June 20, 2023 | Incorporating Indigenous Ethics and World Views in STEM Education

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

10:00-11:00 AM

PSB-240 + Zoom Registration (PDF poster)

Globally, the value of indigenous knowledge and world views are increasingly being recognised, as the limitations of ‘Western’ science are being realised. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, mātauranga Māori – the traditional knowledge system of indigenous Māori peoples – and associated tikanga Māori (ethics), is being incorporated into undergraduate and graduate degree programmes at the University of Otago such as Genetics, Agricultural Innovation, Statistics, Data Science and Bioethics. This is being driven by a range of factors including renaissance of Māori culture, tribally-based litigation settlements with the NZ government of historical grievances arising from colonisation, a steadily growing Māori population, more inclusive research policies aimed at reducing health and socio-economic inequities, as well as a growing Māori economic asset base – primarily in primary and tourism sectors – estimated to be $NZ 50-70 Billion.

In this seminar I will provide an overview of the content I (co)teach in the aforementioned degree programmes, along with learning outcomes associated with individual courses and the requisite graduate competencies in their respective degree programmes. I will also provide descriptions of teaching techniques such as ‘flipped classes’ where students are asked to evaluate research proposals from the perspectives of indigenous communities using knowledge of tikanga Māori, along with previously published guidelines for appropriate engagement with Māori communities. Although this content has only been introduced over the past 3-4 years, we expect graduates will not only be better equipped to interact with indigenous communities, they will also have a more holistic understanding of the broader issues associated with the scientific knowledge and skills they have acquired.

Dr Phillip Wilcox Māori tribal affiliations are Ngāti Rakaipaaka, Te Aitanga a Mahaki, Ngāti Kahungunu ki te Wairoa, and Rongomaiwahine. He is an Associate Professor in the University of Otago’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, with experience in applied genomics and statistical genetics. He is also an Affiliate of the University of Otago’s Bioethics Centre and is the current convenor of MapNet, a NZ-wide collective of gene mapping scientists, and led the Virtual Institute for Statistical Genetics from 2008 to 2013.

For almost 20 years, Wilcox has worked in the interface of genetic sciences and te ao Māori (the Māori world), and co-leads two genomics-based projects focussing on Māori health. He also spent almost 10 years as technical advisor to his iwi, Ngāti Rakaipaaka, regarding the Rakaipaaka Health and Ancestry Study. A/Prof Wilcox has also worked on genetics of plant species (particularly forest trees) and human diseases. He teaches tikanga (Māori bioethics)-based frameworks in science courses at both graduate and undergraduate levels, as well as statistics and quantitative genetics, and teaches genetics-related content to pre-NCEA high school students in marae-based learning environments in the University of Otago’s Science Wānanga initiative. He co-initiated the Summer Internship of iNdigenous peoples in Genomics (SING) Aotearoa, and until recently was a member of the Health Research Council of New Zealand’s Ethics Committee which oversees all of NZ’s institutional and regional ethics committees.

Co-sponsored by The Genomics Institute and Baskin Engineering.

June 07, 2023 | BME80G Series: Susan Reverby on “Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and it’s Legacy”

Wednesday, June 07, 2023

5:20 – 7:00 pm 

Classroom Unit 2 (map) or Zoom (registration TBD)

On Wednesday, June 07 at 5:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Susan Reverby on “Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and it’s Legacy” – a panel discussion will follow.

A zoom option is available for members of the campus community who cannot attend in person. Register for the Zoom link here (TBD).

Susan M. Reverby is Marion Butler McLean Professor Emerita in the History of Ideas; Professor Emerita of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Reverby is a historian of American health care, women, race, and public health with a focus on equality and ethics.

June 05, 2023 | BME80G Series: Alexandra Minna Stern on “Eugenics, State Harm, and Reparations in California: An Unfinished History”

Monday, June 05, 2023

5:20 – 7:00 pm 

Classroom Unit 2 (map)

On Monday, June 05 at 5:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Alexandra Minna Stern on “Eugenics, State Harm, and Reparations in California: An Unfinished History.”

Alexandra Minna Stern is the Humanities Dean and Professor of English and History, and at the Institute for Society and Genetics, at the University of California, Los Angeles. Stern founded and co-directs the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab, an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research team that is reconstructing and analyzing the history of eugenics and sterilization in five U.S. states (Michigan, North Carolina, Iowa, Utah, and California).

May 31, 2023 | BME80G Series: Marcy Darnovsky on “Should We Genetically Modify Our Children?”

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

5:20 – 7:00 pm 

Zoom (registration)

On Wednesday, May 31 at 5:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Marcy Darnovsky on “Should We Genetically Modify Our Children?” – a panel discussion will follow.

Register for the Zoom link here.

Suggested Reading: Geneva Statement on Heritable Human Genome Editing: The Need for Course CorrectionTrends in Biotechnology, Volume 38, ISSUE 4, P351-354, April 2020.

Marcy Darnovsky, PhD, is Executive Director at the Center for Genetics and Society, a nonprofit organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area that works to bring perspectives grounded in social justice, human rights, and healthy equity to considerations of human genetic and assisted reproductive technologies. She speaks and writes widely on the societal implications of human biotechnologies. Her articles have appeared in scholarly and general-audience publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Nature, and Trends in Biotechnology; she is co-editor of Beyond Bioethics: Toward a New Biopolitics (with Osagie K. Obasogie, University of California Press). She has appeared on dozens of television, radio, and online news shows; and has been cited in hundreds of news and magazine articles. Her PhD is from the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

May 15, 2023 | BME80G Series: Hank Greely on “Weird Sh!t: Organoids, Chimeras, and Embryo Models”

Wednesday, May 15, 2023

5:20 – 7:00 pm 

Classroom Unit 2 (map)

On Monday, May 15 at 5:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Hank Greely on “Weird Sh!t: Organoids, Chimeras, and Embryo Models” – a panel discussion will follow.

Henry T. (Hank) Greely is Professor by courtesy of Genetics, Stanford School of Medicine; Director, Center for Law and the Biosciences; Director, Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society; and Chair, Steering Committee of the Center for Biomedical Ethics. Greely specializes in the ethical, legal, and social implications of new biomedical technologies, particularly those related to genetics, assisted reproduction, neuroscience, or stem cell research.

May 03, 2023 | BME80G Series: Victoria M. Massie on “Of Albert Perry: A Biomythography of Genetic African Origins”

Wednesday, May 03, 2023

5:20 – 7:00 pm 

Classroom Unit 2 (map)

On Wednesday, May 03 at 5:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Victoria M. Massie on “Of Albert Perry: A Biomythography of Genetic African Origins” – a panel discussion will follow.

More information to follow.

Victoria M. Massie (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Rice University, and a faculty affiliate in the Medical Humanities Program, the Center for African and African-American Studies, and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is broadly interested in the political economy of racialization through emerging biotechnologies that reconfigure the nature of belonging, citizenship, and life itself. Dr. Massie’s expertise sits at the intersection of feminist kinship studies, anthropology of racialization, black feminist bioethics, postcolonial and feminist science studies, vitalism, and biocapitalism, with an area focus on the United States and West/Central Africa. Her latest book project, Sovereignty in Return: The Gift of Genetic Reconnection in Cameroon, examines how the genetic Cameroonian diaspora emerges as speculative capital to facilitate new modes of postcolonial futurity following Cameroon’s 50th anniversary of independence. Dr. Massie received her Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology with a Designated Emphasis in Science and Technology Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. A Hurston/Wright Foundation Fellow, Dr. Massie draws on her experience as a nonfiction writer, poet, and former journalist to experiment with ethnographic form.

April 26, 2023 | BME80G Series: Benjamin Hale on “Clean Meat and Muddy Markets: Substitution and Indeterminacy in Consumerist Solutions to Animal Agriculture”

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

5:20 – 7:00 pm 

Classroom Unit 2 (map)

On Wednesday, April 26 at 5:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Benjamin Hale on “Clean Meat and Muddy Markets: Substitution and Indeterminacy in Consumerist Solutions to Animal Agriculture” – a panel discussion will follow.

The hope and promise of synthetic ‘cultured’ meat products is that they will serve as inexpensive substitute proteins that replace meats made by conventional animal agriculture. Where the ethical discussion concerning meat often centers on what is wrong with meat, we instead ask how consumer indifference and producer strategy might influence the uptake of clean meat in the economic market. Rather than approaching the problem in terms of substitution value, we approach the problem of substitution from the standpoint of reasons-for and reasons-against. Doing so, we suggest, exposes complications with “causal indeterminacy” that in turn implicate our thinking both about moral responsibility and the broader nature of technocratic solutions to environmental problems.

Benjamin Hale teaches environmental studies and philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  He works primarily in the area of environmental ethics and environmental policy, though his theoretical interests span much larger concerns in applied ethics, normative ethics, and even metaethics. As for applied questions, much of his recent work centers on ethical and environmental concerns presented by emerging technologies.

April 05, 2023 | BME80G Series: Joseph Graves on “Racism, Not Race: Answers to the most critical questions”

Wednesday, April 05, 2023

5:20 – 7:00 pm 

Zoom (registration)

Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions by Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Alan H. Goodman (Columbia University Press, 2023)

On Wednesday, April 05 at 5:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Dr. Joseph Graves on “Racism, Not Race: Answers to the most critical questions” – a panel discussion will follow.

Order a copy of Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions!

In advance of Grave’s lecture, the UCSC Genomics Institute’s Racial Justice Learning and Action Group will read Grave’s most recent book, Racism Not Race, Answers to Frequently Asked Questions. Anyone affiliated with UC Santa Cruz is welcome to attend. Click here to add the first meeting to your calendar (must be logged into your UCSC gmail account). The reading schedule is:

  • Wednesday, March 15: Discuss Preface, Introduction, and Chapters 1-3
  • Wednesday, March 22: Discuss Chapters 4-7
  • Wednesday, March 29: Discuss Chapters 8-11 and Conclusions

Contact Mary Goldman about the reading group.

Joseph L. Graves Jr. is a professor of biological science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and a former associate dean for research at the Joint School for Nanoscience and Nanoengineering. He has written extensively on genetics and race including Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (Columbia University Press, 2023).

February 23, 2022 | Global divisions of health: bioethical principles, practices and regulations on human genome editing in Latin America

Wednesday, February 23, 2022

4:00-5:30 PM

Zoom Registration

Join SJRC scholars for an open discussion of works-in-progress! This is a wonderful chance to engage with one another’s ideas, and support our own internal work.

At this session, we will hear from one of our visiting scholars, Abril Saldaña-Tejeda in a talk titled, “Global divisions of health; bioethical principles, practices and regulations on human genome editing in Latin America.”

This project asks how scientific and non-scientific communities of knowledge production in Latin America have historically perceived ethical concerns regarding human genome editing and other reproductive technologies (MSRTs). The project explores how current frameworks, concerns and discourses in the United States and Europe engage with (or contradict) those in Latin America. Through a series of seminars, workshops and regional meetings /in-depth interviews with some key stakeholders (geneticists, legislators, academics), the project explores the implications of a geographical and discursive distance between those places where bioethical frameworks are produced (global north) and those where the actual practice of human genome editing (research and trials) could be potentially happening.

Abril Saldaña-Tejeda is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico, and focuses on the social determinants of health, genomics and postgenomics. She is currently exploring bioethical principles, practices and regulations on human genome editing and stem cell research in Latin America.