Bioethics Tracks

Listen at: soundcloud.com/hijosdesimon

[bioethicstracks]

TRACK (0:39'')

While I'm in mode work in progress… It's worth it to open the lucid essay The Monster’s Human Nature by the archeologist Stephen Jay Gould about Frankenstein misconceptions. Gould wrote Shelley’s Frankenstein is “neither a diatribe on the dangers of technology nor a warning about overextended ambitions against a natural order” To him Hollywood knows only one theme in making monster movies: “human technology may not go beyond an intended order decreed by God or set by nature’s laws”. The two clips I chose belong to Frankenstein (1931) and Young Frankenstein (1974), true Hollywood prototypical of the most famous monster of all time. Of course a nod to mr. Gould.

[bioethicstracks]

Full Track (3'22''):

Sometimes I feel biotechnology like "something" far away from the human being. Yes, a science of the life without the real life. It sound weird, It isn't? Wherefore I choosed the testimony of Carmen Quijada Luque, a spanish woman who suffers a genetic illnes calls lupus erythematosus. Her story brings to me a shot of reality about how the biotecnological advances could help people diagnostiqued with the called "rare diseases". I confess that the first time I heard the medical name rare diseases I felt like if it has been taken from a fictional novel. Thanks Carmen to show me that rare diseases are not a fictional euphemism.

You can listen to the whole interview audio at IAVANTE TV.

[bioethicstracks]

FULL Track (4'36''):

I extracted an excerpt of Lluis Montoliu voice explaining that in the scientific scene a transgenic organism its not considered the same of a edited one. Montolius works with the material of life been one of the biologist in charge in the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología of Spain. Thus he has worked throughout his professional life, since 1986, with genetically modified organisms and his voice is often heard inside bioethics spaniards circles. In fact his book Editando genes: corta, pega y colorea maybe is right now the spreader divulgation spanish text in CRISPR theme. I took this audio record about trangenics and gene editing from his conference "Crispr para todos" delivered in the Antama Foundation. So, I imagined how I could tell someone the expectations of the scientific community regarding the great quantum leap made by new gene editing tools.

All the rights of the original speech belong to Antama Foundation. It can be visited at https://youtu.be/C8IvMaScq4o For the videoclip I used a Drosophila suzukii imagen from the Invasive Species Compendium Cabi.org.

[bioethicstracks]

FULL TRACK (3'05''):

ATCG is the acronym for life. Everything is exquisitely written in the language of adenosine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine, so the modern "transcriptionists" of this sophisticated code are the new "literate" technicians in gene editing. CRISPR specialist Jennifer Doudna answers "gene editing" to science communicator Sid Mukherjee, who asks her how she feels about the words she uses to name her lab work.

The conversation belong to the Innovative Genomics Institute and the animated 3D protein structure model I used comes from AlphaFold Protein Structure Database. This track can be distributed with License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC.

[bioethicstracks]

Listen to FULL TRACK (1'58'') at:

I wonder how many of us really know about the huge challenges that the biotechnology innovations are demanding to our society at the moment, right now. Do we know that we could... or actually... we should decide if we want (and how we want) the new technologies of the life enter into our lives? Our civilization don't know yet how make agree. But we must to start to do it. In this clip you will listen to Michael Sandel, a justice philosopher legendary in Harvard University. His critical perspective reminds us that technology itself is neither a blessing nor a curse. We have to decide.

Errata: The first version of the track was released with the human error of an extra letter "d" at the end of the word "deliberate". I have left it as it originally came out because not even the human genetic code is always transcribed perfectly.

The declaration form part of one of the episodes of the Dutch science TV programme De Volmaakte Mens (The Perfect Human Being) All interview copyrights reserved to De Volmaakte Mens. I inspired in the Echinaster brasiliensis embryo of Alvaro Migotto for making the videoclip.

[bioethicstracks]

More Bioethics Sounds:

Where did the primordial soup sprout? The hypothetical broth from emerged the life. We speculate yet about where everything began although we already know how to edit our genetic code with a simple home kit. In a figurative way the biotechnology, like a fact, began in the same instant when the first eukaryotic cell achieved divided itself without human help neither human precepts. Life came to life. And the science acts and thoughts came later. The voices of boths inspire me deeply: those from the biotechnology protagonists and those from the bioethical thinkers about that biotechnologies.

Voice clip taken from Nobel Lecture: Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 for her research about CRISPR-CAS9 gene-editing system. Conference credits belong to the Nobel Prize Organization.