Woods Lectures Begin Sept. 6 with Bioethicist Gregory Pence
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Butler University’s fall 2012 J. James Woods Lectures on the Sciences and Mathematics begin at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 6 with bioethicist Gregory Pence.
All talks in the series begin at 7:30 p.m. and take place in the Atherton Union Reilly Room. They are free and open to the public without tickets. For more information, call (317) 940-9269.
Pence will be followed by Indianapolis Prize winner Steven Amstrup (Oct. 1) and Ronald Mallett discussing time travel (Nov. 1).
More information about each speaker follows.
Gregory Pence
Sept. 6
Ethics of Stem Cell Research
Gregory Pence is known as one of the founders of bioethics and an aggressive defender of all cloning research. One of the pioneering bioethicists in America, Pence has a unique point of view since he has seen many past prophecies of doom fail and is optimistic about biotechnology. In a phrase: Pence believes his opponents are creating a new Age of Darkness.
He is nationally and internationally famous for defending cloning and genetically modified food against bio-Luddites and Nay-Sayers, who oppose research on stem cells and cloning. And because of his views, his talks have been picketed by Greenpeace and anti-cloning zealots.
His book Who’s Afraid of Human Cloning? rigorously attacks opponents of cloning. His second book on cloning, Cloning After Dolly: Who’s Still Afraid?, argues for the legalization of artificial wombs and trans-species hybrids. Pence notes that most people’s perception of cloning is based more on science fiction than science, and that anti-cloners draw false or irrelevant distinctions based on questions of human dignity and a religious view of the embryo as a human life. He argues that cloning is actually a biological imperative: we must develop cloning technology to survive the next plague.
Steven Amstrup
Oct. 1
Polar Bears and Global Warming: Reliable Predictions and Hope in an Uncertain World
In 2007, Steven Amstrup's research team at the U.S. Geological Survey projected that we could lose two-thirds of the world’s polar bears by mid-century and may lose all of them by the end of this century. More recently, he and his colleagues showed that preventing the extinction of polar bears is largely a matter of controlling greenhouse gas rise.
The good news is that prompt action to arrest greenhouse gas rise will preserve sustainable polar bear populations over much of their current range. Even more importantly, acting in time to save polar bears will benefit the rest of life on earth — including humans.
Amstrup is the winner of the 2012 Indianapolis Prize, which is given every other year to an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to conservation efforts involving a single animal species or multiple species.
Ronald Mallett
Nov. 1
Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality
In his popular lectures, attended by his peers and interested onlookers, Ronald Mallett explains his theories, which are derived from the work of Einstein and Godol and from his own experiments over 30 years (much of which has been published in journals).
But behind the science — which is delivered in clear, captivating language with inspired metaphors (a spoon stirring a glass of water) — lies Mallett's personal story. He touches on the death of his father when he was a boy (which set him on his current path to invent a time machine) and tells us how he overcame poverty and racism to become one of the few African-American Ph.D.s in theoretical physics.
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