Elliot Gerson - Elliot Gerson is executive vice president for Seminars and Public Programs at the Aspen Institute. Gerson is responsible for the Aspen Institute's seminars, including the Executive Seminar, topical and custom seminars, and those offered in Socrates programs. He also manages the Institute's public programs, including the Aspen Ideas Festival and the World Biomedical Forum.
As American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, he manages the US Rhodes Scholarships. He is also a founding trustee of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation Trust, which focuses on African higher education and leadership; a director of the International Biomedical Research Alliance, affiliated with the National Institutes of Health; and director of a Kabul-based logistics, security, and construction company focused on the reconstruction and redevelopment of Afghanistan.
He was a US Supreme Court clerk and has practiced law, held executive positions in state and federal government and in a presidential campaign, served as president of leading insurance and health care companies, and served on many nonprofit boards, especially in the arts and humanities.
William Haseltine - William A. Haseltine is chairman of Haseltine Global Health, LLC, a virtual pharmaceutical company dedicated to developing new and more efficient means to develop new life saving drugs and medical devices. He is also president of the Haseltine Foundation for Medical Sciences and the Arts, a foundation that supports access to high quality health for the poor and middle class of developing countries and that also fosters a dialog between sciences and the arts.
He is an adjunct professor at The Scripps Institute for Medical Research. Prior to his work as chairman, he was a professor at Harvard Medical School and chairman of Human Genome Sciences, Inc. He serves as a member of the board of trustees of several Foundations and NGOs and has been an advisor to several biotechnology and venture capital companies.
Michael Sandel - Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught political philosophy since 1980.
He is the author of Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge University Press, 1982, 2nd edition, 1997; translated into eight foreign languages), Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1996), Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics (Harvard University Press, 2005), and The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Harvard University Press, 2007).
His writings also appear in general publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The New York Times.
The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering with Michael Sandel and William Haseltine speaking at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival. Elliot Gerson moderates the discussion.
Some of the most inspired and provocative thinkers, writers, artists, business people, teachers and other leaders drawn from myriad fields and from across the country and around the world all gathered in a single place - to teach, speak, lead, question, and answer at the 2006 Aspen Ideas Festival. Throughout the week, they all interacted with an audience of thoughtful people who stepped back from their day-to-day routines to delve deeply into a world of ideas, thought, and discussion.
Man is imperfect. An omnipotent Divine (that is, a being beyond all possible human capability potentials), it can be inferred even by exercise of our intellect in an open manner, has willed a system of the cosmos and the beings, including man and the ecology on earth in the most perfect manner. Science and technology is purely a product of the imperfect human intellect which is conditioned by the space-time constraint. There must be several dimensions additional to space-time, which only the super-intlligent cosmic conscious knows and uses as tool to maintain and keep the cosmic system evolving. If man wants to change it, he is simply ill-equipped to do that, but in his ego, he cannot comprehend the fact of his incapacity. Genetic engineering is product of human intellect. Ethics have to do with feelings, emotions, sentiments, and other binding cement for a cogent and cohesive world and universe. Choosing sex or other features of a child being conceived can lead to a world of monsters and universal extinction when too many monsters are there and fight out one another. This fundamental truth can be elaborated at considerable length.
Please do view this interesting short video debate on 'Ethics in an Age of Genetic Engineering'. It stimulates thinking. I viewed and commented with the thoughts that came to me after viewing. Worth recommending for you to your selected friends.
Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering - Putting the Cart Before The Horse
If we accept that life is a continuing and self-replicating process which goes across all species, then it follows that doing the hokey-pokey IS what it's all about. If we do not accept that, then we need first to explore what life is. This is not done.
When that is settled, the issue of first importance is, "are moral/ethical discussions appropriate to the species spanning process, life, or are such discussions to be limited to just one of the millions of species of life, homo sapiens and if so, why?".
Only when that discussion is completed we will have a base for moral/ethical discussions on reproduction. (see also Sandel's Aristotle's ethos discussion, which, while interesting, also asks the wrong question a priori)
Within the actual discussion (child by design) the comparative 'inflicting harm on a child (by design)' as opposed to the 'physcially attractive, athletic, high SAT' child by design through unnatural methods is suggested as a valid ethical question.
Some people in the audience either objected to both (expressed conclusion based on show of hands) or were without opinion (an option not suggested, thus ignored - form your own conclusions on ignorance).
Not asked first, and thus not explored (and presuming as intent that the discussion is limited to just one species), is the question, "are there moral/ethical implications of circumventing nature (genetic inability to reproduce as a couple) by unnatural methods to create a human life and if so why, what are they and are they static?". Clearly this is an area for consideration necessary to take place well before any moral/ethical implications of 'design' can be considered.
If moral/ethical implications of the 'design' aspects are to be considered, the responsibilities to 'design process success' must first be addressed. If such success of artificial process cannot be guaranteed, is there any reason to discuss moral/ethical implications of a process of randomness?
The quest for designer children and the ethos of discrimination (again see Sandel's Aristotle ethos discussion) through artificial selective breeding (a big 'whoops' for the couple which erred in the traditional approach to breeding selectivity since the couple has the inability to reproduce).
The Moderator, with interruption, asks, "If that particular drug (designer amphetamine) can reverse Alzheimer's, also can enhance mental ability, why can I not take it to enhance my own mental ability, to enhance my memory...?"
Other than understanding the caveat of unintended consequences, under the Constitution (American society) you can. In order to have the right to free speech (Amendment I) you must have the right to your thoughts and your percepts (Amendment IX).
Oh, I could go on. But that involves philosophy and not the entertainment which has been offered by the panel.
