Arts Public Lecture V – Should we use technology to change our genetic destiny?
16 April 2009
BMW Edge
Federation Square
Melbourne
5:30pm (for a 6:00pm start)
Refreshments will be provided
Professor Julian Savulescu presents the fifth Arts Public Lecture on ‘Should we use technology to change our genetic destiny?’
Criminality, self-control, intelligence, and even success in relationships have all been found to have some biological basis. Recent developments in human enhancement technologies have meant that we can use science and medical technology not just to prevent or treat disease, but to intervene at the most basic biological levels to improve biology and enhance people’s lives. Using technology we can overcome the genetic lottery that limits us, enabling us to lead better lives with greater wellbeing both for individuals and society as a whole.
Savulescu will argue the case for human enhancement, dealing with a range of objections and arguing that there are good social and public interest arguments in favour of obligatory population level enhancements based on social and economic arguments, and the necessity to liberate humanity. Evolution by natural selection has left us with genetic barriers to wellbeing in our current environment. Savulescu will argue that enhancement technologies, by allowing us to enter a new stage of evolution, ‘evolution under reason’, can liberate humanity. Human liberation by biological means can improve people’s lives, promote social justice, economic productive as well as improving human relationships and moral behaviour.
Professor Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Professor Julian Savulescu is qualified in medicine, bioethics and analytic philosophy. He holds the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics and is Director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford, Director of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, and Director of the Program on the Ethics of the New Biosciences. He was also recently awarded a major Arts and Humanities Research Council grant on ‘Cognitive Science and Religious Conflict’. He is engaged in research, education and stimulating open discussion around the ethical issues arising in everyday life and has worked broadly in the ethics of science and medicine. His main research interests are the ethics of the new biosciences: cloning, stem cells, genetics, artificial reproduction and neuroscience. He established and was Director of the Ethics of Genetics Unit at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne.
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