Hastings Center News

Watch the Livestream Tonight: Ethics of Technology Keynote Lecture by Hastings Center’s Josephine Johnston

The Hastings Center’s director of research Josephine Johnston will explore how new genetic technologies may impact parents’ sense of their responsibility to their children in the keynote address of the “Ethics of Technology,” a yearlong lecture series at Washington & Lee University that begins on September 26. 

Johnston’s talk is titled “The Good Parent in an Age of Gene Editing: How Novel Genetic Technologies Challenge Parental Responsibility.” It comes after international uproar followed the recent birth of the first babies created from embryos whose genomes had been edited with a breakthrough technology. The prospect of using gene editing to change ourselves, our children, and their offspring raises a host of ethical questions.

Johnston is co-editor with Hastings research scholar Erik Parens of  a new book, Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing, which addresses some of these questions.

The “Ethics of Technology” series is sponsored by the Roger Mudd Center for Ethics at Washington & Lee, which was established in 2010 through a gift from award-winning journalist Roger Mudd, a graduate of the university. Previous Mudd Distinguished Lecturers have included Kwame Anthony Appiah, of NYU, who writes “The Ethicist” column for the New York Times, and Tariq Ramadan, of Oxford University.

The lecture series is free and open to the public. Learn more or register here. Watch the livestream here.