The Lutheran Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology is hosting a two-part public lecture on Friday, April 28 at the Lutheran Center in Chicago, “Being the Church in the Age of Biological Manipulation.”
The lectures are part of the 2017 meeting of the Ecumenical Roundtable for Science, Technology and the Church held on April 27-29 at the Lutheran Center. Held at 7:30pm in the Augsburg Room, interested attendees are asked to RSVP the Alliance by emailing Heather Dean (heather.dean@elca.org).
CRISPR is a precise genome-editing technology which can be viewed as a pair of molecular “scissors” guided by a “GPS” to precise locations on a DNA strand. Dr. Gayle Woloschak, professor of Radiation Oncology at Northwestern University in Chicago and adjunct professor of religion and science at the Lutheran School of Theology Chicago (LSTC) and at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, will give an overview of the technology and why it is important. Meanwhile Barbara Rossing, professor of New Testament at LSTC, will present a lecture on “Christ the Healer and the Age of Biological Manipulation.”
In June 2016, an advisory panel from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) approved a proposal from the University of Pennsylvania to use the CRISPR technique in humans to tackle three different kinds of cancer. Researchers there expect the small clinical trial to begin in 2017. In October 2016, the CRISPR technique was first used on a human subject, when Chinese scientists delivered CRISPR-modified cells into a patient with aggressive lung cancer as part of a clinical trial.
Click here for more information on the lectures.
