Avalon Theatre Washington, DC
Dr. Cynthia Dunbar
Vice President – American Society of Hematology
moderated byJason Dick
Editor-in-Chief of CQ Roll Call, host of its Political Theater podcast
Human Nature— The gene editing revolution: science, fact and forward
Program Description
Dr. Cynthia Dunbar, Vice President of the American Society of Hematology, and series host Jason Dick, Editor-in-Chief of Roll Call, discuss the scientific detective story that resulted in the development of CRISPR gene therapy, the fallout over the technology’s rapid development, and the ethics of gene editing, including Dr. Dunbar’s first-hand experience with principals in the film and participation in some of the events portrayed.
Presented At
Avalon Theatre Washington, DC
Film Synopsis
CRISPR gene-editing technology opens the door to correcting, even designing, DNA. But should we walk through it?
From executive producer Dan Rather and director Adam Bolt, the co-writer and editor of the Oscar-winning film Inside Job, comes the story of the biggest tech revolution of the 21st Century. And it isn’t digital, it’s biological.
A breakthrough called CRISPR has given us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing diseases, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children. Human Nature is a provocative exploration of CRISPR’s far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it, the families it’s affecting, and the bioengineers who are testing its limits. How will this new power change our relationship with nature? What will it mean for human evolution? To begin to answer these questions we must look back billions of years and peer into an uncertain future.
About the Speaker
Dr. Dunbar has pursued a career encompassing clinical investigation, and translational laboratory science. She has been a leader in optimizing and assessing the potential of CRISPR/Cas gene editing approaches to modify hematopoietic stem cells. She has also designed and led landmark clinical trials in bone marrow failure diseases, resulting in regulatory Food and Drug Administration approval for the first new drug treatment for aplastic anemia in over thirty years. She has published over 310 articles in peer-reviewed journals, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and served as Editor-in-Chief of Blood, the premier hematology journal worldwide, the first woman to serve in this position. She is the current Vice President of the American Society of Hematology and past President of the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy. She is also an NIH Distinguished Investigator, and Chief, Translational Stem Cell Biology Branch, at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.
Jason Dick, Series Host, is the editor-in-chief of CQ Roll Call and the host of its Political Theater podcast. He has also worked at National Journal and for the AmeriCorps program, and is a former English teacher at the university and high school levels. A one-time screener for the SXSW Film Festival, he is a native of Arizona and lives on Capitol Hill.