Roundtable on the "Impact of Genome Editing on our Health and Environment"

The second roundtable on the Ethics of Genome Editing, entitled "Impact of Genome Editing on our Health and Environment", is part of a series of events organized by UNESCO since 2018, with the financial support of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. The roundtable will be held from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris (Room II) on 2 December 2019.

The aim of this second roundtable on the ethics of genome editing is to raise awareness and sensitize policy-makers, researchers and the general public to the recent developments in the field of gene editing and on the ethical challenges raised in areas of research and application.

Can genome editing cure our diseases or make our babies more intelligent? Can we modify a human embryo? Could genome editing be used to preserve endangered species or to eliminate malaria? What could therefore be the impact of genome edited insects, plants and animals on our ecosystems?

The application of these new genome editing techniques raises a number of ethical concerns, from safety, justice and equity issues to impacts on future generations and the environment. This is all the more important as the power of these techniques to edit targeted genes with greater certainty and speed has allowed the scope and scale of their application to be rapidly expanded.

By bringing together eminent experts in the fields of science, law, medicine, biotechnology, ethics and philosophy, this roundtable aims to foster multidisciplinary discussions and reflections on the latest developments and on the ethical implications of genome editing in order to raise awareness and sensitize policy-makers, researchers and the general public on these issues.

The discussion will be moderated by Professor Hervé Chneiweiss, Director of the Research Center Neuroscience Paris Seine-IBPS and Chairperson of the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO (IBC).

Speakers:
Sarah Chan (United Kingdom), Chancellor’s Fellow at the Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics, University of Edinburgh

Kazuto Kato (Japan), Professor, Department of Biomedical Ethics and Public Policy, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University
Francine Ntoumi (Republic of Congo), Founder, Chairperson and Director General of the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research

Nicolas Rode (France), Researcher at the Biological Centre for Population Management (CBGP), French National Institute for Agriculture Research (INRA)

This event is open to the public.

A live webcast transmission will be available:
English - http://webcast.unesco.org/live/room-02/en
French - http://webcast.unesco.org/live/room-02/fr