Tag Archives: Elizabeth Koester

Toronto’s ArtSci Salon and The Mutant Project March 15, 2021

The Mutant Project is both a book (The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans) and an event about gene editing with special reference to the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) twins, Lulu and Nana. The event is being held by Toronto’s ArtSci Salon. Here’s more from their March 3, 2021 announcement (received via email),

The Mutant Project

A talk and discussion with Eben Kirksey

Discussants:

Dr. Elizabeth Koester, Postdoctoral fellow, Department of History, UofT [University of Toronto]

Vincent Auffrey, PhD student, IHPST [Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology], UofT

Fan Zhang, PhD student, IHPST, UofT

This event will be streamed on Zoom and on Youtube

Here is the link to register to Zoom on the 15th:

https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/registe/tZErcemoqzwrG9foNF5Ud86uJXdNeIzQSfDw

Event on FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/4033393163381012/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEFfj3Ovsfk&feature=youtu.be

At a conference in Hong Kong in November 2018, Dr. He Jiankui announced that he had created the first genetically modified babies—twin girls named Lulu and Nana—sending shockwaves around the world. A year later, a Chinese court sentenced Dr. He to three years in prison for “illegal medical practice.”

As scientists elsewhere start to catch up with China’s vast genetic research program, gene editing is fueling an innovation economy that threatens to widen racial and economic inequality. Fundamental questions about science, health, and social justice are at stake: Who gets access to gene editing technologies? As countries loosen regulations around the globe, from the U.S. to Indonesia, can we shape research agendas to promote an ethical and fair society?

Join us to welcome Dr. Kirksey, who will discuss key topics from his book “The Mutant Project”.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A

EBEN KIRKSEY is an American anthropologist who finished his latest book as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He has been published in Wired, The Atlantic, The Guardian and The Sunday Times. He is sought out as an expert on science in society by the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Democracy Now, Time and the BBC, among other media outlets. He speaks widely at the world’s leading academic institutions including Oxford, Yale, Columbia, UCLA, and the International Summit of Human Genome Editing, plus music festivals, art exhibits, and community events. Professor Kirksey holds a long-term position at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. For more information, please visit https://eben-kirksey.space/.

Elizabeth Koester currently holds a SSHRC [Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada] Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. After practising law for many years, she undertook graduate studies in the history of medicine at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of
Science and Technology at the University of Toronto and was awarded a PhD in 2018. A book based on her dissertation, In the Public Good: Eugenics and Law in Ontario, will be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press and is anticipated for Fall 2021.

Vincent Auffrey is pursuing his PhD at the Institute for the History of Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) at the University of Toronto. His focus is set primarily on the social history of medicine and the history of eugenics in Canada. Secondary interests include the histories of scientific racism and of anatomy, and the interplay between knowledge and power.

Fan Zhang is a PhD student at the History of Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) at the University of Toronto

Kirksey’s eponymous website,