Outdoor Science Talk: Who Owns Life?

Please join us for Stanford’s acclaimed Summer Science Lecture Series on the lawn adjacent to Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center on four Thursday evenings. You are invited to come early and wander through the art museum, buy dinner in the Art Center’s Cool Café or bring your own picnic, and then settle on the lawn outside to hear informal lectures about cutting-edge research from four of Stanford’s most esteemed professors.

We promise that all of the talks will be delivered in terms understandable to the lay public. So bring your entire family (high school age and up) and enjoy! The Outdoor Science Series is sponsored by the Stanford Office for Science Outreach, the Cantor Arts Center, and Stanford Continuing Studies.

Outdoor Science Talk 1: Who Owns Life?

The “ownership of life” has become one of the most central and vehemently debated issues facing scientists working on isolating human stem cells and engineering new forms of life. What is life? What is natural? Do we want to promote the commercial development of these technologies—and when? Are we somehow turning life into a commodity in the marketplace?

This lecture will bring together many thoughtprovoking voices and perspectives on the issues of “owning life” including legal, scientific, ethical, and economic. From the patenting of genes and organisms such as the Chakrabarty oil-eating bacteria, to the ownership of our bodies and bodily tissues, these are among the most compelling moral and social issues facing our society today and will form the critical foundation of discussions for years to come.

DAVID C. MAGNUS
Director, Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics; Co-Chair, Ethics Committee, Stanford Hospital; Associate Professor of Pediatrics
David Magnus received a PhD in philosophy from Stanford and has published articles on a range of topics in bioethics, particularly on issues concerning genetic technology, cloning, and stem cell research. He teaches medical genetics in the Stanford School of Medicine.

Thursday, June 25
7:00 – 8:30 pm
Lawn outside Cantor Arts Center
FREE; no registration required
Open to the public