69 min listen
The Gene: Unlocking the Human Code, with Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Gene: Unlocking the Human Code, with Siddhartha Mukherjee
ratings:
Length:
66 minutes
Released:
Oct 7, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Genetics has revolutionised not just how we think of biology but how we think of ourselves. We are, in the words of one geneticist, the first organism that has ‘learned to read its own instructions’. Now, with the breakthrough of gene-editing technology — whose precision allows us to alter a single letter of DNA — we can now not only decipher but rewrite our genetic code. We may soon be able to treat diseases such as cancer not simply with drugs, but with genetic manipulation. Yet behind this medical revolution lies the prospect of something altogether more worrying. Already, we possess the technology to add to our genetic code at will, and thus create the world’s first generation of ‘transgenic’ humans. As we intervene genetically on ourselves with ever more accuracy, do we risk changing what it means to be human? In a potential quest for the genetically ‘normal’, will we risk annihilating the very diversity and mutations on which evolution depends?
These are some of the questions that the Pulitzer... For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy
These are some of the questions that the Pulitzer... For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy
Released:
Oct 7, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Michael Sandel on the Moral Limits of Markets: Should we pay children to get good grades? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? Michael Sandel is one of th... by Intelligence Squared