#72 - Should humans be modified? How about plants or animals? The Environment? Q&A on bioethics

Molecular Podcasting with Darren Lipomi

This is an unusual episode for me. Rather than responding to questions about graduate school, in this video, I responded to an interviewer performing an ethnographic survey about how researchers in bioengineering and bioengineering-adjacent fields view certain controversial subjects like human modification. 0:50 Would you be in favor of a prenatal treatment such that it would be possible for children to live 200 years? 2:04 What if we could guarantee no inequities, and anyone that would want it could allow their children to live 200 years? 2:36 Why wouldn’t you want to live 200 years? 3:03 Would you accept an intervention that would increase your cognitive capacities permanently? 5:16 Do you think all technological advancements improve society? 6:43 What would you change to improve society and human well being if not advance technology? 7:12 What are the barriers to technological interventions to societal problems? 8:10 What would you change about the human body if you could? 9:31 How do you respond to the idea that humans should live forever? 10:51 How about the idea that it is humanity’s destiny to take control over its own biology? 11:40 What do you regard as the appropriate relationship between humanity and the natural world? 12:35 Is it good that the human species is limited biologically? 14:03 Would you say that a human being is similar to a machine? 15:13 Do you think science should seek to understand everything? 16:02 Should humans be modifying nature? 16:50 Are there any biological species we should be modifying? 19:32 How does your work fit into the broader field of bioengineering?