Today@Dal

Moderator: Andrew Fenton (Research Associate, Novel Tech Ethics, Faculty of Medicine & Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Dalhousie University)

Panelists:
Graham Dallaire (Director of Research & Professor, Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University) studies how the cell repairs DNA damage and how cancer’s develop resistance to radiation and chemotherapy treatment. He obtained his Ph.D. in Experimental Medicine from McGill University in the field of genetic engineering and DNA recombination, and completed postdoctoral training at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh Scotland, and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario. Funded by the CIHR, Dr. Dellaire's laboratory recently developed a novel test for measuring the efficiency of CRISPR-based gene editing in living cells, and continues to use CRISPR to develop new treatments for cancer and chronic viral infections.

Josephine Johnson is Director of Research and Research Scholar at The Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York. She works on a range of ethical, legal, and policy issues in science and medicine. Her current projects address the ethical implications of new kinds of prenatal genetic tests, the relationship between gene editing technologies and understandings of human flourishing, and, with colleagues at University of California, San Francisco, the potential use of genetic sequencing technology in newborns. She is also a member of Columbia University Medical Center’s Center for Excellence in Ethical, Legal and Social Implications looking at psychiatric, neurologic and behavioral genetics. Josephine is also developing a bioethics research program for high school students.