‘Life Re-Engineered’

Our own Prof. John Rasko AO has delivered the ABC’s prestigious Boyer Lectures for 2018 – in which he explains something about the research we are doing into Cell and Gene Therapies.

He examines the social and moral impact of these revolutionary genetic and cell-based technologies on our lives and the power of gene therapy to cure disease, prolong life and change the course of human evolution.

This link will take you watch the lecture on ABC iView. Please come back soon!

“We stand at the start of a revolution that may alter the very fabric of our being and the essence of what it means to be human, Reproductive technologies and gene and cell-based technologies offer the possibility of prolonging life and curing disease – even controlling our evolution as a species.”

Professor John Rasko AO

1. Back to the Future of Eugenics

by Prof John Rasko | Boyer Lecture 2018 No.1

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/back-to-the-future-of-eugenics/10338816

3. Sins of the Flesh

by Prof John Rasko | Boyer Lecture 2018 No.3

2. Gene Genie

by Prof John Rasko | Boyer Lecture 2018 No.2

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/gene-genie/10338954

4. Life Immortal

by Prof John Rasko | Boyer Lecture 2018 No.4

Across this series of four outstanding lectures, Professor Rasko explores issues such as:

How advances in biomedicine, such as prenatal testing and gene therapy, have revived the debate around eugenics – a concept poisoned by its association with the Nazis. How gene therapies will not only enable us to cure inheritable diseases but to re-engineer ourselves at the most basic level. Why stem cell research has had such a scandal-prone history, promising the dawn of regenerative medicine but delivering few therapeutic wonders. And whether having the power to re-engineer life gives us the right to do so — a question Mary Shelley posed 200 years ago in her novel Frankenstein.