the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar

Video

Patricia Williams

Gene Wars:  Self-Assembly, Rational Man and The New Eugenics

This lecture took place on November 3rd, 2009 at 7:00 pm in the Rose Auditorium at the Cooper Union

Lecture introduction

Genetic modification of plants and animals remains largely unregulated in the United States. Just as hybridized and chimeric forms of lower life have proliferated with little public resistance, we are faced with the possibility of a new human eugenics movement, reinvigorated by a “market” for “Ivy League” eggs and “designer” babies, and assisted by rapid enhancements in reproductive technology, cosmetic surgery, and genetic engineering.  Moreover, there is a reemergence of profiling by race, ethnicity, religion and medical condition--as well as greatly expanded abilities to mine that data, both because of the powers granted to governments by laws like the USA Patriot Act, and because of the speed with which computers can now sort trillions of bits of information.  And, in a world where DNA can pinpoint inherent INequalities, the very cornerstone of our constitutional identity--the notion of equal personhood--is increasingly vexed by a cultural context where one’s value is negotiable rather than assumed; and where the power to fix that value is driven by advertising, profit, relative supply and demand, and fashion in the most fleeting and momentary sense. This lecture will consider how we might we chart an ethical course in the face of nearly unprecedented technological leaps and expansion of human understanding.

About Patricia Williams

Patricia J. Williams is the John Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University.  Her column, Diary of a Mad Law Professor, appears monthly in The Nation Magazine.