (USC) where he is also professor of biochemistry and pediatrics. He is recognized as the leading pioneer of gene therapy — he is called the "Father of Gene Therapy" -- perhaps the most revolutionary medical advance in recent times. Dr. Anderson was featured in a major story in TIME magazine; he is editor-in-chief of Human Gene Therapy and he has a gold medal in karate.
	Francisco Ayala was recently profiled in a major story in The New York Times as the "Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology." He is professor of biology and philosophy at the University of California at Irvine, where he specializes in evolutionary genetics, using DNA to track the path and flow of evolution. He has published 12 books and 650 articles. He is past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
	Sherwin Nuland is clinical professor of surgery at Yale University, where he also teaches medical history and bioethics. His best-selling books, How We Die and How We Live, are remarkable portraits of life and death and have been called resonant works of moral philosophy.
	Gregory Stock is Director of UCLA’s (University of California at Los Angeles) Program on Medicine, Technology and Society where he focuses on transformational technologies such as genetic engineering. Trained in both biophysics and business, he is the author of Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism. An earlier book exploring values, The Book of Questions, has sold over 2 million copies and translated into 15 languages.
	Allan Tobin is Director of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Brain Research Institute where he is also professor of neurology. A leading researcher on epilepsy, Huntington’s Disease and juvenile diabetes, he is also the Scientific Director of the Hereditary Disease Foundation.
	Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator and host of the Closer To Truth television series and author of the Closer To Truth book. Trained in brain research (Ph.D. UCLA), he has published more than twenty books, including the Handbook for Creative and Innovative Managers and the seven-volume Library of Investment Banking. He is the president of The Geneva Companies, a leading merger and acquisition firm for private, middle market businesses.
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