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Air Dates: January 6-12, 2020

The genetics revolution is already reshaping healthcare—and most people see in it the potential for healthier children, healthier adults, and less disease.  Dr. Jamie Metzl argues that the same technology making progress possible has the potential to saddle the world with a complex array of thorny ethical questions that will affect everything from human sexual reproduction to national security.

Metzl is a technology and healthcare futurist, geopolitical expert, novelist, entrepreneur, media commentator, and Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council.  He was appointed to the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on developing global standards for the governance and oversight of human genome editing in 2019.  He currently serves on the Advisory Council to Walmart’s Future of Retail Policy Lab and is a faculty member for Singularity University’s Exponential Medicine conference.  Metzl previously served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations in Cambodia.  He has also served as an election monitor in Afghanistan and the Philippines, advised the government of North Korea on the establishment of Special Economic Zones, and is the Honorary Ambassador to North America of the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy.  Metzl appears regularly on national and international media discussing Asian economic and political issues and his syndicated columns and other writing on Asian affairs, genetics, virtual reality, and other topics are featured regularly in publications around the world.  His most recent book is “Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity.”

On this week’s episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Metzl emphasizes the need for guidelines that will govern human ability to manipulate the genome.  He says the “challenge of this moment” is to find a way to use “our values greatest ethical traditions to guide the application of our most powerful [genetic] technologies.”

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. An audio version of the program airs 8:30 a.m. & 6:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 4:30 a.m. & 11:30 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a partnership between the Pell Center and The Providence Journal. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.