Date/Time
Tuesday
12 Apr 2016
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Location
470 Stephens Hall

Event Type
Film

Please join us April 12, 2016 on the UC Berkeley campus for the last film event of the Being Human in the Biotech Age 2015/ 2016 series the  documentary DNA Dreams directed by Bregtje van der Haak.

What if we could identify the genes that contain information about human intelligence? Would a brave new world of improved human beings be waiting for us? This new world is now in the making in China’s Pearl River Delta. The documentary DNA Dreams delves into the heart of bio-science in China, exploring the lifestyles and beliefs of a new generation of young scientists in Shenzhen.

The screening  will take place at 4pm on Tuesday, April 12th at 470 Stephens Hall. After the film, at 5:00pm, there will be a panel discussion with Troy Duster and Terry Johnson. Mark your calendars!

Troy Duster, Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus of Sociology at UC Berkeley, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at New York University, and former President of the American Sociological Association. His vast collection of publications include the book Backdoor to Eugenics, “Lessons from History: Why Race and Ethnicity Have Played A Major Role in Biomedical Research,” and White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society, which he co-authored. In 2014, CGS and co-sponsors honored Troy’s canon of influential scholarship with the day-long event Celebrating Troy Duster. Terry Johnson, Associate Teaching Professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley, holds a master’s in chemical engineering from MIT. In 2010 he received the Golden Apple Award for Outstanding Teaching, and was one of the recipients of Berkeley’s 2013 Distinguished Teaching Awards. He is also co-author of the popular science book How to Defeat Your Own Clone (and other tips for surviving the biotech revolution). You can follow Terry on Twitter at @TerryDJohnson.

About the Film Series:

With powerful new biotechnologies now emerging, the prospect of creating humans with “better” genetic characteristics is on the horizon. Some support these technologies as a way to “seize control of human evolution” or as an efficient means of producing “enhanced” children and future generations. Others believe that they would encourage efforts to engineer children to specification, and that creating genetically modified humans would open the door to new forms of inequality, discrimination and conflict. This film series explores what it means to be human in a biotech age. All films will be screened on Tuesdays at 4:00 pm at 470 Stephens Hall – UC Berkeley. The series website provides the schedule for 2015/2016.

This event is sponsored by Gender and Women’s Studies (Chau Hoi Shuen Gender and Science Initiative), Center for Genetics and Society, and CSTMS.  Additional sponsorship comes from:  Department of Sociology • Disability Studies • The Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society • Townsend Center for the Humanities