18 February 2022
Sheila Jasanoff
Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies
Harvard Kennedy School
American bioethics developed largely in the shadow of the Nuremberg trials and revelations of racialized and abusive practices in biomedicine. As a result, bioethics has tended to take the individual human subject as its object of care and concern. That focus is proving to be increasingly problematic as modern genetic and information technologies enable an unprecedented decoupling of our physical, moral, and social selves. Drawing on concrete examples from recent public debates, I will illustrate the gaps between the kinds of issues we are confronting in research and therapy at the frontiers of biotechnology and our institutional capacity to deliberate and act upon them.