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Whether you’re excited by its possibilities or worried about its potential consequences, large-scale human genome editing appears to be just around the corner thanks to CRISPR – a new gene editing tool unmatched in its revolutionary capabilities and efficiency. So how can we possibly prepare for its ethical implications? In this Parlor Chat, New York Times science journalist Carl Zimmer and Yale University science historian Daniel Kevles discuss how the history of science and regulation might – or might not – be our guide for avoiding social and ethical catastrophe.
Video by Parlor Chats
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Metaphysics
Bertrand Russell wanted to kill off causation. Can contemporary philosophy rescue it?
8 minutes
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Ethics
How many monkeys is it worth sacrificing to save a human life?
6 minutes
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History of science
Bat-people on the Moon – what a famed 1835 hoax reveals about misinformation today
8 minutes
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Human rights and justice
Thirty years after one teenager shot another, is it time to forgive?
28 minutes
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Biotechnology
What it’s like to wear a prosthetic that ‘feels’
6 minutes
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Chemistry
A square inch in a Petri dish becomes a grand stage for chemical transformations
4 minutes
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Medicine
What is it like to be a paramedic, navigating human emergency?
17 minutes
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Physics
The tangled tale of how physicists built a groundbreaking wormhole in a lab
17 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
Teaching an AI to beat video games still takes human imagination
5 minutes