The science and ethics of X-Men

“What really interests me in watching comic book super heroes move to the movie screen, 30 and 40 years after their origins, is the change in the way we portray the technology involved,” says bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe. The director of Emory’s Center for Ethics, Wolpe was a big comic book fan growing up.

In the original Spider Man story, Peter Parker gained super powers after he was bitten by a spider that was exposed to radiation.

At that time, Wolpe notes, there was an enormous fear that we were going to be “nuked” by nuclear weapons. “Radiation was the scientific phenomenon around which people had fear and mystery. That isn’t how we think about radiation anymore. Now it’s how we think about genetics.”

So when the first Spider Man movie came out in 2002, the spider that bit Parker had been genetically manipulated instead of radiated.

The X-Men movie series, about a group of genetically mutated super heroes, is a great example of a storyline that is on target with a technology that holds a sense of potential, along with fear and mystery, Wolpe says.

The latest in the series, “X-Men: First Class,” opens June 3.

“The story of the X-Men is really a dramatic representation about what happens when there is a minority group that’s feared by the majority,” Wolpe says. “They created that minority through genetics.”

The mutations portrayed in the series, such as the ability to shoot laser beams from your eyeballs, are implausible as sudden genetic mutations. But many enhanced powers are perfectly plausible as biotechnological developments, Wolpe says.

Bio-engineers are working on ways to improve things such as memory and strength that would mimic the best achievements of humans, and we might one day even be able to borrow traits from animals, Wolpe says.

“One of the great challenges for us is how do we resist the temptation to use genetic technology in humans beings for reasons that are less than life saving,” he says.


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BEINGS launches work on global consensus for ethical course of biotech

Novelist Margaret Atwood on stage at BEINGS with cognitive scientist Steven Pinker (center) and Thierry Magnin, who is a physicist, Catholic priest and professor of ethics.

By Carol Clark

Some of the world’s preeminent scientists and bioethicists gathered with leaders of philosophy, sociology, law, policy and religion in Atlanta May 18-20 for BEINGS 2015. The landmark summit launched work on a global consensus for the direction of biotechnology for the 21st century.

The setting for this futuristic event: The Tabernacle, an historic former church turned music venue, with red walls swirled with murals and wood floors that creak like the deck of a ship. Novelist Margaret Atwood, creator of fictional laboratory creatures such as the pigoon, gave a keynote.

“The lid is off the Pandora’s Box of genetic modification,” Atwood said. “This is a pivotal moment. Deliberate well. Keep the bar high. Take precautions.”

And with that, the tumultuous voyage began.

BEINGS, short for Biotech and the Ethical Imagination: A Global Summit, was organized by Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics. “The idea is audacious,” Wolpe admitted of their plan to write global guidelines for the aspirations, ethics and policies of biotechnology within the next eight months.

Paul Root Wolpe on the potential and perils of biotechnology:


The BEINGS delegates are up to the task, he added. About 135 delegates from 25 countries joined the summit to take up the challenge of charting a course for how biotechnology can best contribute to human flourishing while navigating the potential perils and ethical pitfalls.

Tensions soon emerged as delegates from different perspectives took the microphone.

Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker threw down the deregulatory gauntlet. “Stay out of the way” of biotech innovation, he urged, as scientists seek to prevent, treat and cure diseases. He cited major improvements in life expectancy around the world largely due to biomedical breakthroughs.

Pinker downplayed fears of eugenics and “designer” babies, while others countered that we are living in a world of competition and should be extremely concerned about the potential power to “edit” the genes of the human germline.

Princeton’s Ruha Benjamin, author of “People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier,” called for the inclusion of those who identify as disabled in discussions about the goals and policies of biotechnology. “Anything less is presumptive and paternalistic,” she said.

It’s important to think about how to distribute benefits, added Benjamin, an assistant professor of African American Studies focused on issues of science and health. “There is no such thing as trickle-down biotech.”

Benjamin and three other delegates summarized their thoughts in an opinion piece for the Guardian: “As we pursue promising treatments, we should also be asking what we are trying to treat; whether it is best treated biomedically; who is included as funders, patients, donors and scientists; who is left out; who profits; and whether or not the treatment masks, depoliticizes, or exacerbates political and social inequality.”

By the afternoon of the first day of the summit, Wolpe said he knew the gathering was going to be a success. “I could tell by the tone of the conversation, and how people were lining up at the microphones to speak, that we had struck a chord,” he says. “We need to bridge a tension in philosophies, but both sides believe that curing human diseases and stopping suffering is an important goal. We have to get outside of the theoretical arguments and start talking about practical, specific issues.”

BEINGS divided discussions into the following major topic areas.

Aspirations and Goals: How should we think about differing goals of biotechnology, from making money, to curing disease, to understanding the basic nature of the organic world, to promoting human flourishing?

Alien Organisms and New (ID)entities: Cellular biotechnologies enable us to engineer novel organisms for industrial, environmental or therapeutic purposes. How might these organisms modify existing social systems and ecosystems, and how do we balance innovation with responsibility?

Bioterror/Bioerror: What are the potential dangers of synthetic biological materials and pathogens in terms of accidents or criminal intent?

Ownership: Should custom-designed genetic material or organisms be subject to patents and copyright?

Donorship: How can government and private sector entities collaborate to protect donors and create standards for bio- and stem-cell banks?

“All voices have a place,” Wolpe stressed. “We don’t have to agree on everything. Wherever we have honest, important disagreement in an area, we will note it in the final document.”

At the end of the summit, more than 80 delegates committed to actively working on writing the guidelines for the five major topic areas. Another 30 agreed to serve as reviewers and editors as drafts are ready. Their goal is to have a final document by next January, which they will submit for publication by a major journal.

“We do not represent just a single segment of society or government body or special interest,” Wolpe says. “We’re a group of global citizens who believe that for biotechnology to be used successfully it has to be used ethically. We as a group can create a document that is persuasive and has value.”

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Blurring the lines between life forms

Composite creatures, such as the mythical centaur, have long lived in the human imagination. Our growing power to directly design life forms should give us pause, says bio-ethicist Paul Root Wolpe. Once we perfect the technologies in animals and start using them in humans, what will be the ethical guidelines?

You may have already heard of the liger, the lion-tiger hybrid that is the largest cat in the world. Now meet the beefalo (buffalo-cattle), the geep (goat-sheep) and the camma (camel-llama).

A growing number of such hybrid animals exist due to selective breeding combined with genetic manipulation. “For the first time in our history, we’re able to directly design organisms,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics in a TED conversation (see video below). “We’re able to manipulate life with unprecedented power.”

Bioengineers have removed the bio-luminescent gene from jellyfish and used it to make kittens, pigs and puppies that glow in the dark. Some states already allow sales of genetically altered Zebra fish, a black-and-white aquarium favorite that now comes in glowing yellow, red and green.

Wolpe wonders, “Do we get to go to ‘Pets-R-Us’ someday and say, ‘I’d like to have a dog. I’d like it to have the head of a dachshund, the body of a retriever, maybe some pink fur, and let’s make it glow in the dark.’”

It’s past time for us to confront tough questions about bio-engineering, Wolpe says. How are we going to define animal species in this new era of directed evolution?

He points out that most of the food we buy in the supermarket today already has a genetically modified component to it. “So even as we have worried about it, we’ve allowed it to go on in this country without regulation, or even any identification on the package.”

Cloning and computers are further pushing the envelope of transgenic animals. Labs have created organic robots, including Goliath beetles implanted with computer chips that allow engineers to use a joystick to control their flight. This technology is not limited to insects. One lab has created a robo-rat with electrodes wired into its brain and a tiny camera mounted on its head.

“This is not science fiction, it’s happening now,” Wolpe says. “Once we perfect these technologies in animals and start using them in human beings, what are the ethical guidelines we’ll use? Is it okay to manipulate and create whatever creatures we want?”

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'BEINGS' set to generate global biotech guidelines

By Carol Clark

The recent news that China is trying to “edit” the genes of human embryos, in a way that would permanently alter their DNA, was met with alarm by many in the scientific community. Researchers from the United States were among those who called for a halt to such experiments until the safety and ethical implications are fully considered.

“We’re at the point where we can manipulate life in ways that have great promise to cure some of our most dreaded diseases, expand agriculture and clean up the environment,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of Emory’s Center for Ethics. “But the ability to create new forms of life also holds the potential to cause disease or create organisms that could be environmentally toxic. So we need to be really careful when we’re trying to change some of these basic building blocks of life that we do so thoughtfully. We need to have boundaries around what should and shouldn’t be done.”

The Center for Ethics is hosting a major international summit in Atlanta May 17 to 19, to discuss both aspirations and guidelines for the era of synthetic biology. Biotechnology and the Ethical Imagination: A Global Summit (BEINGS), will bring together delegates from the top 30 biotechnology producing countries of the world.

Heading up the discussions will be a faculty of 25 distinguished scholars, including leaders in science, law, ethics, industry, philosophy, religion and the arts and humanities. Among the luminaries: Novelist Margaret Atwood, synthetic biologist George Church and evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker.

The public is also encouraged to register and attend BEINGS. “The kinds of decisions that we need to make about biotechnology should not just be made by scientists,” Wolpe says. “I think it’s everybody’s responsibility to participate in this conversation.”

Regulations have not kept pace with rapid advances in biotechnology, he says. “We are currently dealing with a kind of regulatory chaos, not only among different countries but even within the United States. Different states, for example, have different standards for how to use stem-cell research.”

BEINGS 2015 will kick off with a key question: What are the major goals of biotechnology?

“We want to articulate the most important aspirational principles of biotechnology and how it can contribute to human flourishing,” Wolpe says. “Once we agree on where we want to go, then I think it becomes easier to talk about how we create boundaries to get there safely.”

In the months following the summit, the delegates will work on developing an international consensus document for biotechnology guidelines, the first of its kind. “Our hope is that it will serve as a kind of touchstone, and a model for ethical principles and policy standards worldwide,” Wolpe says.

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Neuro-Interventions and the Law: Experts to explore ethics and efficacy

Atlanta's Neuro-Interventions and the Law Conference will grapple with thorny issues facing today's legal system. The case of British computer scientist Alan Turing, who submitted to chemical castration in 1952 to avoid imprisonment for homosexuality, exemplifies why a judicial system should take the long view before resorting to drugs or other medical means to alter a person's behavior and biology. Benedict Cumberbatch, above, portrays Turing in the upcoming movie "The Imitation Game."

By Carol Clark

Alan Turing was a hero. He was a mathematician who played a key role in the development of computer science and artificial intelligence and, during World War II, he led Britain’s German code-breaking team, cracking secret messages that gave the Allies an edge in critical battles against the Nazis.

Turing was also a homosexual. In 1952 he was prosecuted for having a sexual relationship with another man, a crime at that time in the United Kingdom. In order to avoid prison, Turing underwent chemical castration: Injections of a drug that took away his libido, while also causing him to have enlarged breasts. His death two years later from cyanide poisoning was ruled a suicide.

The Turing tragedy is just one of many examples of a legal neuro-intervention: The use of a drug or other medical means to change someone’s behavior – sometimes permanently. Despite a problematic past record, a range of such interventions are poised to expand within the legal system and could even become routine.

The conference Neruo-Interventions and the Law: Regulating Human Mental Capacity will gather leading legal scholars, judges, ethicists, neuroscientists and psychologists at Georgia State University September 12-14 to grapple with some of the thorny legal issues being spurred by advances in neuroscience. Registration is free, but there is limited seating.

“Techniques to diagnose and manipulate human behavior and the brain are becoming increasingly sophisticated,” says Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist and director of the Emory Center for Ethics, who will give the introductory remarks for the conference. “We need to develop processes and regulations for how we’re going to use these techniques because they are not going away. In fact, many of them are already in use in criminal proceedings.”

The conference is the first major event of the Atlanta Neuroethics Consortium. The Emory Center for Ethics spearheaded the formation of the consortium, which brings together a range of resources from metro-Atlanta’s universities, biotechnology sector and non-profit organizations to explore the implications as neuroscience is set to transform every aspect of our lives, from medicine, to law and civil society.

At least nine U.S. states, including Georgia, have incorporated versions of chemical castration into their laws for those convicted of child sex crimes. While pedophilia is an extreme taboo, critics of chemical castration have called it “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Even if convicted sex offenders are given a voluntary option of a drug treatment in lieu of imprisonment, the ethics are problematic, Wolpe says. “From a government perspective, it would be infinitely cheaper to use drugs instead of incarceration to fix a criminal problem. That kind of incentive would add to the risk of abuse of the power to drug people.”

Another problematic area that Wolpe cites: The practice of drugging criminal defendants suffering from schizophrenia or other mental illnesses so that they achieve a “synthetic competency” to stand trial and, if convicted, perhaps even be executed.

Attorneys are increasingly calling for brain scans as evidence in criminal trials. Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, for instance, is associated with impulsiveness, anger and aggression. Should people diagnosed with TBI receive special consideration if they commit a violent criminal offense?

About 12 percent of U.S. veterans returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from at least mild TBI, according to the Department of Defense. Should vets accused of violent acts be treated differently than other defendants with similar brain injuries?

These questions and dozens of others will be brought up in the conference talks, papers and panel discussions.

It’s important to involve a range of expertise to sort through the complicated neuroethics involved in all of these issues, Wolpe says. “History shows that, over and over again, society has allowed moral suppositions to infiltrate scientific thinking. Years from now, we don’t want to be looking back and saying, ‘How could they have done that?’”

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'Omic astronauts' blast off into a new genetic era

By Carol Clark

Ready or not, the ability to rapidly and cheaply sequence the human genome is set to shape our species, both biologically and socially. Some people are early adopters of the technology, eager to jump into this brave new world.

Kristopher Hite, a bio-chemist and a post-doctoral fellow working in a biology lab at Emory, is among these “omic astronauts.” He is heading into unknown territory, full of potential risks and rewards, by having his genome sequenced and added to the public database of the Personal Genome Project (PGP).

Are we on the road to “Gattaca?” The 1997 film is set in a future where genetic databases are used to bio-engineer “ideal” children and sort out the less ideal members of society. In the above video of a Google + Hangout, Hite discusses some of the potential scenarios of the emerging genetic era with Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist and director of the Emory Center for Ethics.

Hite’s interest in the Harvard-based PGP is both scientific and personal. He wants to learn more about his own ancestry while also adding to our general knowledge of genetics.

He checked with his closest family members before joining the project, and they all gave him a green light. Even future family members, however, could be affected by his decision.

“If I have kids, maybe they’ll think I’m crazy for doing it and maybe they’ll resent me,” says the 30-year-old Hite, adding that he could not resist the opportunity of having his genome sequenced for free.

Here is how the PGP sums up its aims on its Web site: “We are recruiting volunteers who are willing to share their genome sequence and many types of personal information with the research community and the general public, so that together we will be better able to advance our understanding of genetic and environmental contributions to human traits.”

Hite has yet to decide whether he will allow the PGP to attach his name to his genetic data. It was among the concerns he discussed in his conversation with Wolpe.

The truth is, no one knows all of the future implications, Wolpe says. On the one hand, genetic data will likely boost opportunities for tailor-made medical treatments that will make today’s health care seem crude by comparison. But every new technology comes with a dark side.

“With your whole genome available to someone, and 20, 30 years from now with really more sophisticated DNA synthesizers, somebody could potentially clone you without your knowledge or consent,” Wolpe says. “As I tell my students, there is no science fiction anymore. There’s virtually nothing that I read about as a kid that I thought was whacky and way out that we’re not doing or trying to do. So I think that we’re opening up a whole new world of not only opportunity and potential but also legal problems and medical problems and certainly security problems.”

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Does science need a universal symbol?

Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics, sparked a debate with his proposal in New Scientist to develop a unifying symbol for science: A sort of bumper sticker for passionate nerds, and those who support their mission. Wolpe writes:

"A single, unified symbol would have many uses. It could be displayed to represent a position: opposition to the politicizing of science in government, support for increased research spending, or concern about global warming and species loss. It could be displayed by an astronomer or geologist or sociologist or teacher as a symbol of their allegiance to science. It could be used on car bumpers and web pages, and in public venues. ...

"Perhaps it could even accommodate a cross or star of David or some other symbol to state: 'I am a Christian (or Jew or Muslim) and support science as an enterprise.'"

You can read the full New Scientist article here.

Do you agree with Wolpe? You can send your ideas for a symbol to sciencesymbol@emory.edu, or join the discussion via a special science symbol Facebook page Wolpe set up.

Graphic: iStockphoto.com.

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The real origins of the X-Men

“The X-Men take up a conversation that started in its modern form after World War II, in the Nuremberg Nazi trails,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics.

The judges were not just horrified by the testimony of the horrific experiments done on humans by the Nazis, Wolpe says. They were also alarmed when the defense lawyers brought to light what was going on in the United States in regard to human experimentation.

The judges were so appalled that they wrote the Nuremberg Code, which laid out clear guidelines for human experimentation, such as working with animals first and gaining the full consent of the subjects.

“It took more than two decades before those kinds of standards began to be universally applied,” Wolpe says.

Marvel Comics, which created the X-Men, tackled many tough issues in its storylines, says Wolpe, who grew up with a love of comic books. “The X-Men became this fascinating discussion of majority-minority relationships, human experimentation and the coming genetic sophistication,” he says.

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Artificial intelligence and 'deep ethics'

In the sci-fi film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” astronauts go into a soundproof pod to discuss their concerns about some of the decisions made by the supercomputer Hal (seen through the window) without realizing that Hal knows how to lip read.

Advances in neurotechnology, genetics and artificial intelligence are not only going to change society as a whole, they are actually going to challenge what it means to be human and change our ethics, argues Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics, in a recent TEDx Atlanta talk.

He uses self-driving cars as just one example.

“These vehicles are going to be going down the road and in a crisis they’re going to have to make decisions about what to do,” Wolpe says. “Do I crash into the wall and endanger my passengers or do I turn left and hit those pedestrians? For the first time we’re going to have to create ethical algorithms. That is, we’re going to have to teach a vehicle to make ethical decisions. For the first time, machines will be making ethical decisions that will have a profound impact on human beings.” 

Watch Wolpe’s talk in the video below to learn what he means by the term “deep ethics,” and how artificial intelligence may someday help us navigate through the ethical complexities raised by technology itself.



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Nazi eugenics versus the American Dream

It’s the year of genetically modified super heroes at the movies. The latest, “Captain America: The First Avenger,” is set in World War II, the era when the comic book character was introduced to readers.

“Captain America is the archetypal Marvel Comic,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics and a comic book fan. “You have the scrawny kid who wants desperately to do good. You have technology coming to his rescue. And then you have him modified to become this incredible fighting machine.”

The irony is that the Marvel story created an anti-Nazi figure by using genetics to perfect the human form, which is exactly what the Nazis were trying to do.

“Of course, the difference is that America does it in a way that doesn’t involve genocide or denigrating any other group,” Wolpe says. “They take a specimen that in Nazi ideology would be dispensable and say, all of us have within us the ability to be great, this guy just needs a little help.”

The ideology in the United States at the time was to help people who come here with disadvantages to live the American Dream, Wolpe says. “Captain America becomes a symbol of he way in which the United States thought about itself. I think because eugenic ideas were so much of what World War II was about, that different model of how genetic science can be used became a very powerful symbol of the difference between the German and American views of technology.”

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'Blade Runner' blows past our ideas of 'disability'

Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics, wrote about Oscar Pistorius, the South African amputee who is running in the 2012 Olympics, as a guest blogger for CNN.com. Dubbed the “Blade Runner,” for his high-tech, carbon-fiber “Cheetah” legs, Pistorius assembled his own legal and scientific team to make a successful bid to compete in the Olympics. But, as Wolpe writes, the story is far from over, with no general guidelines about the future use of “adaptive sports equipment.” An excerpt from the article:

Photo by Elvar Paisson/Wikipedia Commons.

“The issue will have to be revisited by each new athlete who wants to use artificial mechanisms in competition. …

“We do not ultimately know the degree to which technology mimics true physiological function. What if an amputee high jumper wants to use Cheetahs; what level of springiness is "fair" against able-bodied athletes? What about a swimmer who wants to use prosthetic hands or legs? Or an archer whose prosthetic arm does not tremble like an arm of flesh and blood? We do not have metrics that can determine true equivalence with able-bodied athletes.

“Then there is the issue of fairness. In this year's U.S. Olympic trials, Dathan Ritzenhein, the two-time Olympian and 5k American record holder, was eliminated from the marathon team because of leg cramps. Pistorius cannot get cramps in his calves because he does not have any, and so he can never be eliminated based on this criterion.

“The Pistorius case confronts us with two important questions. What is a disability? And what is the rationale for elite sport?”

Read the whole article at CNN.com.

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Do drones make killing too easy?

Dozens of countries are now producing unmanned aircraft known as drones, ranging from flying “spies” the size of insects to large planes equipped with missiles and bombs.

A soldier sitting at a computer in Nevada can be running lethal drones on the other side of the world.

“That to me is deeply problematic, when you make killing so easy, and when you remove the person so far from the site of the killing,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics. “The sense of having killed people becomes so abstract.”

Drone technology could develop to the point that enemy soldiers conduct entire battles against one another via computer, while sitting in fortified bunkers.

“This sort of strategy ends up protecting soldiers more, but exposing civilians more,” Wolpe says. “It will change the nature of warfare and raise a new kind of ethical calculus in the way in which warfare is conducted.”

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Why robots should care about their looks

As one movie reviewer points out, the Autobots and Decepticons in Transformers: Dark of the Moon “drool, bleed, have whiskers and even go bald with age.”

But what's going on beneath the surface? As real-life robots become increasingly sophisticated, how will we decide if they have enough of a sense of themselves to deserve certain levels of rights?

“It will be an interesting question, and it won’t be just an intellectual one,” says bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics. “A whole series of experiments show that if you create a robot that moves, but just looks like a whole bunch of gears, and you give someone a sledgehammer and say, ‘Smash it,’ they’ll smash it. If you put a little furry cover on it, so now it moves but it looks organic, they won’t hit it.”

Whenever a robot is more humanoid or more animal-like in appearance, people are more reluctant to harm it.

“We already have robots that in one sense or another are being treated more like animals,” Wolpe says. “As soon as you begin to give robots the appearance of life, people begin to project onto it the feelings that they project onto life.”


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Fiction, facts and values of synthetic biology

“The story of Frankenstein is a scientific one,” says bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe, adding that the classic tale by Mary Shelley is “a product of the Christian cultural milieu that had underpinnings of suspicion and worry about technology.”

Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics, was one of the speakers at recent meetings on the future of synthetic biology, held by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

What is synthetic biology? Are molecular biologists playing God? Should we be more excited or frightened by the potential to make life as we don’t know it? Click here to listen and watch as experts explain some of the challenges ahead, including communicating potential benefits and risks of synthetic biology to the public.

Emory President James Wagner is vice chair of the Presidential Commission, which plans more public meetings in November, on the Emory campus.

Illustration, above, from 1831 edition of "Frankenstein." Source: Wikipedia Commons.

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Synthetic cell: A step closer to 'recipe for life'

The creation of the first self-replicating, synthetic cell by the J. Craig Venter Institute is being hailed as a milestone in the history of biology and biotechnology. In the journal Science, the researchers described the steps to make a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome.

“It’s marvelous what they’ve done,” says Emory chemistry chair David Lynn. “They’ve taken a major step in defining a minimal set of chemical instructions for what we call living. This understanding, and the underlying technology, will certainly be extended and amplified into a synthetic biology. Their accomplishment also moves us that critical step closer to the definition of and a recipe for life. And that is profound.”

Watch the video, above, of Lynn explaining the discovery on CNN.

Lynn, professor of biomolecular chemistry, is working to understand supramolecular self-assembly, and how life may have originated on pre-biotic Earth.

“What Craig Venter and his team have done is taken the genome out of one organism and put it into another,” Lynn says. “Our group is coming at it from the opposite direction, of emergent life forms. Both approaches are trying to define the minimal chemical composition for life.”

Excitement over Venter's discovery should be tempered by caution, says Paul Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics. "Like any great scientific innovation, this has enormous promise and enormous peril," Wolpe said on ABC World News Tonight. "This may allow us to make more virulent viruses. This could unleash a bacterium on the world that has properties we didn't expect that could cause great disease and ecological damage."

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Can neuroscience read your mind?

Paul Root Wolpe, director of Emory Center for Ethics, wrote about neuroimaging and personal freedom for Forbes.com:

"Neuroscience has, for the first time, demonstrated that there may be ways to directly access human thought--even, perhaps, without the thinker's consent. While the research is still preliminary, the science is advancing at an astonishing rate. While many obstacles need to be overcome and the technology is not yet practicable, the implications for our current state of knowledge are profound. ...

Watch an earlier "60 Minutes" interview with Wolpe, on the science of mind-reading.

"Neurotechnology is making its way into business, politics and other civic realms as well. The booming field of neuromarketing has been peering into the brains of consumers as they think about products or look at advertising. Political scientists have used fMRI to try to determine voter preferences, and a book by Emory psychologist Drew Westen, titled "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," drew on such research and played a prominent role in the Democratic strategy in the last presidential election. ...

"While our abilities in these areas are still quite limited, and while there is always the possibility that the technology will never progress to the point where it can extract truly useful information from anyone, the time to think about the implications of this endeavor is now, before the technology is upon us. The appeal of the technology to the state is obvious. So we need to ask ourselves: What are the limits of the use of this technology? Should we ever allow the courts, or the state, to demand access to the recesses of our minds?"

Read the full article.

Scientist tackles ethics of space travel

Artist rendering of simulated Mars mission, courtesy NASA

Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics and the first chief bioethicist for NASA, tells the New York Times:

"Imagine you had a severely injured astronaut on the surface of Mars — or a dead body. American soldiers will put themselves at great risk to retrieve a dead body. On Mars, you have a different situation. You might be endangering the entire mission by trying to retrieve the body. In that case, you might recommend that it be left behind, even if that is against our ethical traditions.

"Or what do you do if someone has a psychotic episode while in space?

"I’ve written that there has to be medication and restraints on the craft. If you have to restrain the person for a long period of time, you have to do it. You can’t thank the person for their service to the country and put them out into space. You can’t medicate them to insensibility for a year and a half. You have to find a reasonable way to manage the situation."

Read the full interview with Wolpe in the New York Times.

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Unveiling of Frankenstein portrait to set stage for year-long celebration of the classic novel

A public unveiling and discussion of a large-scale portrait of Dr. Frankenstein’s creation, described in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel “Frankenstein," will take place at 7 pm at Emory on Tuesday, September 19. The event will be held at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts and is open to all free of charge, but guests must register in advance at http://engage.emory.edu/Frankenstein or call Erin Mosley at 404-727-5048.

The portrait is by renowned artist Ross Rossin, who is on the Emory campus as the 2017-2018 Donna and Marvin Schwartz Artist-in-Residence. Rossin, whose art hangs in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and was exhibited at the United Nations Palace of Nations in Geneva and the Russian Duma in Moscow, is also known to Atlantans as the sculptor/creator of the nine-foot-tall bronze statue of Hank Aaron unveiled earlier this year at SunTrust Park.

Rossin's residency is part of the Ethics and the Arts Program at Emory's Center for Ethics. The program, the only one of its kind in the nation, encourages ethical discourse and debate through and about the arts, and partners with arts organizations to demonstrate the way art challenges ethical perspectives.

This year, the residency coincides with FACE (Frankenstein Anniversary Celebration and Emory), a year-long university-wide celebration of the 200th anniversary of the novel.

The exclusive corporate sponsor of FACE is Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Emory is providing support through its Science and Society fund.

“One of the most acclaimed and influential works of science fiction ever written, ‘Frankenstein’ continues to shape debates surrounding science and its complications,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of Emory’s Center for Ethics, which is spearheading FACE. “It’s a permanent part of the dialogue about the dilemmas we face in technological advancement, scientific experimentation and research, bioethics, artificial intelligence, stem cell research and innovation.”

Rossin’s new depiction of Frankenstein’s creation is expected to highlight the broad influence and implications of the landmark novel. Rossin envisioned not the standard movie portrayal, but a portrait based on his vision of Shelley’s intent.

“It’s precisely Mary Shelley’s youth [age 18 when she began the novel] that inspired me to approach my subject differently,” says Rossin. “Unlike all other portrayals before, I prefer to see the Creature as a young man.”

As Rossin points out, Dr. Frankenstein intended “to create something beautiful, young, powerful and promising, like Prometheus. The Creature was supposed to have a future, open a new chapter in human history.”

Those familiar with the story know that Dr. Frankenstein’s good intentions turned ugly and murderous. Rossin says that his portrait of “Adam Frankenstein reflects exactly this kind of tragic duality. In my work the viewer should be able to see both.”

How 'Fifty Shades' is coloring views of fantasy

Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Gray (Jamie Dornan) in the movie version of "Fifty Shades of Grey," which is only rated R but reportedly shows at least 20 full minutes of sex.

Emma Green writes in The Atlantic about the social implications of the blockbuster fantasy novel and movie "Fifty Shades of Grey." Below is an excerpt from the article:

"In some ways, it’s remarkable that a phenomenon like 'Fifty Shades' has even been possible. 'Oral sex, anal sex—those are all things that were at one time illegal,' said Paul Wolpe, the director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University. Sodomy, for example, was considered a felony in every state until 1962, and until the Supreme Court ruled against sodomy bans in its 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, it was still illegal in 14 states.

"Today, 'there are lots of differences in the moral composition,' he said. 'There’s no unified moral view, so … the argument then becomes: My morality is different than yours—what right do you have to oppose me?'

Read the whole article in The Atlantic.

When 'I' becomes 'we': Brain-to-brain interfaces

Emory scientists John Trimper (psychology), Paul Root Wolpe (Center for Ethics) and Karen Rommelfanger (neurology) wrote an opinion piece on the ethical implications of emerging brain-to-brain interfacing technologies for Frontiers in Neuroengineering. Below is an excerpt.

The idea of creating a direct connection between a human brain and a computer has a long history in science fiction. The development of brain computer interfaces (BCI), technologies permitting direct communication between a user's brain and an external device, began to become a reality in the 1970s, and have since captured the attention of scientists and the public alike. Initially conceptualized for military use—the initial work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—more recently BCIs have shown promise for therapeutic uses, providing hope for restorative and even enhanced human capacities.

Utilizing both invasive and non-invasive technologies, scientists are now capable of recording and translating activity from populations of neurons to operate external devices. In early 2013, the technology took a leap forward as researchers replaced the external computer connection with a second embodied brain, dubbing the approach “brain-to-brain” interfacing (BTBI). The direct transfer of information between two brains raises new and important ethical issues. We summarize the first two landmark studies in BTBI research, and then discuss ethical concerns relevant to BTBI as they are applied in clinical, research, and non-therapeutic domains.

Read the whole article in Frontiers in Neuroengineering.

Image: iStockphoto.com

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