Friday, April 18, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101 (flyer)

On Friday, April 18 at 1:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Kim TallBear, Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society.

From Feminist Science Studies to Native-Led Science for Land and Life

Indigenous peoples are often at the receiving end of the colonial gaze, including that of scientific researchers whose work has served US and Canadian national development. Kim TallBear is best known for her anthropological study of colonial narratives such as that of the “Vanishing Indian” that animate human population genetics research. Over the past fifteen years, she has worked with scientists and social scientists to channel feminist and Indigenous analyses of science into training Indigenous scientists in critical approaches to genomics. The resulting program, Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics (SING), goes beyond critique to transform science to support Indigenous governance and life. SING Canada, founded in 2018, surpasses diversity and inclusion, and reaches toward decolonization by helping develop critical Indigenous genomics to support Indigenous governance and land back projects. This talk touches on both the disciplinary/theoretical underpinnings and programmatic details of such training.

Kim TallBear, Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society

Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Dr. TallBear is a regular panelist on the Media Indigena podcast and a regular media commentator on topics including Indigenous peoples, science, and technology; self-indigenization in the US and Canada; and Indigenous sexualities. You can follow her Substack newsletter, Unsettle: Indigenous affairs, cultural politics & (de)colonization at https://kimtallbear.substack.com.

Co-hosted by the UCSC Department of Biomolecular Engineering, the Genomics Institute, and the Science & Justice Research Center.

Friday, April 11, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

VIRTUAL (flyer)

On Friday, April 11 at 1:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Christof Koch.

A zoom option or recording may be available for members of the campus community who cannot attend in person. Contact Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu) to request access.

Consciousness and its Place in Nature

Any scientific theory of consciousness, here meant as any experience – feeling-like-something, seeing, smelling, thinking, fearing, dreaming – needs to not only explain the relationship between experience and its substrate, the neural correlate of consciousness, but also why different experiences feel the way they do – why space feels spatially extended, why time flows and why colors feel different from an infected tooth or the taste of Nutella. Most contemporary theories of consciousness are based on computational functionalism. Integrated Information Theory takes a purely operational approach rooted in causal power. IIT argues that the neuronal correlates of consciousness, the maximum of intrinsic cause-effect power, are the posterior hot zone, and that certain types of meditative or psychedelic experiences may go together with a “silent” cortex. I will discuss clinical progress achieved in locating the footprints of such experiences to the posterior part of the cerebral cortex and in reliably detecting the presence of covert consciousness in patients with Disorder of Consciousness.

Christof Koch, PhD, Meritorious Investigator, Allen Institute, Seattle, Chief Scientist, Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, Santa Monica

Christof Koch PhD, is a neuroscientist best known for his studies and writings exploring the basis of consciousness, starting with the molecular biologist Francis Crick. Trained as a physicist, Christof was for 27 years a professor of biology and engineering at the California Institute of Technology. In 2011, he joined the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle as their Chief Scientist, becoming the President in 2015. He is now Meritorious Investigator at the Allen Institute and the Chief Scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, with its focus on understanding consciousness, and how this knowledge can benefit humanity. His latest book is Then I am myself the world.

Co-hosted by the UCSC Department of Biomolecular Engineering, the Genomics Institute, and the Science & Justice Research Center.

Monday, April 07, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101 (flyer)

On Friday, May 02 at 1:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Kyle Robertson.

A zoom option or recording may be available for members of the campus community who cannot attend in person. Contact Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu) to request access.

Artificial Intelligence and the Criminal Justice System

Predictive algorithms are not just helping us write text (like this abstract), they are becoming part of the criminal justice system. Police departments use them to help with decisions, and courts use them to suggest bail options and amounts. In the future, trials and sentencing may also rely on these technologies. These developments raise important ethical questions about human freedom and causation. In this talk, I will focus on two questions: (1) What moral obligation do we have to use predictive algorithms to prevent crime? (2) How can we reconcile ideas of free will and blameworthiness with the apparent predictability of human behavior?

Kyle Robertson, Lecturer of Philosophy, Assistant Director, Center for Public Philosophy, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Kyle Robertson is Lecturer of Philosophy, Assistant Director, Center for Public Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Co-hosted by the UCSC Department of Biomolecular Engineering, the Genomics Institute, and the Science & Justice Research Center.

Friday, April 04, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101 (flyer)

On Friday, April 04 at 1:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Jonathan LoTempio on the foundational aspects of bioethics as it developed in the last 80 years.

A zoom option or recording may be available for members of the campus community who cannot attend in person. Contact Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu) to request access.

Nuremberg moments: bioethics pasts and futures

Bioethics as we understand it today is a product of the rules-based international order. It is a unique field of study because it has been sanctioned or supported at the highest level of government, rather than devolved to specialist agencies. However, this position is changing, offering time for stock-taking and consideration of new futures. In this seminar, we will discuss some pre-World War II antecedents of 20th-century bioethics, the bioethical wilderness from the War and Nuremberg up until the Belmont Report, and the Commission Era from 1974-2016. With this foundation, we will consider the futures of bioethics, public health ethics, and data ethics in light of our newly fractured rules-based order.

Dr. Jonathan LoTiempo Jr, Fellow in Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Genetics and Genomics at Penn Medical Ethics & Health Policy.

Dr. Jonathan LoTempio Jr. is a globally engaged researcher working at the intersection of genomics, bioethics, and international policy. As a postdoctoral fellow in bioethics and human data at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, he studies the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging genomic technologies within an international framework.

LoTempio’s contributions to the field span bioinformatics, science diplomacy, global health, and bioethics initiatives. During his doctoral work, he expanded an extant medical collaboration between researchers in Washington, DC and Kinshasa, DR Congo to include reference genomics projects to enhance diagnostic rates for rare and inherited conditions in sub–Saharan Africa. As a Fulbright Schuman Fellow, he conducted research at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, Austria, and United Nations University-CRIS in Bruges, Belgium, where he examined the role of science and technology in international governance with a focus on data sharing. He spent the summer after his Fulbright doing archival research at the UN Office at Geneva in search of the postwar antecedents of open science. Woven through each of these has been a commitment to enhancing ethical research and fundamental study of bioethics.

He has been funded by the US National Institutes of Health, the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the US Department of State and the EU Directorate General for Education and Culture through the Belgium-Luxembourg Fulbright Commission, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, San Francisco, California, the Clark Family Foundation of Bethesda, Maryland, and the Cosmos Club of Washington, DC.

He holds a BS in biochemistry (University of Rochester) and a PhD in genomics and bioinformatics (George Washington University). Before his academic career, he spent three years working in program management and policy evaluation at the US National Institutes of Health and the Obama White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Readings

1. Nuremberg Doctor’s Trial PDF (get from instructor)
   1. Section: Judgment – Permissible Medical Experiments (pages 11-14 only, charges on pages 6-11 may be disturbing but instructive)
2. Obama’s apology to the Guatemalan president 
   1. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2010/10/01/read-out-presidents-call-with-guatemalan-president-colom

Required papers:

1. The Nuremberg Code at 70 (free online): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2649074
2. Public Health Ethics: mapping the terrain (attached): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-law-medicine-and-ethics/article/abs/public-health-ethics-mapping-the-terrain/415AE80C221FD84CDF5067898F7F7425
   

1. Wikipedia on the rules-based order:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order
2. Marshall Plan speech at Harvard, 1947: https://www.oecd.org/en/about/history/the-marshall-plan-speech-at-harvard-university-5-june-1947.html
3. Elenor Roosevelt speech on the struggle for human rights at Sorbonne, 1948: https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/struggle-human-rights-1948
4. Nature article, “Overcoming challenges associated with broad sharing of human genomic data,” bibliography is very good for genomics / data / engineers.

Co-hosted by the UCSC Department of Biomolecular Engineering, the Genomics Institute, and the Science & Justice Research Center.