The Genetic Prism: Understanding Health and Responsibility

This project is designed to support a conference on the implications for our understanding of health and moral responsibility of the Genome Project. The purpose of the conference will be to better anticipate the cultural impact that knowledge generated by the Genome Project will have on society. The conference will be held on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley in March or April of 1991. It will draw together speakers from the fields of medicine and genetics, philosophy, history, and the social sciences. The four major themes of the conference will encompass: cultural understandings of diseases and illness, moral responsibility, the political implications of genetic classifications, and the moral imperative to seek a cure for disease in general and genetic disease in particular. The program will be open to the public but will particularly be aimed at the researchers and others involved in the Genome Project in Northern California and the Bay Area. A conference report designed for wide circulation will help to assure wide distribution of the conference results. Conference date: April 8-9, 1991, Berkeley, California