Big Think Interview with Lee Silver | Big Think

Big Think Interview with Lee Silver

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A conversation with the Professor of Molecular Biology and Public Policy at Princeton University.

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Lee Silver:

Dr. Lee M. Silver is a professor at Princeton University in the Department of Molecular Biology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He also has joint appointments in the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy, the Center for Health and Wellbeing, the Office of Population Research, and the Princeton Environmental Institute, all at Princeton University. In 1973, he received a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1978, he received a doctorate in biophysics from Harvard University. Before arriving at Princeton in 1984, he trained at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Cancer and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which was directed by Nobel Laureate James D. Watson.

Dr. Silver's newest book is Challenging Nature: The clash of science and spirituality at the new frontiers of life. His previous book is Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family, published in 16 languages. Silver is also the coauthor of an undergraduate textbook in genetics, the single author of Mouse Genetics, a textbook for professionals, and editor of Teratocarcinoma Stem Cells published in 1983.

In 1993, Professor Silver was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 1995, he received an unsolicited 10 year National Institutes of Health MERIT award. He has published over 180 scientific articles in the fields of genetics, evolution, reproduction, embryology, computer modeling, and behavioral science, and other scholarly papers on topics at the interface between biotechnology, law, ethics, and religion. He has been elected to the governing boards of the Genetics Society of America and the International Mammalian Genome Society. He was a member of the New Jersey Bioethics Commission Task Force formed to recommend reproductive policy for the New Jersey State Legislature, and has testified on reproductive and genetic technologies before U.S. Congressional and New York State Senate committees. He has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, the Jim Lehrer PBS News Hour, Nova, ABC Nightline, The ABC World Report with Peter Jennings, the Charlie Rose Show, 20/20, 60 Minutes, and many others in the U.S. and other countries.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What distinguishes biotechnology from other scientific pursuits?

Lee Silver: The idea of biotechnology has overlapped with other scientific pursuits but has a very specific difference in that biotechnology is the control, or manipulation of living things and feelings that we have, or that some people have about living things, and whether or not we should be disturbing them causes a lot of reaction against biotechnology. It’s the kind of reaction that you don’t have in the field of electronics or any of the other sciences. Biotechnologists, as a whole I would say, have groups of technologies that take advantage of living things, that control the output of living things, or that manipulate their genes in some way.

Question: Are there ethical considerations specific to the field?

Lee Silver: There are two main issues that are specific to biotechnology, and they have to do with whether we are experimenting or manipulating human beings, and then that comes to a question of; is that ethical? We have a set of ethics as a society in how we deal with human beings. The big issue is not whether human beings have rights and that we shouldn’t be hurting human beings or experimenting with human beings without their permission, the big question there is; what is a human being? That’s where the dispute is. Is a single cell embryo a human being, in which case it deserves protection, or is it just a single cell? Certainly, when the embryo develops into a fetus, [and] it becomes more complicated as the fetus develops into a baby.

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