"Creating the perfect human? The ethics of enhancement" with Prof Julian Savulescu

Past Event

Date
19 November 2015, 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Location
Lecture Theatre, Oxford Martin School
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

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Do we have the means necessary to create the perfect human? Do we have a moral responsibility to do so? Professor Julian Savulescu, Director of the Institute for Science and Ethics, will consider current and potential human enhancement technologies, and look at the ethical arguments surrounding their use.

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This event will be live streamed on our YouTube channel


About the speaker

Professor Julian Savulescu is Director of the Institute for Science and Ethics, Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease, Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Geoengineering, and Principal Investigator for our Resource Stewardship and Vaccines programmes.

The Institute of Science and Ethics (ISE, formerly known as the Programme on the Ethics of the New Biosciences) is a founding institute of the Oxford Martin School. It has achieved self-sufficiency through attracting donor funding such as the Loebel Lectures and Research Programme (OLLRP), and the Practical Ethics and Science of Altruism (PESA) , embedding ethics in OMS programmes such as Mind and Machine, Oxford Geoengineering Programme (OGP), Oxford Martin Programme on Vaccines (Vaccines), Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship (OMPORS), and external research funds (Shepherd’s Wellcome Trust Fellowship; Savulescu’s Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award Responsibility and Healthcare).

Julian Savulescu's areas of research include: the ethics of genetics, especially predictive genetic testing, pre implantation genetic diagnosis, prenatal testing, behavioural genetics, genetic enhancement, gene therapy; research ethics, especially ethics of embryo research, including embryonic stem cell research; new forms of reproduction, including cloning and assisted reproduction; medical ethics, including end of life decision-making, resource allocation, consent, confidentiality, decision-making involving incompetent people, and other areas; sports ethics; the analytic philosophical basis of practical ethics. He is on the Advisory Board for the journal Neuroethics. Savulescu, along with Professor Nick Bostrom, of the Future of Humanity Institute, initiated the two year EU ENHANCE project, an interdisciplinary project devoted to studying the ethical implications of human enhancement and to providing detailed recommendations to European policy makers. Oxford led the cognitive enhancement theme. Savulescu is editor of two major collections on enhancement: one, co-edited with Bostrom, entitled Human Enhancement (OUP) and another draws on research from the ENHANCE project, entitled Enhancing Human Capacities (Wiley Blackwell, due for publication January 2011).