1 00:00:00,640 --> 00:00:07,560 I'm Dustin Grinnell and this is curiously Ever since I was a 2 00:00:07,560 --> 00:00:10,800 kid, I loved reading science based thrillers and cautionary 3 00:00:10,800 --> 00:00:12,760 tales about science and technology. 4 00:00:13,200 --> 00:00:16,200 I grew up on a steady diet of books by Michael Crichton, Ray 5 00:00:16,200 --> 00:00:18,840 Bradbury, George Orwell, and Aldos Huxley. 6 00:00:19,320 --> 00:00:22,680 I'm a huge fan of scifi movies too, especially new films like 7 00:00:22,680 --> 00:00:27,120 Her Arrival and Ex Machina that depict how realistic seeming 8 00:00:27,120 --> 00:00:29,040 science and tech would affect us all. 9 00:00:29,740 --> 00:00:33,260 In many popular scifi stories, I'm usually both fascinated and 10 00:00:33,260 --> 00:00:35,420 horrified by the possibilities of what I'm seeing. 11 00:00:35,860 --> 00:00:38,300 It was thrilling to watch scientists harvest ancient 12 00:00:38,300 --> 00:00:41,500 dinosaur DNA and use genetic engineering to bring them back 13 00:00:41,500 --> 00:00:44,860 to life, but terrifying to see them start using humans as a 14 00:00:44,860 --> 00:00:47,220 food source. It was fun to imagine your 15 00:00:47,220 --> 00:00:50,220 phone's talking assistant software organizing your life 16 00:00:50,420 --> 00:00:53,260 like in the movie Her, until I watched somebody fall in love 17 00:00:53,260 --> 00:00:55,300 with it. And who wouldn't want to adopt 18 00:00:55,300 --> 00:00:58,540 an alter ego and play out some fantasies in a virtual world? 19 00:00:59,100 --> 00:01:02,260 Sounds great until you see a movie like Surrogates, in which 20 00:01:02,260 --> 00:01:05,060 most people retreat from the real world and spend most of 21 00:01:05,060 --> 00:01:06,940 their time living in virtual spaces. 22 00:01:07,820 --> 00:01:10,140 The best scifi makes us ask questions. 23 00:01:10,540 --> 00:01:13,100 How close are we to realizing these scientific breakthroughs? 24 00:01:13,420 --> 00:01:15,100 What are the ethical implications at play? 25 00:01:15,820 --> 00:01:18,540 Even if we can create a certain technology, should we? 26 00:01:19,340 --> 00:01:21,780 To help us sort through questions like these, I invited 27 00:01:21,780 --> 00:01:25,420 Doctor Nisha Iyer onto the show. Doctor Iyer is a biomedical 28 00:01:25,420 --> 00:01:28,420 researcher and an assistant professor at Tufts University. 29 00:01:28,990 --> 00:01:31,470 Who teaches the class to 1st year biomedical engineering 30 00:01:31,470 --> 00:01:34,630 students, in which she explores the science and technology in 31 00:01:34,630 --> 00:01:38,990 five popular scifi movies, Jurassic Park, Gattica, Never 32 00:01:38,990 --> 00:01:43,190 Let Me Go, Ghost in the Shell, The 1995 version, and Avatar. 33 00:01:43,830 --> 00:01:46,630 In her class, Doctor Iyer engages students in discussions 34 00:01:46,630 --> 00:01:49,870 about genetic engineering, cloning, artificial organs, 35 00:01:49,950 --> 00:01:52,630 space travel, stem cells, and more. 36 00:01:53,350 --> 00:01:56,430 How close were you to realizing the scientific advances depicted 37 00:01:56,430 --> 00:01:59,810 in the scifi movies we love? How might these advances affect 38 00:01:59,810 --> 00:02:02,650 our everyday lives? What are the possible unintended 39 00:02:02,650 --> 00:02:04,730 consequences? Who would regulate it? 40 00:02:05,010 --> 00:02:08,410 What laws may need to exist? Is developing this science or 41 00:02:08,410 --> 00:02:11,450 tech even a good idea? We discussed all of these 42 00:02:11,450 --> 00:02:14,930 questions and more in today's episode with Dr. Nisha Eyer. 43 00:02:16,850 --> 00:02:18,770 Nisha Eyer, Welcome to the podcast. 44 00:02:18,930 --> 00:02:20,850 Hi, nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me. 45 00:02:21,250 --> 00:02:25,850 Yeah. So I first heard of you on NPR's 46 00:02:25,970 --> 00:02:28,210 Brilliant Boston segment. I think it was. 47 00:02:29,090 --> 00:02:33,210 And you're a biomedical engineer, and you are teaching 48 00:02:33,210 --> 00:02:37,570 first year engineering students a class that is very interesting 49 00:02:37,570 --> 00:02:39,650 and caught the attention of this program. 50 00:02:39,890 --> 00:02:43,850 And I listened to it with rapt attention because the subject is 51 00:02:44,210 --> 00:02:47,690 the use of science fiction movies to undergraduate 52 00:02:48,090 --> 00:02:50,490 engineering students to understand how plausible the 53 00:02:50,490 --> 00:02:53,410 science is within those movies, and then some of the ethical 54 00:02:53,410 --> 00:02:55,930 implications for that technology. 55 00:02:56,250 --> 00:02:59,450 So I was hoping maybe you could just talk about how this began. 56 00:02:59,450 --> 00:03:02,770 How does a biomedical engineer such as yourself get to teaching 57 00:03:02,770 --> 00:03:05,690 scifi movies to undergraduate engineering students? 58 00:03:05,850 --> 00:03:09,090 Yeah, thanks so much for that question because I get a lot of 59 00:03:09,090 --> 00:03:11,690 questions about it. I love talking about this class 60 00:03:11,690 --> 00:03:15,650 because I think growing up everyone watches scifi movies. 61 00:03:15,650 --> 00:03:18,650 It's probably the way that a lot of scientists and even 62 00:03:18,650 --> 00:03:21,890 individuals get a lot of their ideas sparked on science and 63 00:03:21,890 --> 00:03:24,010 what is possible and how that science. 64 00:03:24,360 --> 00:03:26,200 Interacts with the lives of people. 65 00:03:26,200 --> 00:03:29,200 And it might be dramatized people, but people nonetheless. 66 00:03:29,560 --> 00:03:33,200 And so those interactions on the screen, I think, really inform 67 00:03:33,200 --> 00:03:36,760 what laypeople, students, families, people who are not 68 00:03:36,760 --> 00:03:39,360 scientists, really think about science and interact with 69 00:03:39,360 --> 00:03:42,320 science. So for me, as someone who enjoys 70 00:03:42,320 --> 00:03:45,240 watching these films, thinks really deeply when I am watching 71 00:03:45,240 --> 00:03:50,000 things on the screen, using that as an entree, as an 72 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:53,360 introduction, an accessible way to start talking about these 73 00:03:53,360 --> 00:03:56,360 topics. And organizing these scientific 74 00:03:56,360 --> 00:04:01,000 shops in a way that is not only accessible but makes sense and 75 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:05,320 starts to build from, well, this is a really high, high level way 76 00:04:05,320 --> 00:04:08,720 that science can interact in the world and potentially in very 77 00:04:08,720 --> 00:04:12,720 dramatic, crazy ways that then give rise to these amazing 78 00:04:12,720 --> 00:04:15,080 narratives, these these stories that we get to tell. 79 00:04:15,480 --> 00:04:18,120 But then how do you breakdown what might be a really, really 80 00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:21,480 small component of these films? Just a concept or an idea or a 81 00:04:21,480 --> 00:04:23,640 technology? And really think about how 82 00:04:23,960 --> 00:04:26,040 possible is it to make that technology? 83 00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:28,880 How would we as engineers or as students, how would you go about 84 00:04:28,880 --> 00:04:30,200 making that technology in the film? 85 00:04:30,200 --> 00:04:32,960 Or is it possible? And if it's not possible, then 86 00:04:33,280 --> 00:04:36,280 what are we doing right now that's kind of getting to the 87 00:04:36,280 --> 00:04:39,160 things that are possible or that would have very similar roles? 88 00:04:39,360 --> 00:04:41,480 And so my class is Scifi bioengineering. 89 00:04:41,480 --> 00:04:45,360 And again, the idea is to really introduce engineering students. 90 00:04:45,360 --> 00:04:47,560 And these are students that are coming in with no other 91 00:04:47,560 --> 00:04:48,880 backgrounds. There are high school students 92 00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:50,240 that come from all over the world. 93 00:04:50,620 --> 00:04:53,140 They've never taken engineering class before for the most part. 94 00:04:53,300 --> 00:04:57,300 And they're still taking these really basic science, math, very 95 00:04:57,300 --> 00:04:59,580 basic kind of sciences to get that foundation. 96 00:04:59,940 --> 00:05:02,740 And this class is really to just get them excited about 97 00:05:02,740 --> 00:05:05,820 engineering. How do we as engineers think 98 00:05:06,140 --> 00:05:09,740 about technology and developing technology and how do we use? 99 00:05:10,330 --> 00:05:12,810 What we know to build these things and then how are these 100 00:05:12,810 --> 00:05:15,330 things then interacting with society? 101 00:05:15,330 --> 00:05:18,010 So engineering as a subject is an applied science as opposed to 102 00:05:18,010 --> 00:05:19,850 basic science, which is learning more about things. 103 00:05:19,850 --> 00:05:23,490 And as engineers, I think our role is to build things for 104 00:05:23,490 --> 00:05:27,370 people and that human science interaction is something that 105 00:05:27,370 --> 00:05:29,050 engineers work on, that's in our careers. 106 00:05:29,050 --> 00:05:32,810 And that is so much the story of scifi films, right, How science 107 00:05:32,810 --> 00:05:35,250 interacts with people and how those interactions. 108 00:05:35,680 --> 00:05:38,560 Can do again wild crazy stories. Yeah. 109 00:05:38,560 --> 00:05:42,320 And as a science fiction lover myself, you know, I grew up on, 110 00:05:42,840 --> 00:05:45,160 you know, Ray Bradbury and Michael Crichton. 111 00:05:45,160 --> 00:05:47,280 And I read books like Jurassic Park. 112 00:05:47,280 --> 00:05:50,040 And I read it with great interest because it does. 113 00:05:50,440 --> 00:05:53,920 It's about application of imaginative technologies that 114 00:05:53,920 --> 00:05:55,680 are usually just like a little bit out of reach. 115 00:05:56,040 --> 00:05:58,360 But I think one thing Michael Crichton did, especially, it was 116 00:05:58,360 --> 00:06:02,080 a sense of realism in the books. In the movie, it's a sense of 117 00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:04,600 like, whoa, we're not that far away potentially. 118 00:06:04,990 --> 00:06:07,590 To something like this, and it sparks the imagination of 119 00:06:07,710 --> 00:06:10,870 engineers who made want to try to practically make that leap. 120 00:06:11,150 --> 00:06:13,430 And I have to say, you know, when I was preparing for this 121 00:06:13,430 --> 00:06:15,870 class, I hadn't read the Michael Crichton book. 122 00:06:16,230 --> 00:06:18,390 I was very young. And so when it was that big 123 00:06:18,390 --> 00:06:21,230 bestseller phenomenon, I was too young to really appreciate it or 124 00:06:21,230 --> 00:06:24,030 read about it. And so I read the book and I was 125 00:06:24,030 --> 00:06:26,910 just really astonished how close. 126 00:06:27,280 --> 00:06:29,720 Some of those technologies, those methods actually are to 127 00:06:29,720 --> 00:06:32,040 what we do. And when he'd written the book, 128 00:06:32,040 --> 00:06:35,160 genetic science wasn't as mature as it is now, you know, in the 129 00:06:35,160 --> 00:06:37,760 twenty 20s, in the early 90s. I mean, so it's really 130 00:06:37,760 --> 00:06:40,520 remarkable for me to have to step back and think, you know, 131 00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:43,240 this was really forward thinking, the way that companies 132 00:06:43,240 --> 00:06:45,600 were going to interact with these genetic technologies, how 133 00:06:45,600 --> 00:06:47,880 scientists were going to be working in the lab analyzing 134 00:06:47,880 --> 00:06:49,210 data. Doing these kinds of 135 00:06:49,210 --> 00:06:52,330 comparances, creating, you know, novel things. 136 00:06:52,330 --> 00:06:53,930 And that was captured in a book so early. 137 00:06:53,930 --> 00:06:56,490 And to what extent did scientists who grew up with this 138 00:06:56,490 --> 00:07:00,330 book really see this book? And then integrate that right 139 00:07:00,330 --> 00:07:02,010 into the into the science that we do? 140 00:07:02,010 --> 00:07:05,450 And again, using these stories as inspiration for scientists 141 00:07:05,450 --> 00:07:08,250 and how much that has now fed perhaps into the science that we 142 00:07:08,250 --> 00:07:09,570 actually do today? Yeah. 143 00:07:09,570 --> 00:07:12,410 I mean, if you think about Jurassic Park in general, just 144 00:07:12,410 --> 00:07:16,050 in terms of sequencing and genetic engineering and. 145 00:07:16,470 --> 00:07:19,950 Leading maybe to CRISPR technology and the mapping of 146 00:07:19,950 --> 00:07:23,830 the human genome in general. But even more specifically and 147 00:07:23,830 --> 00:07:28,110 kind of like oddly, we think about today isn't Aren't 148 00:07:28,110 --> 00:07:30,510 scientists thinking about resurrecting Bully mammoths? 149 00:07:30,550 --> 00:07:32,190 And George Church? I think he's a Harvard 150 00:07:32,190 --> 00:07:34,150 geneticist. He's put that out there and 151 00:07:34,430 --> 00:07:36,030 we're there. We're thinking about 152 00:07:36,030 --> 00:07:38,630 resurrecting ancient DNA, yeah. Absolutely. 153 00:07:38,630 --> 00:07:41,190 And these are exactly the topics that we talk about in class. 154 00:07:41,190 --> 00:07:43,150 So, you know, you think about a film like Jurassic Park, What 155 00:07:43,150 --> 00:07:46,110 are all the science that you need to know or be able to? 156 00:07:47,110 --> 00:07:49,150 In order to do that and so again thinking about first year 157 00:07:49,150 --> 00:07:52,030 students, that means learning about the building blocks of 158 00:07:52,030 --> 00:07:55,670 life, learning about DNA, RNA, proteins, how those contribute 159 00:07:55,990 --> 00:07:59,190 to, you know, the final kind of product that you might have. 160 00:07:59,190 --> 00:08:04,150 How would you go about reading DNA, editing DNA, thinking about 161 00:08:04,190 --> 00:08:06,350 then you know, sequencing technologies, CRISPR 162 00:08:06,350 --> 00:08:09,130 technologies? How do you implement that in 163 00:08:09,130 --> 00:08:10,610 embryos? So how do you genetically 164 00:08:10,610 --> 00:08:14,410 engineer organisms and how are different organisms perhaps 165 00:08:14,570 --> 00:08:16,690 difficult to do? It's very different, you know, 166 00:08:16,690 --> 00:08:19,450 genetically engineering a single cell compared to something 167 00:08:19,450 --> 00:08:22,170 that's alive or something that is an adult. 168 00:08:22,530 --> 00:08:25,010 And so that there's different science that goes behind that. 169 00:08:25,490 --> 00:08:27,970 What is actually possible to resurrect? 170 00:08:27,970 --> 00:08:30,210 You know, how old of DNA can you resurrect? 171 00:08:30,250 --> 00:08:33,450 And so dinosaur DNA is kind of getting up to the physical 172 00:08:33,450 --> 00:08:35,010 reality. It's too old. 173 00:08:35,289 --> 00:08:37,730 DNA is too degraded. We can't actually bring back the 174 00:08:37,730 --> 00:08:40,130 dinosaurs. And so students understand, 175 00:08:40,409 --> 00:08:43,409 learning that it's not possible to take Amber and, you know, 176 00:08:43,409 --> 00:08:46,730 kind of the more scifi fantasy part of that film. 177 00:08:47,010 --> 00:08:49,930 But what is possible is, you know, stuff a little bit newer. 178 00:08:49,930 --> 00:08:53,050 So the woolly mammoth, only hundreds of thousands as opposed 179 00:08:53,050 --> 00:08:56,390 to 10s of 1,000,000. And that scale is really 180 00:08:56,390 --> 00:08:58,510 important when we think about that genetic material. 181 00:08:58,670 --> 00:09:01,550 And Even so, it's not the woolly mammoth that's coming back, it's 182 00:09:01,550 --> 00:09:05,230 a East Asian elephant that's being edited to have woolly 183 00:09:05,230 --> 00:09:07,350 mammoth like features. So it's not quite the woolly 184 00:09:07,350 --> 00:09:09,630 mammoth, the animals that are really being brought back, 185 00:09:09,910 --> 00:09:14,630 things like the thylacine are much more recently extinct, only 186 00:09:14,670 --> 00:09:18,910 a couple of less than 100 years old and those are, those are the 187 00:09:18,910 --> 00:09:21,910 Tasmanian tigers. So that's one of the newest 188 00:09:21,910 --> 00:09:24,270 projects I think from Colossal, this company. 189 00:09:24,700 --> 00:09:28,380 And so again, thinking about how the age of DNA contributes to 190 00:09:28,380 --> 00:09:32,300 kind of that quality of DNA, how that quality of DNA then really 191 00:09:32,620 --> 00:09:34,740 controls what you can or cannot do with it. 192 00:09:34,740 --> 00:09:37,660 So you can definitely, you know, splice in parts of the DNA or 193 00:09:37,660 --> 00:09:41,500 understand what that DNA was and kind of create equivalence in 194 00:09:41,660 --> 00:09:45,300 modern animals or you can take extinct animals, but the quality 195 00:09:45,300 --> 00:09:46,580 has to be within a certain range. 196 00:09:46,580 --> 00:09:49,780 And so these are kinds of those quality control math metrics. 197 00:09:49,940 --> 00:09:52,780 These are the basic science, kind of the practicalities. 198 00:09:53,150 --> 00:09:55,230 Of, you know, what would go behind something like Jurassic 199 00:09:55,230 --> 00:09:56,430 Park. And you know, this can take a 200 00:09:56,430 --> 00:10:00,150 long time to even get to the point where we can discuss a lot 201 00:10:00,150 --> 00:10:03,150 of science goes into even just understanding what is or what is 202 00:10:03,150 --> 00:10:06,430 not possible. And what can scientists do with 203 00:10:06,430 --> 00:10:08,070 that? How, well, what should we then 204 00:10:08,070 --> 00:10:10,670 be doing with that? So things like bringing animals 205 00:10:10,670 --> 00:10:13,990 that are recently synced back into their ecosystems versus 206 00:10:13,990 --> 00:10:17,350 doing things like genetically engineering mosquitoes to try to 207 00:10:17,350 --> 00:10:20,030 get rid of malaria or other kinds of airborne diseases. 208 00:10:20,410 --> 00:10:23,610 And that's inserting genetic material that doesn't belong in 209 00:10:23,610 --> 00:10:27,330 nature into these animals potentially and changing our our 210 00:10:27,330 --> 00:10:29,850 biodiversity. Changing what what, what our 211 00:10:29,890 --> 00:10:32,410 ecosystems look like. And So what responsibilities do 212 00:10:32,410 --> 00:10:34,810 we have when thinking about implementing these and, you 213 00:10:34,810 --> 00:10:36,770 know, living creatures that are going to go out into the wild? 214 00:10:37,130 --> 00:10:40,930 Yeah, first of all, bummer. No possibility for a Jurassic 215 00:10:40,970 --> 00:10:43,010 Park. Sounds like there's a myth 216 00:10:43,010 --> 00:10:45,370 busting aspect to to some of this work. 217 00:10:45,490 --> 00:10:47,210 Yeah, absolutely. Is that I didn't. 218 00:10:47,210 --> 00:10:50,040 It didn't occur to me that the. DNA would degrade to that to 219 00:10:50,040 --> 00:10:52,920 such degree. But I want to pick up on that 220 00:10:52,960 --> 00:10:54,920 idea of it's not could we, Should we? 221 00:10:54,920 --> 00:10:57,360 It's Michael Creighton's. It's the Jurassic Park. 222 00:10:57,360 --> 00:11:00,480 It's the theorist who's saying, you know, you're scientists were 223 00:11:00,480 --> 00:11:02,320 so preoccupied whether or not they could, they didn't stop, 224 00:11:02,320 --> 00:11:04,200 think they should, right. It's the famous line. 225 00:11:04,720 --> 00:11:07,840 And I guess the question is, should we be tinkering with 226 00:11:07,840 --> 00:11:11,120 genes and mosquitoes, even if it has a profound public good? 227 00:11:11,280 --> 00:11:13,360 What are the possible unintended consequences? 228 00:11:13,600 --> 00:11:15,280 What are the ethical implications of that? 229 00:11:15,810 --> 00:11:18,130 How do you, yourself and students work through those 230 00:11:18,130 --> 00:11:21,730 questions of like, even if it's plausible from an engineering or 231 00:11:21,730 --> 00:11:23,970 technological perspective, should we? 232 00:11:24,010 --> 00:11:26,370 Because we can't anticipate what could happen because we'd be 233 00:11:26,450 --> 00:11:28,970 playing God, so to speak. Yeah, yeah. 234 00:11:28,970 --> 00:11:32,450 And I mean, I think this is not just the role of scientists. 235 00:11:32,490 --> 00:11:35,850 I think that's really important, right, that there is a public. 236 00:11:36,300 --> 00:11:38,220 Science. There needs to be conversation 237 00:11:38,220 --> 00:11:41,940 and interaction between policymakers, the public folk, 238 00:11:41,940 --> 00:11:45,700 potentially individuals who live in these environments, 239 00:11:45,940 --> 00:11:49,020 consideration for animals, for the plant life, entire 240 00:11:49,060 --> 00:11:51,740 ecosystems and of course scientists who may or may not 241 00:11:51,740 --> 00:11:54,220 feel comfortable or able to do these kinds of things. 242 00:11:54,660 --> 00:11:57,300 So you know in the case of of the mosquitoes, I mean there is 243 00:11:57,300 --> 00:11:59,500 right this huge public good that could be have. 244 00:11:59,940 --> 00:12:02,620 You can also think about things that you know even without 245 00:12:02,620 --> 00:12:05,020 genetic modification that we should and could think about the 246 00:12:05,020 --> 00:12:09,340 role of humans and human induced climate change on you know 247 00:12:09,340 --> 00:12:12,260 animals environments. Is that not also a way that we 248 00:12:12,260 --> 00:12:14,740 are affecting you know animals in the environment. 249 00:12:14,980 --> 00:12:18,180 There are now you know recent evidence that there's genetic 250 00:12:18,180 --> 00:12:21,940 drift in animals that live in urban versus rural or you know 251 00:12:21,940 --> 00:12:26,420 non human occupied areas so that by just living we are you know, 252 00:12:26,420 --> 00:12:28,020 in the way that humans live that we are. 253 00:12:28,790 --> 00:12:31,510 We're not actively, but we are certainly changing the 254 00:12:31,510 --> 00:12:34,070 trajectories of different species and their evolution 255 00:12:34,110 --> 00:12:36,830 right by virtue of being near. Us also in some cases putting 256 00:12:36,830 --> 00:12:39,710 our own species at risk with like infectious diseases where 257 00:12:39,710 --> 00:12:41,910 there's less kind of forested area, so now. 258 00:12:41,950 --> 00:12:45,590 And invasive species as well. You know a lot of the public 259 00:12:45,590 --> 00:12:48,470 health problems with mosquitoes, ticks. 260 00:12:48,750 --> 00:12:51,950 You think about the insects that are decimating tree populations 261 00:12:51,950 --> 00:12:56,160 or having agricultural impacts. In waterways and in land, all of 262 00:12:56,160 --> 00:12:59,320 those are broad and moved by people into places that they 263 00:12:59,320 --> 00:13:00,960 don't belong and they're causing problems. 264 00:13:00,960 --> 00:13:04,560 So, you know, outside of just the science, just by being human 265 00:13:04,560 --> 00:13:08,080 and living our human lives, we are, you know, making these 266 00:13:08,080 --> 00:13:10,800 dramatic changes. So how are any of those 267 00:13:10,800 --> 00:13:14,480 different from perhaps putting a genetically modified mosquito? 268 00:13:14,480 --> 00:13:16,120 And, and I don't know the answer to that. 269 00:13:16,360 --> 00:13:19,560 I'm just suggesting, you know, that these are questions that 270 00:13:19,560 --> 00:13:24,060 exist beyond kind of the scifi. Genetic modification of animals 271 00:13:24,060 --> 00:13:27,020 or anything, These are things that we already do and that 272 00:13:27,020 --> 00:13:29,780 people are already discussing without that kind of very 273 00:13:29,780 --> 00:13:32,500 poignant immediacy of, you know, this is an intentional plan as 274 00:13:32,500 --> 00:13:34,500 opposed to things that are already happening. 275 00:13:34,940 --> 00:13:37,420 And so I think it's important to think about that in a balanced 276 00:13:37,420 --> 00:13:39,300 way, right? This is an intentional thing 277 00:13:39,300 --> 00:13:42,020 that we could do maybe put in modified mosquitoes and there is 278 00:13:42,020 --> 00:13:45,420 huge public health benefits. Thinking about the cons of doing 279 00:13:45,420 --> 00:13:47,940 that, what potential things could go wrong and how do you 280 00:13:47,940 --> 00:13:50,890 potentially mitigate harms? But also, outside of this 281 00:13:50,890 --> 00:13:54,450 context, what are topics and things that we already see in 282 00:13:54,450 --> 00:13:57,970 society that very closely mimic what could be happening? 283 00:13:57,970 --> 00:14:00,450 And if you care about this, but you don't care about those other 284 00:14:00,450 --> 00:14:03,730 things, then what kind of ethical frameworks are you 285 00:14:03,730 --> 00:14:05,490 working in? Are you only concerned because 286 00:14:05,490 --> 00:14:06,570 it's scientists who are doing it? 287 00:14:06,570 --> 00:14:09,690 Or are you concerned about kind of the larger impact that humans 288 00:14:09,690 --> 00:14:13,450 have on ecosystems beyond kind of just that single case of, you 289 00:14:13,450 --> 00:14:16,560 know, genetic modification? You know, one thing I love about 290 00:14:16,680 --> 00:14:19,640 the movie Jurassic Park, and there's that scene where 291 00:14:19,960 --> 00:14:22,680 Malcolm, the chaos there is, delivers that famous line. 292 00:14:23,080 --> 00:14:25,200 What I love about that scene too, is that there's multiple 293 00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:28,840 representations at the table. So there's two scientists, 294 00:14:29,040 --> 00:14:32,480 there's one mathematician, there's like the lawyer, and 295 00:14:32,480 --> 00:14:34,320 who's like a layperson, and there's the founder. 296 00:14:34,320 --> 00:14:36,240 And they all have their own backgrounds. 297 00:14:36,640 --> 00:14:40,040 And what I'm getting at is like, why does it often seem like the 298 00:14:40,160 --> 00:14:42,560 ethicist? Or the philosopher and the 299 00:14:42,560 --> 00:14:45,640 scientists aren't always in the same room at the origin of the 300 00:14:45,640 --> 00:14:47,520 technology or the scientific advancement. 301 00:14:47,520 --> 00:14:49,600 Because that's I think, what your class is sort of doing, 302 00:14:49,600 --> 00:14:51,480 right? It's like, let's think about the 303 00:14:51,480 --> 00:14:55,560 science and the ethics and the unintended consequences all at 304 00:14:55,560 --> 00:14:59,400 the same time at the inception of the technology, because I 305 00:14:59,400 --> 00:15:01,560 think that's what you're. I think that's one of the things 306 00:15:01,560 --> 00:15:03,640 I'm trying to do with my students, certainly, you know, 307 00:15:03,640 --> 00:15:06,360 at the beginning of this career that they're going to have and 308 00:15:06,400 --> 00:15:08,440 their decision to become engineers. 309 00:15:08,850 --> 00:15:12,250 Thinking ahead of time what, what and how they could be 310 00:15:12,250 --> 00:15:14,570 putting science into the world and how we should be thinking 311 00:15:14,570 --> 00:15:15,890 about things. And I don't think that that's 312 00:15:15,890 --> 00:15:18,090 very often done in science education. 313 00:15:18,410 --> 00:15:21,210 I think it's something that happens on the side and with 314 00:15:21,210 --> 00:15:23,730 less intentionality and certainly as a consequence of 315 00:15:23,730 --> 00:15:26,530 perhaps bad things happening in the world that we have these 316 00:15:26,530 --> 00:15:28,610 conversations, but certainly not on the front end. 317 00:15:28,610 --> 00:15:31,930 So that's definitely something that I enjoy thinking about, 318 00:15:31,930 --> 00:15:35,680 enjoy doing, and I think it is. Really awesome to think that 319 00:15:35,720 --> 00:15:39,040 kind of huge, big picture right at the beginning, to have that 320 00:15:39,040 --> 00:15:41,760 inform and the rest of what you're studying and thinking 321 00:15:41,760 --> 00:15:43,360 about how you think about things in the world. 322 00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:48,120 But as the science is being incepted, I think it's really 323 00:15:48,120 --> 00:15:51,440 hard, you know, as a research scientist, because you know, I 324 00:15:51,440 --> 00:15:54,040 love teaching, I love this class, but I mean, at the end of 325 00:15:54,040 --> 00:15:57,880 the day, I also have a lab and I also do research and I I work in 326 00:15:57,880 --> 00:16:00,640 stem cell research, which has its own controversies and its 327 00:16:00,640 --> 00:16:01,900 own. Kind of ethical. 328 00:16:01,900 --> 00:16:05,060 A lot of ethical kind of stuff around around stem cell research 329 00:16:05,460 --> 00:16:08,900 and when you're in it and you're doing the research, it's very 330 00:16:08,900 --> 00:16:12,140 incremental and it's really hard, I think when you're you're 331 00:16:12,140 --> 00:16:16,340 in the weeds to see the forest. And so when you're making these 332 00:16:16,340 --> 00:16:19,060 incremental changes, not even one lab or one person, right? 333 00:16:19,060 --> 00:16:22,220 It's a whole field. It's this disperse set of 334 00:16:22,220 --> 00:16:26,300 knowledge that is being created slowly every day by individuals 335 00:16:26,300 --> 00:16:28,180 in the laboratory. It's really hard to see. 336 00:16:28,660 --> 00:16:31,180 Until there are these pivotal moments that happen, right? 337 00:16:31,180 --> 00:16:35,660 Someone has edited an animal. Someone has implemented this in 338 00:16:35,900 --> 00:16:36,660 people. Yeah. 339 00:16:37,420 --> 00:16:42,020 And it takes these really proof of principle things to hit that 340 00:16:42,020 --> 00:16:44,580 public consciousness, where for scientists, this is all just a 341 00:16:44,580 --> 00:16:47,620 very logical incremental change onto the thing that has happened 342 00:16:47,620 --> 00:16:49,860 before. But it takes those again, those 343 00:16:49,860 --> 00:16:54,180 kind of really big splashes in the news media needs to pick it 344 00:16:54,180 --> 00:16:56,700 up, right, Those big splashes to really hit the public 345 00:16:56,700 --> 00:17:00,950 consciousness and. For then there to be that kind 346 00:17:00,950 --> 00:17:03,510 of active conversation of what could be happening, because 347 00:17:03,510 --> 00:17:06,910 until the science has been developed, there's not a lot of 348 00:17:06,910 --> 00:17:11,150 people that are really interested in policing it. 349 00:17:11,470 --> 00:17:13,109 And that's not a bad thing. And that's something we talk 350 00:17:13,109 --> 00:17:16,270 about in the lab or sorry, in my course as well, you know, at 351 00:17:16,270 --> 00:17:18,589 what time should there be this intervention? 352 00:17:18,589 --> 00:17:22,430 Should we be slowing research down, speeding it up? 353 00:17:22,710 --> 00:17:25,790 Who should be involved in these processes and to what degree do 354 00:17:25,790 --> 00:17:28,089 things like? Policies that ban stem cell 355 00:17:28,089 --> 00:17:31,650 research or policies that ban animal research or CRISPR 356 00:17:31,650 --> 00:17:34,370 technology in certain ways. To what degree does that put us 357 00:17:34,370 --> 00:17:36,930 at a competitive disadvantage if someone else in the world is 358 00:17:36,930 --> 00:17:38,370 going to do it? You know, outside of the United 359 00:17:38,370 --> 00:17:39,890 States, we live in a Western structure. 360 00:17:40,410 --> 00:17:43,610 To what degree does that prevent us from developing lifesaving 361 00:17:43,610 --> 00:17:46,490 technologies? So do we have a moral obligation 362 00:17:46,490 --> 00:17:47,930 to use the technologies for good? 363 00:17:47,930 --> 00:17:51,370 And is there some kind of problem that you're causing by 364 00:17:51,370 --> 00:17:53,410 preventing those technologies from being developed? 365 00:17:53,410 --> 00:17:57,110 These are really hard questions. And there's not a single force 366 00:17:57,390 --> 00:17:59,910 that is doing that for every single field of science. 367 00:17:59,910 --> 00:18:02,990 And so I think these are really great, and it's really amazing 368 00:18:03,190 --> 00:18:05,150 to even bring these up to students and just have them 369 00:18:05,150 --> 00:18:07,870 think about what is stopping anyone from doing anything. 370 00:18:07,870 --> 00:18:10,950 And if there was something stopping scientists from moving 371 00:18:10,950 --> 00:18:12,510 forward, is that a bad thing as well? 372 00:18:12,510 --> 00:18:14,910 So where are we and where should we be? 373 00:18:15,030 --> 00:18:17,670 Yeah. And I think that's exactly why 374 00:18:17,670 --> 00:18:19,910 science fiction writers do what they do. 375 00:18:20,230 --> 00:18:23,910 Because it's sort of here's a simulation, yeah, for 376 00:18:23,910 --> 00:18:26,390 consideration. And in often cases, it's sort of 377 00:18:26,390 --> 00:18:27,670 dystopian. It's like here are the 378 00:18:27,670 --> 00:18:30,550 unintended consequences of this invention. 379 00:18:30,590 --> 00:18:33,590 In this particular application, this is basically like every 380 00:18:33,590 --> 00:18:35,430 Black Mirror episode. Absolutely. 381 00:18:35,430 --> 00:18:38,510 And so it's sort of to like wake us up, to scare us and to say, 382 00:18:38,550 --> 00:18:42,430 oh, wait, that's an eventuality. If we took this left and that 383 00:18:42,430 --> 00:18:45,150 right and this left. So the story sort of gets right 384 00:18:45,150 --> 00:18:48,910 in your face and says we've dramatized this potentiality and 385 00:18:48,910 --> 00:18:51,030 now it's on the table for consideration. 386 00:18:51,390 --> 00:18:54,230 And I love that that creates a safe space. 387 00:18:54,660 --> 00:18:57,900 To talk about these things, because when you talk about it 388 00:18:57,900 --> 00:19:00,900 to scientists or politicians or, you know, grant funding 389 00:19:00,900 --> 00:19:04,020 agencies, the people that are funding the research, it becomes 390 00:19:04,020 --> 00:19:06,460 very technical and it again loses that human aspect. 391 00:19:06,460 --> 00:19:09,020 And at the end of the day, right, science does interact 392 00:19:09,020 --> 00:19:10,380 with people. It interacts not only with 393 00:19:10,380 --> 00:19:13,660 people, but with ecosystems, with with the planet, and 394 00:19:13,900 --> 00:19:16,900 without those stories, those narratives. 395 00:19:17,310 --> 00:19:19,830 To at least give us a framework to think about those 396 00:19:19,830 --> 00:19:22,270 possibilities, we have to wait until it actually happens in the 397 00:19:22,270 --> 00:19:24,390 world, right? For someone to really mess up 398 00:19:24,390 --> 00:19:27,270 and to create some kind of huge disaster before there's 399 00:19:27,270 --> 00:19:28,710 backlash. And that backlash can be 400 00:19:28,710 --> 00:19:31,350 harmful. And so I think using science 401 00:19:31,350 --> 00:19:34,990 fiction as a way to not only inspire and to learn, but to 402 00:19:34,990 --> 00:19:39,430 also be a place where we can discuss where human characters 403 00:19:39,430 --> 00:19:43,110 went wrong or where societies perhaps made poor decisions. 404 00:19:43,500 --> 00:19:48,740 Is a phenomenal way for young scientists to talk about these 405 00:19:48,860 --> 00:19:52,260 topics in a world that is not based on our own. 406 00:19:52,260 --> 00:19:54,740 So you can bring people together from, again, multiple 407 00:19:54,740 --> 00:19:59,500 backgrounds, faiths, geographic locales, and have conversations 408 00:19:59,500 --> 00:20:01,820 because this is just a fictional world we're just talking about. 409 00:20:02,280 --> 00:20:05,280 You know, a story, Yeah. And it becomes play. 410 00:20:05,480 --> 00:20:09,280 But through play, we think really deeply about these 411 00:20:09,280 --> 00:20:12,280 philosophical elements of the science that we're doing and the 412 00:20:12,280 --> 00:20:14,080 ethics of it. Yeah, Which I think is really 413 00:20:14,080 --> 00:20:16,280 cool. And it's not, I think, always 414 00:20:16,280 --> 00:20:18,680 what science fiction writers think about. 415 00:20:18,680 --> 00:20:21,600 But it's certainly one aspect outside of just the story, 416 00:20:21,600 --> 00:20:26,120 right, How decisions right, can cause both good and bad. 417 00:20:26,160 --> 00:20:29,120 Yeah, I think I heard a science fiction writer say once the his 418 00:20:29,120 --> 00:20:31,520 whole job was to prevent civilization from destroying 419 00:20:31,520 --> 00:20:33,640 itself. That's sort of Orwellian 420 00:20:33,640 --> 00:20:35,920 approach, I think. Even Huxley, who wrote Brave New 421 00:20:35,920 --> 00:20:37,800 World, he was asked, you know, what's the point? 422 00:20:37,800 --> 00:20:38,680 What are you up to here? He said. 423 00:20:38,680 --> 00:20:41,800 Don't let it happen. Don't let it happen, you know, 424 00:20:41,800 --> 00:20:45,880 don't let this future society happen where we're like drugging 425 00:20:45,880 --> 00:20:48,960 ourselves into bliss and and controlled. 426 00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:51,200 Our minds are controlled through pleasure and and things like. 427 00:20:51,200 --> 00:20:52,600 That I know. And then when you think about 428 00:20:52,600 --> 00:20:56,340 what cell phones are. You know every day TikTok or 429 00:20:56,340 --> 00:21:00,060 dream scrolling are we not doing that has technology not always 430 00:21:00,300 --> 00:21:03,740 already. Have we not already created 431 00:21:03,740 --> 00:21:06,620 technologies inadvertently that do these things that you know 432 00:21:06,620 --> 00:21:08,700 someone thought it was going to be some kind of drug and it's 433 00:21:08,700 --> 00:21:11,900 instead, you know this glass screen that we have so you know 434 00:21:11,900 --> 00:21:12,980 again you. Mean a Black Mirror? 435 00:21:12,980 --> 00:21:16,980 Yeah, exactly. It's just it's amazing that even 436 00:21:17,020 --> 00:21:20,180 unintentionally, the ways that technology can lead to these 437 00:21:20,180 --> 00:21:22,700 dystopian realities that people used to write about, and now we 438 00:21:22,700 --> 00:21:25,750 just take its normal. It's been normalized and is that 439 00:21:25,750 --> 00:21:28,550 good for the human experience? Is that bad for the human 440 00:21:28,550 --> 00:21:30,630 experience? It's neither here nor there. 441 00:21:30,630 --> 00:21:33,470 It can be both good and bad. And that's why ethics are 442 00:21:33,470 --> 00:21:35,110 important to talk about and think about. 443 00:21:35,510 --> 00:21:37,750 And I think it ends up being an individual decision, right? 444 00:21:37,750 --> 00:21:42,030 What is the human experience that individuals should have or 445 00:21:42,030 --> 00:21:44,350 should seek to have? Yeah, Imagine you have some 446 00:21:44,350 --> 00:21:47,870 pretty stimulating philosophical discussions in your class, which 447 00:21:47,870 --> 00:21:51,390 is like take a cell phone for example, obviously there are. 448 00:21:51,940 --> 00:21:56,100 Many advantages, conveniences to your life. 449 00:21:56,140 --> 00:21:57,980 I mean, it's amazing what you can do. 450 00:21:57,980 --> 00:22:01,180 You can be in contact with the Internet and in contact with 451 00:22:01,420 --> 00:22:02,700 your family and friends. Etc. 452 00:22:02,700 --> 00:22:06,860 It's the history of the world is of everything is at your 453 00:22:06,860 --> 00:22:09,260 fingertips. Which is incredible. 454 00:22:09,260 --> 00:22:12,060 If you think about you know when we were growing up, you know you 455 00:22:12,060 --> 00:22:13,540 would have to find an encyclopedia and the 456 00:22:13,540 --> 00:22:15,780 encyclopedia was the best thing and you have to get every 457 00:22:15,780 --> 00:22:17,660 addition to even just know things and. 458 00:22:18,120 --> 00:22:20,560 The Internet is just instant knowledge at all times. 459 00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:24,440 And that puts a lot of, you know, mental lift off of perhaps 460 00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:27,200 remembering things. We can spend more time maybe not 461 00:22:27,200 --> 00:22:29,560 reading encyclopedias and more time, you know, actually 462 00:22:29,960 --> 00:22:31,720 implementing the knowledge that we've saw. 463 00:22:32,480 --> 00:22:36,240 But it also means that it's a source of distraction, and it 464 00:22:36,240 --> 00:22:38,800 means that attention spans are lower. 465 00:22:38,800 --> 00:22:42,040 And it's not something we talk about in my class, which is more 466 00:22:42,040 --> 00:22:44,920 bio focus, but it's certainly a way. 467 00:22:45,450 --> 00:22:49,810 That technology interacts with people and both unconsidered but 468 00:22:49,810 --> 00:22:52,170 also really amazing ways. And it's really hard. 469 00:22:52,610 --> 00:22:54,770 It's really hard. It's I think that's that's what 470 00:22:54,770 --> 00:22:56,570 we decide in my class. At the end of the day, we have 471 00:22:56,570 --> 00:22:59,330 really great discussions and there's a lot of opinions, but 472 00:22:59,330 --> 00:23:02,810 there are no answers. And I think that's also hard for 473 00:23:02,810 --> 00:23:05,450 a lot of people to come up with. It's that the world is not black 474 00:23:05,450 --> 00:23:08,850 and white, and science, despite being this thing that should be 475 00:23:08,850 --> 00:23:10,930 black and white, is not always black and white. 476 00:23:11,010 --> 00:23:13,290 The science is real or not real, but. 477 00:23:13,650 --> 00:23:16,130 How it should be used and implemented in the world is 478 00:23:16,170 --> 00:23:21,250 definitely up for debate. And the pace of technology has 479 00:23:21,250 --> 00:23:24,330 been accelerating and so I feel like more and more every day, 480 00:23:24,330 --> 00:23:29,010 every hour where having to face these complicated conversations 481 00:23:29,130 --> 00:23:33,010 that become exhausting and. Isn't it better to check out or 482 00:23:33,010 --> 00:23:35,100 isn't it easier? To check out. 483 00:23:35,420 --> 00:23:37,860 Check out of the conversation. Yeah, and just sort of let the 484 00:23:37,860 --> 00:23:41,220 technology happen and run its course, which may be running off 485 00:23:41,220 --> 00:23:45,460 the rails or being harmful, but it seems like every sector of 486 00:23:45,700 --> 00:23:49,620 technology, there's some sort of new philosophical unintended 487 00:23:49,620 --> 00:23:53,340 consequence to grapple with, I think, yeah, there are no 488 00:23:53,740 --> 00:23:56,620 answers is what you said. It's mostly about the questions, 489 00:23:57,100 --> 00:24:00,500 should we, can we, how would we, could we modify this so it's 490 00:24:00,580 --> 00:24:02,740 more safe? Could be do it this way instead 491 00:24:02,740 --> 00:24:04,500 of that way. It's more like the questions. 492 00:24:04,780 --> 00:24:07,140 Yeah. And I think science fiction, as 493 00:24:07,140 --> 00:24:09,660 you mentioned, is, is dystopian mostly in nature. 494 00:24:09,660 --> 00:24:13,380 It tends to be very extreme, you know, potential undintended 495 00:24:13,460 --> 00:24:16,580 consequence of, you know, whatever ethical quandary the 496 00:24:16,580 --> 00:24:19,860 world might be facing. So another film I do is Gattaca. 497 00:24:20,060 --> 00:24:23,740 And very often when 23 Andme, that genetic and sequencing 498 00:24:23,740 --> 00:24:25,900 company became public, that was the first thing everyone thought 499 00:24:25,900 --> 00:24:26,780 about. Oh, Gattaca. 500 00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:30,560 Right, Gattaca, this film about you know when everyone knows 501 00:24:30,560 --> 00:24:33,400 what everyone's genetic code is and what your gene means for you 502 00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:36,520 as a person, that it's going to control whole society and 503 00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:38,440 everyone's going to start being judged by that. 504 00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:41,720 But you know, to what degree are we already judged by things like 505 00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:44,600 our socioeconomic status or the color of our skin? 506 00:24:45,200 --> 00:24:48,760 This morning, Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, 507 00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,320 and to what degree could have that have been encoded in the 508 00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:55,160 genome? And yet with 23 new technology, 509 00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:57,820 it hasn't. You know, dictated our society. 510 00:24:58,020 --> 00:25:01,620 There's still privacy laws, you know, around the sharing of 511 00:25:01,620 --> 00:25:03,860 genetic information. And there's also a lot more 512 00:25:04,220 --> 00:25:06,820 information that we know about genetics, right. 513 00:25:06,820 --> 00:25:09,460 That all of who you are is not written into your DNA. 514 00:25:09,900 --> 00:25:12,900 That there's the epigenome, which a lot of students don't 515 00:25:12,940 --> 00:25:14,380 know about when they come to my class. 516 00:25:14,380 --> 00:25:16,260 Right. Which is the way that DNA is 517 00:25:16,260 --> 00:25:20,460 modified as soon as you're born or even before that to, you 518 00:25:20,460 --> 00:25:23,670 know, change how? Different proteins and therefore 519 00:25:23,670 --> 00:25:27,270 cells and therefore the phenotype or the outcome of who 520 00:25:27,270 --> 00:25:29,430 you are changes as a result of your life experience. 521 00:25:29,430 --> 00:25:32,470 So it's not just the genome, but also that nature and that 522 00:25:32,470 --> 00:25:35,150 environment and that nurture And you, not only your experience, 523 00:25:35,430 --> 00:25:38,110 but the experience of your family, right, the your mother, 524 00:25:38,110 --> 00:25:41,710 your father and how that information gets translated onto 525 00:25:41,710 --> 00:25:45,070 that egg and sperm. So we are more than just our 526 00:25:45,070 --> 00:25:47,790 DNA. And so with the way that we know 527 00:25:47,790 --> 00:25:50,030 about science right now, well, we'll never have a world like 528 00:25:50,030 --> 00:25:53,660 Gattaca because there's no way. To become born and be able to 529 00:25:53,660 --> 00:25:55,740 read that, to know what you're going to be on the other side. 530 00:25:55,740 --> 00:25:57,260 That's not how genetics works. We. 531 00:25:57,260 --> 00:25:59,540 Couldn't read the epigenome potentially. 532 00:25:59,700 --> 00:26:02,220 I mean, we can, but it's constantly changing. 533 00:26:02,780 --> 00:26:06,460 And so how can we start modifying the epigenome? 534 00:26:06,460 --> 00:26:09,060 The way that we're trying to modify the genome with CRISPR 535 00:26:09,060 --> 00:26:11,100 technology is something that people are definitely looking 536 00:26:11,100 --> 00:26:13,220 at. How can you do things like 537 00:26:13,220 --> 00:26:16,860 potentially rapidly age or DH cells? 538 00:26:16,860 --> 00:26:19,340 How can you activate regenerative pathways? 539 00:26:19,690 --> 00:26:23,050 These are things that are, you know, all new science that is 540 00:26:23,050 --> 00:26:24,810 still happening in the laboratory. 541 00:26:25,250 --> 00:26:28,010 And as you know, people are understanding about the basic 542 00:26:28,010 --> 00:26:31,130 science, trying to come up with strategies to implement that in 543 00:26:31,130 --> 00:26:32,650 people. And you know, what does that 544 00:26:32,650 --> 00:26:34,970 look like? And we'll have perhaps another 545 00:26:34,970 --> 00:26:37,690 kind of huge wave of drugs and therapies. 546 00:26:37,690 --> 00:26:41,290 Hopefully that goes after the epigenome and can help us live 547 00:26:41,290 --> 00:26:44,690 healthier, better lives. It's interesting because the 1st 548 00:26:44,690 --> 00:26:48,010 2 movies that. We've talked about two of five. 549 00:26:48,010 --> 00:26:51,530 I think the others that you teach are never let me go Ghost 550 00:26:51,530 --> 00:26:53,730 in the Shell. Not the Scarlett Johansson one, 551 00:26:53,730 --> 00:26:57,250 but the earlier one. The better one the the anime. 552 00:26:57,330 --> 00:26:58,890 Right. It's interesting because 553 00:26:58,890 --> 00:27:03,050 Jurassic Park and Gattica, you've said of them both, we're 554 00:27:03,050 --> 00:27:05,930 probably not going to have those worlds, which is great, right? 555 00:27:05,930 --> 00:27:08,810 Because the world in Gattica, which is one of my favorite 556 00:27:08,810 --> 00:27:11,890 movies, by the way, it's a story of genetic determinism, like you 557 00:27:11,890 --> 00:27:14,890 you said, you're sort of defined by your package of genes. 558 00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:18,800 Where you go in the world and that's great that we will 559 00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:21,440 probably won't have a society like that because it's 560 00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:23,480 completely. It's not a good society. 561 00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:26,960 It's yeah, it's an immoral society that creates like caste 562 00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:30,160 systems and your have or have not based on. 563 00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:33,240 And yet that is a movie of optimism, right? 564 00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:37,800 The protagonist is a person who, despite their subpar genome, 565 00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:41,120 this congenital disease goes on to do really remarkable thing 566 00:27:41,120 --> 00:27:44,680 and is the best in the company. And, you know, goes to show. 567 00:27:45,070 --> 00:27:48,470 That we are not all in our DNA, and that you can do things even 568 00:27:48,470 --> 00:27:52,910 in this really judgmental, reclusive society based on 569 00:27:52,910 --> 00:27:55,350 technology that transcends that technology. 570 00:27:55,590 --> 00:27:59,230 The human capacity is, is more than what might be written by, 571 00:27:59,550 --> 00:28:02,190 by nature or otherwise. And I think that's a remarkable 572 00:28:02,190 --> 00:28:05,270 thing to think about in a lot of aspects. 573 00:28:05,270 --> 00:28:07,030 You know, we think a lot about the negative parts of 574 00:28:07,030 --> 00:28:10,430 technologies, but how many more people in the world are educated 575 00:28:10,430 --> 00:28:12,030 because of cell phones? How many? 576 00:28:12,430 --> 00:28:14,870 More opportunities to people have because of the Internet, no 577 00:28:14,870 --> 00:28:16,950 matter what kind of negatives, right? 578 00:28:16,950 --> 00:28:20,510 The technologies as they're developed should be improving 579 00:28:20,510 --> 00:28:23,670 the human condition. I think that it comes out to 580 00:28:23,670 --> 00:28:25,590 being human, right? That humans have so much 581 00:28:25,590 --> 00:28:30,350 creative capacity and the capacity to do so much despite 582 00:28:30,350 --> 00:28:32,950 or because of the technologies that they interact with. 583 00:28:33,070 --> 00:28:36,750 Yeah, that's what's remarkable about Gattaca is that it is a 584 00:28:36,750 --> 00:28:39,910 dystopian world, but you have a protagonist, Ethan Hawke, who 585 00:28:39,910 --> 00:28:42,900 has is so willful. And he has like a heart of a 586 00:28:42,900 --> 00:28:46,620 lion, and he will not stop unless he becomes an astronaut, 587 00:28:46,620 --> 00:28:50,500 which is his dream, which is statistically 0% chance he has 588 00:28:50,500 --> 00:28:53,460 based on where he started genetically and in life. 589 00:28:54,020 --> 00:28:59,180 And so it really is a message of the human imagination and human 590 00:28:59,180 --> 00:29:04,500 will can win out despite how wrong we've gone as a society in 591 00:29:04,500 --> 00:29:06,190 that world. And then that's a mention of 592 00:29:06,190 --> 00:29:09,230 goodness, which is a little bit unusual in the world of science 593 00:29:09,230 --> 00:29:11,630 fiction that tends to go dark on most of the scientific 594 00:29:11,630 --> 00:29:14,470 advancements. But there's even a huge number 595 00:29:14,470 --> 00:29:17,990 of people that are helping him in that film do this right. 596 00:29:17,990 --> 00:29:21,790 There's the donor of the genetic material, Uma Thurman, who's his 597 00:29:21,790 --> 00:29:25,070 girlfriend. There's the doctor that does all 598 00:29:25,070 --> 00:29:27,710 of his screening for all of the testing that he needs to do as 599 00:29:27,710 --> 00:29:31,010 part of the space company. And there's so many people 600 00:29:31,010 --> 00:29:34,770 around him that are genetically perfect or who have been placed 601 00:29:34,770 --> 00:29:39,410 in in positions of privilege in this society, who are also 602 00:29:39,410 --> 00:29:43,250 trying to lift up someone and protect someone who has been 603 00:29:43,250 --> 00:29:46,930 hurt by the society and who has the capacity to to grow and do 604 00:29:46,930 --> 00:29:50,890 these great things. I think that also speaks to even 605 00:29:50,890 --> 00:29:53,610 the privileged in society and people who benefit from 606 00:29:53,610 --> 00:29:57,180 technologies or otherwise. Can see what the problems are 607 00:29:57,180 --> 00:29:59,900 and can move beyond it to try to make a better world right and 608 00:29:59,900 --> 00:30:02,020 try to give opportunity where it belongs. 609 00:30:02,220 --> 00:30:05,900 Yeah, and this was most powerfully displayed at the very 610 00:30:05,900 --> 00:30:08,340 end of the movie, right right before Ethan Hawke is about to 611 00:30:08,340 --> 00:30:11,700 realize his dream of going on the space shuttle. 612 00:30:11,740 --> 00:30:16,820 Spoiler I guess he and the Doctor Who's been testing him 613 00:30:16,820 --> 00:30:20,140 throughout. The story and you know, making 614 00:30:20,140 --> 00:30:21,940 sure he's he is who he says he is. 615 00:30:22,300 --> 00:30:26,860 He does a like a surprise urine sample right before he goes on 616 00:30:27,220 --> 00:30:31,260 the shuttle and this is game over for him because he didn't 617 00:30:31,340 --> 00:30:33,980 expect it. Ethan Hawke could head all his 618 00:30:33,980 --> 00:30:36,180 ducks in a row. He'd figure out every way to 619 00:30:36,380 --> 00:30:40,620 deceive the system, but he got caught right at the end and the 620 00:30:40,620 --> 00:30:43,020 Doctor just let him walk. And that was a really nice 621 00:30:43,020 --> 00:30:46,260 moment because exactly to your point, even in an A moral 622 00:30:46,260 --> 00:30:48,530 society. There are people who recognize 623 00:30:48,530 --> 00:30:52,330 how wrong it is, and this is their little rebellion, you 624 00:30:52,330 --> 00:30:55,130 know, and that's what will happen in that society. 625 00:30:55,130 --> 00:30:57,810 It may not be outright revolution, although that's 626 00:30:57,810 --> 00:31:00,690 probably what is going to happen eventually. 627 00:31:01,010 --> 00:31:04,250 It's these little rebellions against wrongness. 628 00:31:04,250 --> 00:31:06,810 Yeah, yeah. And I think that's just so much 629 00:31:06,810 --> 00:31:10,370 fodder for the imagination to be able to think or and predict 630 00:31:10,370 --> 00:31:12,210 where these characters are going to go in that film. 631 00:31:12,210 --> 00:31:14,450 I think that's what makes it such a great film is. 632 00:31:14,860 --> 00:31:15,940 You don't know if he gets caught. 633 00:31:15,940 --> 00:31:18,060 You don't know what he does when he comes back. 634 00:31:18,060 --> 00:31:20,820 They kind of set up these individuals and and their 635 00:31:20,820 --> 00:31:24,060 stories and set up these little rebellions and you can just 636 00:31:24,060 --> 00:31:27,220 imagine what will happen on the other side and and hopefully 637 00:31:27,220 --> 00:31:30,580 it's a society that's better and and fuller that's. 638 00:31:30,620 --> 00:31:33,300 I think the only thing we can can hope for is that hope 639 00:31:33,300 --> 00:31:36,420 element. I think another nice thing about 640 00:31:36,420 --> 00:31:39,860 that film, you know, that I talked about is it was again 641 00:31:39,860 --> 00:31:42,770 like Jurassic Park. Thought about in the early 90s 642 00:31:42,770 --> 00:31:44,970 during that the human genome project and there was a lot of 643 00:31:44,970 --> 00:31:49,690 fear I think at that time is if we can know and access the human 644 00:31:49,690 --> 00:31:52,210 genome then there could be all of these things that happened. 645 00:31:52,210 --> 00:31:55,930 We could bring dinosaurs back. If we knew what the DNA was. 646 00:31:55,930 --> 00:31:59,810 We can predict one's life and we would have the society that was 647 00:31:59,810 --> 00:32:03,090 kind of unequal based on the perfect DNA that different 648 00:32:03,090 --> 00:32:07,850 people have and the human genome project the 13 years in the in 649 00:32:07,850 --> 00:32:10,290 the 90s to sequence the first human genome. 650 00:32:10,700 --> 00:32:13,420 And it's just remarkable that there are a lot of technologies 651 00:32:13,420 --> 00:32:16,660 that were developed, you know, much sooner than our ability to 652 00:32:16,660 --> 00:32:19,220 actually edit the genome and and implement the stuff in Jurassic 653 00:32:19,220 --> 00:32:20,740 Park. Like cell phones, for example, 654 00:32:21,060 --> 00:32:23,540 Keep getting back to the cell phones that that weren't in that 655 00:32:23,540 --> 00:32:26,460 movie, that the idea that you could just walk onto a spaceship 656 00:32:26,460 --> 00:32:30,620 in a suit would be enough that, you know, their idea of training 657 00:32:30,620 --> 00:32:32,380 was just doing a heart rate thing, so. 658 00:32:32,780 --> 00:32:35,660 I think it's it's a little funny to see these anachronisms 659 00:32:35,660 --> 00:32:38,900 especially in these films now living in the twenty 20s that we 660 00:32:38,900 --> 00:32:42,100 have so much technology that has made things like communication 661 00:32:42,100 --> 00:32:45,180 and computer technology so great And and they envisioned all of 662 00:32:45,180 --> 00:32:48,300 these biological technologies being so much more advanced than 663 00:32:48,500 --> 00:32:50,540 where we are on the on the computer side. 664 00:32:50,740 --> 00:32:54,900 And then the bio is really much harder to implement than 665 00:32:54,900 --> 00:32:57,860 technological advances that you see in in say computer science 666 00:32:57,860 --> 00:33:00,250 or. Electrical engineering or other 667 00:33:00,250 --> 00:33:01,450 kinds of engineering disciplines. 668 00:33:01,450 --> 00:33:03,810 And that's because we just don't know very much about biology, 669 00:33:04,130 --> 00:33:07,610 that just knowing about it doesn't mean that we can 670 00:33:07,650 --> 00:33:11,850 engineer it or implement it in ways that actually will have an 671 00:33:11,850 --> 00:33:15,530 impact on people, and that the time scale of biological 672 00:33:15,530 --> 00:33:18,970 discovery is just much longer. You can throw billions of 673 00:33:18,970 --> 00:33:21,210 dollars into biology research and get nothing. 674 00:33:21,250 --> 00:33:22,690 Look at the race for cancer cure. 675 00:33:23,010 --> 00:33:26,570 We know a lot about cancer and we still can't cure all cancer. 676 00:33:26,860 --> 00:33:28,500 And that's just because biology is really hard. 677 00:33:28,740 --> 00:33:31,020 And I think, again, from an educational standpoint, I think 678 00:33:31,020 --> 00:33:33,140 it's really important for students to understand that, 679 00:33:33,140 --> 00:33:36,020 that you need to know the biology to do kind of 680 00:33:36,020 --> 00:33:37,780 bioengineering, biomedical engineering. 681 00:33:38,100 --> 00:33:40,620 But we still need to know a lot about the biology. 682 00:33:40,620 --> 00:33:44,020 And then even when we know about it, it's really hard to get that 683 00:33:44,020 --> 00:33:46,340 engineering aspect down. It's a huge challenge and that's 684 00:33:46,340 --> 00:33:49,500 what makes it so cool and interesting to work on because 685 00:33:49,500 --> 00:33:52,900 this is a huge potential field. There's so many opportunities if 686 00:33:52,900 --> 00:33:54,140 we can just get that stuff right. 687 00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:56,920 Yeah, it's so cool and interesting, but also probably 688 00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:58,960 maddening from the scientific perspective. 689 00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:02,400 I studied Physiology in grad school and I was just struck by 690 00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:05,480 the how the systems work together in such a complex way, 691 00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:09,000 and especially just when you go into the cell and you think 692 00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:11,440 about intercell signaling and. And all that. 693 00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:15,360 And it's just this dizzyingly complex arrangement of systems. 694 00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:19,840 And so again as a stem cell scientist, I'm constantly amazed 695 00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:23,239 by this great technology that's coming out just in the last 696 00:34:23,239 --> 00:34:26,960 couple of days. We have FDA approval for islet 697 00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:28,639 cells. So these are the cells that 698 00:34:28,639 --> 00:34:32,800 create insulin that are damaged when someone has diabetes. 699 00:34:33,159 --> 00:34:37,760 So we have stem cells arrived, human cells that are potentially 700 00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:40,699 going. Into patients to cure people of 701 00:34:40,699 --> 00:34:42,340 diabetes. So you can get this stem cell 702 00:34:42,340 --> 00:34:45,659 transplant and it'll create insulin for the patients. 703 00:34:45,659 --> 00:34:48,540 They don't have to take insulin for Parkinson's patients. 704 00:34:48,540 --> 00:34:52,900 So these are patients who have this degenerative disease of the 705 00:34:52,900 --> 00:34:54,820 dopaminergic neurons in their brain. 706 00:34:55,100 --> 00:34:58,260 So it can cause tremor, eventually paralysis and death. 707 00:34:58,260 --> 00:35:02,420 So really terrible neurological disease, stem cell transplants 708 00:35:02,580 --> 00:35:06,200 also happening for these cells. So can you replace those cells 709 00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:08,640 that have degenerated in the patients and therefore get that 710 00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:11,440 function back? And so these are huge 711 00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:14,120 advancements that you know, hopefully they're in the clinic 712 00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:15,760 and they're going to be available to patients. 713 00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:19,800 But it took 20 years from when stem cells were first discovered 714 00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:22,480 and imagined to be as part of kind of these regenerative 715 00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:25,400 therapies to the point where we're still in clinical trials, 716 00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,600 we're still just determining if they work, but that's a long 717 00:35:28,760 --> 00:35:31,000 developmental time scale and a lot of people have gotten really 718 00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:33,040 bored about stem cell research in the meanwhile. 719 00:35:33,700 --> 00:35:37,340 So it's just remarkable to see these technologies finally 720 00:35:37,340 --> 00:35:40,900 making it in the twenty 20s, these things that these films 721 00:35:40,900 --> 00:35:44,180 talked about and maybe imagined early on and are just now 722 00:35:44,180 --> 00:35:47,060 happening. So not organ replacement like 723 00:35:47,060 --> 00:35:50,460 and never let me go per se, but definitely individual cell types 724 00:35:50,460 --> 00:35:54,820 and thinking about how you can use biology in the dish to 725 00:35:55,420 --> 00:35:58,300 regenerate and cure different kinds of human diseases. 726 00:35:58,620 --> 00:36:01,740 Yeah, I always think about. The line in Jurassic Park, the 727 00:36:01,740 --> 00:36:04,500 movie, it's nature always finds a way, right? 728 00:36:04,820 --> 00:36:08,140 What a wise saying. It's, you know, especially in 729 00:36:08,140 --> 00:36:12,380 biological systems, there's so much evasion and that adaptation 730 00:36:12,700 --> 00:36:16,860 and like unanticipated tricks, I can imagine. 731 00:36:16,860 --> 00:36:20,100 Maybe we put the insula cells in people's pancreases and 732 00:36:20,420 --> 00:36:22,220 something happens that makes the whole. 733 00:36:22,580 --> 00:36:24,540 Theory crash down or something, Unfortunately. 734 00:36:24,940 --> 00:36:27,860 Like, yeah, I can discover that. And I mean, and if I could 735 00:36:27,860 --> 00:36:30,180 probably run a whole class on this, right, like the the 736 00:36:30,180 --> 00:36:34,180 science behind just how do we know those cells or what we say 737 00:36:34,180 --> 00:36:36,300 they are, how do we make sure that they function? 738 00:36:36,500 --> 00:36:38,980 How do you protect them from the immune environment? 739 00:36:39,380 --> 00:36:41,460 What kind of transplantation strategy will use? 740 00:36:41,460 --> 00:36:43,300 So what is going to be the source of your cells? 741 00:36:43,300 --> 00:36:45,540 How are you going to make them then actually making them in 742 00:36:45,540 --> 00:36:47,740 that process years worth of doing it. 743 00:36:48,100 --> 00:36:51,100 If you finally have a technology and maybe a drug delivery system 744 00:36:51,100 --> 00:36:54,700 right at some way to protect the cells from being degraded, well 745 00:36:54,700 --> 00:36:57,460 then what are all of the regulatory hurdles that you need 746 00:36:57,780 --> 00:36:59,140 to pose? And so these are things we're 747 00:36:59,140 --> 00:37:02,740 talking about in my class, the the patenting process, what FDA 748 00:37:02,740 --> 00:37:05,300 approval looks like, How do you run clinical trials? 749 00:37:05,500 --> 00:37:08,220 How do you do the statistics for clinical trials, right, How much 750 00:37:08,220 --> 00:37:10,220 money needs to go into all of this? 751 00:37:10,220 --> 00:37:13,460 Where is that money coming from? Is it coming from companies, 752 00:37:13,460 --> 00:37:16,850 governments, individuals? Who is doing the research? 753 00:37:17,050 --> 00:37:19,450 And after all of that is done, you need to create something 754 00:37:19,450 --> 00:37:21,730 that's cost effective, which means you need to go to Business 755 00:37:21,730 --> 00:37:24,090 School too. So this isn't something that you 756 00:37:24,090 --> 00:37:26,050 can just imagine. There's this whole 757 00:37:26,290 --> 00:37:31,090 infrastructure around perhaps what is a single disease bearing 758 00:37:31,090 --> 00:37:34,210 therapy and and this is happening in parallel for 759 00:37:34,210 --> 00:37:37,730 thousands of diseases in the world and they're at various 760 00:37:37,730 --> 00:37:41,490 stages, you know and I think the scale of that again thinking 761 00:37:41,490 --> 00:37:43,210 about those first year engineering students is. 762 00:37:43,610 --> 00:37:45,290 It's quite remarkable when you're still taking that basic 763 00:37:45,290 --> 00:37:48,370 biology class and maybe if you want to take something to 764 00:37:48,370 --> 00:37:51,250 clinical trial or you want to cure someone in the long run by 765 00:37:51,250 --> 00:37:53,250 being a biomedical engineer. This is all of the stuff you 766 00:37:53,250 --> 00:37:56,690 need to think about this huge process, this huge scientific 767 00:37:56,690 --> 00:37:59,290 enterprise that we that you're entering, which I think is 768 00:37:59,290 --> 00:38:00,850 pretty cool. Yeah, totally. 769 00:38:01,450 --> 00:38:03,250 So I'd love to talk about Never Let Me Go. 770 00:38:03,250 --> 00:38:08,010 Yeah, you know, so this is a movie where essentially. 771 00:38:08,590 --> 00:38:13,670 Children are raised to be identical clones to older people 772 00:38:13,750 --> 00:38:19,270 who would like to later harvest these donor clones for their 773 00:38:19,270 --> 00:38:23,430 organs when they get older. So maybe you are 75 years old 774 00:38:23,710 --> 00:38:28,150 and you need a new kidney. You go to your donor, you go to 775 00:38:28,150 --> 00:38:31,070 your clone, and you, because they're genetically identical to 776 00:38:31,070 --> 00:38:34,110 you, you can take their kidney and put it back in you as a 777 00:38:34,110 --> 00:38:36,230 replacement. So people are being bred 778 00:38:36,230 --> 00:38:38,190 essentially for replacement organs. 779 00:38:38,740 --> 00:38:42,940 It's a pretty bleak movie. It's pretty grim and there's no 780 00:38:43,060 --> 00:38:48,100 Gattaca hope to it. But where the movie, The Island 781 00:38:48,100 --> 00:38:51,020 has also explored that area. Where are we there? 782 00:38:51,140 --> 00:38:54,380 Because that to me, seems I could see some biotech 783 00:38:54,380 --> 00:38:56,500 entrepreneur doing that right now. 784 00:38:56,540 --> 00:39:00,220 Like, yeah, you know. Yeah, And so that's the crazy 785 00:39:00,220 --> 00:39:02,060 thing. I think we we talk a little bit 786 00:39:02,060 --> 00:39:07,220 in my class is if if we wanted to clone humans, I think we 787 00:39:07,220 --> 00:39:11,190 could. Because we have active DNA, we 788 00:39:11,190 --> 00:39:15,230 know how to modify the germ cells. 789 00:39:15,230 --> 00:39:19,030 So these eggs and sperm like we can do in vitro fertilization 790 00:39:19,390 --> 00:39:23,510 and we can think about doing something like that with people 791 00:39:23,510 --> 00:39:25,710 that are alive today. I mean there are a lot of 792 00:39:26,110 --> 00:39:28,270 technology that are just being developed to create kind of 793 00:39:28,270 --> 00:39:32,070 artificial embryos, artificial blastoces, These are not quite 794 00:39:32,070 --> 00:39:36,510 the same as the ones that. Happen naturally, but they are 795 00:39:36,510 --> 00:39:39,230 starting to happen in the dish. It's just happening in just in 796 00:39:39,230 --> 00:39:41,950 the last few years. So a lot of controversy around 797 00:39:41,950 --> 00:39:43,350 it. A lot of people are really 798 00:39:43,350 --> 00:39:45,630 concerned about where this technology can go. 799 00:39:45,630 --> 00:39:49,430 But at least right now there are the glimmerings that it could 800 00:39:49,630 --> 00:39:52,830 happen that we could create, you know, with your cells, say 801 00:39:53,230 --> 00:39:57,390 literally thousands of clone embryos in the dish, you know, 802 00:39:57,390 --> 00:39:59,230 using very commonly used technologies. 803 00:39:59,510 --> 00:40:02,510 That technology isn't mature, but it is happening. 804 00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:05,640 So can you create a lot of clones of humans? 805 00:40:05,680 --> 00:40:09,240 Potentially, even though it's still just in development? 806 00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:12,760 Can you edit those embryos? That's much harder, right? 807 00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:15,360 That gets into the realm of kind of Gattica crossover. 808 00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:17,000 But can you do the clone to begin with? 809 00:40:17,360 --> 00:40:20,120 Genetic modification? Harder cloning more easily? 810 00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:24,560 The problem is aging right now that I see it. 811 00:40:25,020 --> 00:40:30,660 That you need to be able to grow these organs to a size and an 812 00:40:30,660 --> 00:40:34,180 age that is going to be useful to you. 813 00:40:34,180 --> 00:40:38,780 And so that is where all of kind of stem cell research runs up 814 00:40:38,780 --> 00:40:42,180 against a problem where we can create really early versions of 815 00:40:42,180 --> 00:40:45,580 cell types and organs. We can even do things like. 816 00:40:46,050 --> 00:40:49,770 Take an organ from a pig or another person. 817 00:40:49,930 --> 00:40:52,970 We can take out all of the cells and then try to replace it with 818 00:40:52,970 --> 00:40:55,770 cells from you to try to create something that looks like your 819 00:40:55,770 --> 00:40:58,410 cells. But the problem seems to be that 820 00:40:58,410 --> 00:41:00,130 the stem cells remain really young. 821 00:41:00,130 --> 00:41:03,930 It's really hard to create organs that have that same kind 822 00:41:03,930 --> 00:41:07,370 of functional maturity that you do have as an adult. 823 00:41:07,370 --> 00:41:10,570 And that is a big roadblock in stem cell research right now. 824 00:41:10,570 --> 00:41:14,290 How do we think about going beyond kind of these very early 825 00:41:14,290 --> 00:41:17,280 developing tissues? And create environments and 826 00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:21,000 tissue structures that are much more like you would have in a 827 00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:23,360 person. So there's a couple of routes 828 00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:24,480 that you know people are looking at. 829 00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:28,320 One is the engineering route, can we create materials and stem 830 00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:31,440 cells and combine them in ways that kind of improve the 831 00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:34,240 maturity of these tissues. So you don't need to do things 832 00:41:34,240 --> 00:41:37,640 like create an organ, you could just create it say in a in a big 833 00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:40,040 tank or something that would be great. 834 00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:43,200 And so that's you know what tissue engineers like me try to 835 00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:46,870 work on and in different ways. Another kind of route as well, 836 00:41:46,870 --> 00:41:50,310 can we think about maybe not using people, but think about 837 00:41:50,350 --> 00:41:53,670 genetically modifying animals to be able to grow these kinds of 838 00:41:53,670 --> 00:41:55,750 tissues for us. And so that's another company 839 00:41:56,070 --> 00:42:00,510 that are working on creating genetically modified pigs so 840 00:42:00,510 --> 00:42:04,270 that you could grow human pig kind of chimeras to grow human 841 00:42:04,270 --> 00:42:08,270 heart cells within like human hearts effectively within. 842 00:42:08,530 --> 00:42:11,890 Kind of these chimeric pigs and you would be able to then grow 843 00:42:11,890 --> 00:42:14,890 the pigs which grow at a much faster time scale than humans do 844 00:42:14,890 --> 00:42:16,810 and get maturity and get the size bigger. 845 00:42:17,170 --> 00:42:20,810 And you could then take the pig and take out the heart and be 846 00:42:20,810 --> 00:42:22,290 able to transplant into that patient. 847 00:42:22,290 --> 00:42:26,410 So that first pig, human heart transplant was done just last 848 00:42:26,410 --> 00:42:28,410 year. In human patient it was a, it 849 00:42:28,410 --> 00:42:32,530 was an end of 1 as a as a very preliminary trial and he lived 850 00:42:32,530 --> 00:42:35,290 for a number of days before passing away. 851 00:42:35,290 --> 00:42:37,130 He had very, very severe heart failure. 852 00:42:37,490 --> 00:42:40,970 But it was the first instance of kind of using a genetically 853 00:42:40,970 --> 00:42:44,810 modified animal to host these human organs and then being able 854 00:42:44,810 --> 00:42:47,490 to transplant that human organ into a patient. 855 00:42:47,850 --> 00:42:50,890 And so when thinking about kind of animal to human 856 00:42:50,890 --> 00:42:53,790 transplantation. There are a lot of barriers. 857 00:42:53,790 --> 00:42:56,590 So not only the human cell type and the immune response, but 858 00:42:56,590 --> 00:42:59,710 things like, well, certain animals are receptive to 859 00:42:59,710 --> 00:43:02,990 different kind of viruses. So the coronavirus is, you know, 860 00:43:02,990 --> 00:43:05,590 a big example, a lot of people I think learned about bats and 861 00:43:05,590 --> 00:43:08,790 viruses and how viral crossover happens. 862 00:43:08,990 --> 00:43:12,110 So pigs also are susceptible to certain types of viruses. 863 00:43:12,110 --> 00:43:15,070 And so the genetic modifications that they've had to do in these 864 00:43:15,070 --> 00:43:18,070 pigs have to do a lot with making the immune system, the 865 00:43:18,070 --> 00:43:20,190 pig to look more like the human immune system. 866 00:43:20,630 --> 00:43:24,790 And also to try to reduce the potential for these kinds of 867 00:43:24,790 --> 00:43:27,950 organs to get these kinds of viruses that pigs very often get 868 00:43:28,190 --> 00:43:30,630 to prevent that kind of human animal crossover. 869 00:43:31,190 --> 00:43:34,350 And so it's a huge number of genetic modifications they've 870 00:43:34,350 --> 00:43:37,110 had to do in these animals in order to make that happen. 871 00:43:37,110 --> 00:43:40,870 But this patient didn't have any kinds of problems with either 872 00:43:40,870 --> 00:43:43,270 immune rejection or any of these viral things. 873 00:43:43,270 --> 00:43:47,550 So he died because he was very sick and the heart eventually 874 00:43:47,550 --> 00:43:48,710 didn't take. It didn't work. 875 00:43:49,180 --> 00:43:53,300 But the reasons that they had genetically modified this heart, 876 00:43:53,740 --> 00:43:56,380 those all worked, that the modifications worked, that the 877 00:43:56,380 --> 00:43:59,260 the tissue might have worked. And as this technology matures, 878 00:43:59,260 --> 00:44:02,500 perhaps this will be huge for organ transplantation. 879 00:44:02,500 --> 00:44:06,820 There are thousands, millions of people that die because of heart 880 00:44:06,820 --> 00:44:09,060 failure every year in the world and there's just not enough 881 00:44:09,060 --> 00:44:12,500 hearts to go around. And so if we can think about 882 00:44:12,700 --> 00:44:16,300 using animals to host these tissues to be able to transplant 883 00:44:16,300 --> 00:44:19,190 them, that. Can save so many lives beyond 884 00:44:19,190 --> 00:44:20,670 what we currently have available. 885 00:44:20,870 --> 00:44:25,070 Yeah, the upside is profound. The thing about the movie like 886 00:44:25,070 --> 00:44:28,550 Never let me Go is all of the, if I can call them kind of 887 00:44:28,550 --> 00:44:32,430 workarounds from just creating identical clone that you spoke 888 00:44:32,430 --> 00:44:35,590 of sort of preempting all the in the immological responses, the 889 00:44:35,590 --> 00:44:39,950 viral responses you're trying to sort of do as best you can to be 890 00:44:39,950 --> 00:44:43,670 a representative of a human. But that movie just decided 891 00:44:43,670 --> 00:44:46,740 let's raise humans. Because that's probably the most 892 00:44:46,740 --> 00:44:49,500 ideal place for a tissue or an organ, right? 893 00:44:49,540 --> 00:44:51,460 Because one of the things I was talking about with a friend, 894 00:44:51,460 --> 00:44:53,740 which I think is really interesting, is like, why 895 00:44:53,740 --> 00:44:58,300 educate those clones? Because like, maybe a kidney is 896 00:44:58,460 --> 00:45:02,260 healthier if they're educated, if they're in a happy setting, 897 00:45:02,260 --> 00:45:05,700 in an environment, maybe if they fall in love, maybe if they have 898 00:45:06,500 --> 00:45:09,740 healthy social networks, maybe it's a healthier kidney. 899 00:45:09,940 --> 00:45:12,460 So that movie sort of sets a world up where. 900 00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:18,200 The best donor is a donor who's living a full human life. 901 00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:19,640 Yeah, which is really interesting. 902 00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:22,920 And this is a conversation that we had with my students who are 903 00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:27,240 really interested about the nature of animal studies, donor 904 00:45:27,240 --> 00:45:30,480 transplant, the potential use of animals or, you know, people 905 00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:34,320 thinking about the ethical implications of growing animals 906 00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:36,800 for human tissue transplantation. 907 00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:38,440 Same with human for human tissue. 908 00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:40,680 And again, thinking about these parallels well. 909 00:45:41,100 --> 00:45:45,180 We already use a lot of animals for agriculture, a lot of 910 00:45:45,180 --> 00:45:46,780 animals already consumed every year. 911 00:45:46,780 --> 00:45:49,140 So you know, really, what difference is it to use an 912 00:45:49,140 --> 00:45:52,700 animal instead of for meat or for food, but instead to use 913 00:45:52,700 --> 00:45:54,940 them for orchard? And that was an ethical kind of 914 00:45:54,940 --> 00:45:57,380 dilemma a lot of students had who thought we definitely 915 00:45:57,380 --> 00:46:00,540 shouldn't be making these clones for human health, but I don't 916 00:46:00,540 --> 00:46:03,700 have any problem eating them. That's kind of one of those 917 00:46:03,700 --> 00:46:06,780 moral Gray areas that people were running up against and I 918 00:46:06,780 --> 00:46:09,260 think very similarly, you know, they looked at. 919 00:46:09,590 --> 00:46:12,870 These we kind of did a paper on thinking about organ transplant 920 00:46:12,870 --> 00:46:16,190 and animals and then look at the parallel of effectively treating 921 00:46:16,390 --> 00:46:19,470 these children, calling you know putting them onto the farm quite 922 00:46:19,470 --> 00:46:21,350 literally. And in this film where they're 923 00:46:21,350 --> 00:46:23,910 growing up in kind of these very rural areas where they're not a 924 00:46:23,910 --> 00:46:28,110 lot around a lot of non clones, that they're living full lives 925 00:46:28,110 --> 00:46:29,830 but they are like living separately. 926 00:46:30,110 --> 00:46:32,630 And the similarities between how we treat our animals in 927 00:46:32,630 --> 00:46:36,150 agriculture today perhaps to how you know you're treating the 928 00:46:36,150 --> 00:46:38,990 clones for those films, the idea that. 929 00:46:39,240 --> 00:46:42,680 You know, grass fed meat is better, or animals that are 930 00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:45,360 living better lives are going to be better than only for the 931 00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:47,560 animals. But as an agricultural product 932 00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:50,800 is not totally out there. And it's disturbing to think 933 00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:52,920 about when you're making those comparisons. 934 00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:56,200 And it can be hard, I think, for students to make those 935 00:46:56,200 --> 00:46:59,560 connections. But I think it also helps to 936 00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:02,000 create ethical clarity and where people's boundaries are. 937 00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:05,400 And maybe you know what should and shouldn't be legal or 938 00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:08,200 allowed or stopped in the name of progress. 939 00:47:08,540 --> 00:47:10,260 I think there's just a lot of really interesting conversation 940 00:47:10,260 --> 00:47:14,220 that can be had around all of this and a controversial movie 941 00:47:14,540 --> 00:47:19,300 that is very dark, very non hopeful can lead to really 942 00:47:19,300 --> 00:47:21,780 interesting discussions and kind of these other realms. 943 00:47:21,980 --> 00:47:25,260 I imagine one of the discussions you probably have are those 944 00:47:25,820 --> 00:47:29,140 really big kind of philosophical questions like what makes a good 945 00:47:29,140 --> 00:47:34,340 life and why live to 100, You know, so we have these maybe 946 00:47:34,340 --> 00:47:39,390 wealthy, privileged people who? Are creating clones so that they 947 00:47:39,390 --> 00:47:43,630 can overcome diseases and live for a very long period of time. 948 00:47:43,630 --> 00:47:47,150 You know what age is. What age is enough? 949 00:47:47,190 --> 00:47:50,270 You know if you can get to 100, well why not get to 125 and 950 00:47:50,270 --> 00:47:51,230 like? But why? 951 00:47:51,230 --> 00:47:52,670 Why live that long? Should we? 952 00:47:52,870 --> 00:47:56,550 Yeah, and I think most of biomedical history has been 953 00:47:56,550 --> 00:47:58,470 let's live longer, let's live longer. 954 00:47:58,710 --> 00:48:01,710 And that's what almost all of medical science has tried to 955 00:48:01,710 --> 00:48:05,440 achieve for until now. Because we're living the longest 956 00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:07,640 that we've ever lived, you know, in this moment. 957 00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:09,280 And there are problems with that. 958 00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:12,840 We have folk who are getting really old who are starting to 959 00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:15,120 have neurological diseases that we've never encountered. 960 00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:17,280 A lot more people are with having cancer because they're 961 00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:19,400 living much longer and there's more opportunity for these 962 00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:22,240 things to come up. It's created economic, 963 00:48:22,240 --> 00:48:25,040 financial, environmental issues with, you know, the long 964 00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:28,520 longevity that people have and disparities in different parts 965 00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:30,600 of the world as different places are catching up. 966 00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:34,080 And so I think. It's really interesting to see 967 00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:36,480 students understand when I asked them this question. 968 00:48:36,480 --> 00:48:38,400 You know, is this something that we need to do? 969 00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:41,360 The goal of the society is to continue to prolong human life. 970 00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:45,240 Is it worth creating clones, potentially humans, and using 971 00:48:45,240 --> 00:48:47,640 them for their organs? And the answer is 972 00:48:47,640 --> 00:48:50,160 overwhelmingly, I don't know why anyone would do that. 973 00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,120 Like why we shouldn't be extending human life, we should 974 00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:57,480 be expanding human healthfulness, expanding health 975 00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:01,730 span as opposed to lifespan. But that's a very new idea, I 976 00:49:01,730 --> 00:49:04,050 think, for medicine that that's what we should be focusing on, 977 00:49:04,050 --> 00:49:08,170 not longevity, but the quality of the health of the life that 978 00:49:08,170 --> 00:49:10,610 we are living. And I think that's a remarkable 979 00:49:10,610 --> 00:49:14,530 shift, not only in the attitudes of students in the classroom, 980 00:49:14,970 --> 00:49:17,810 but, you know, society, I think a society we're looking for. 981 00:49:17,810 --> 00:49:20,410 Well, we we live a long time and there seems to be problem with 982 00:49:20,410 --> 00:49:20,930 age. Let's. 983 00:49:21,490 --> 00:49:24,130 Hold off on trying to live even longer than we already do, to 984 00:49:24,130 --> 00:49:26,650 make sure that the lives that we are living are the best ones 985 00:49:26,650 --> 00:49:28,330 that we can. And the student, I think 986 00:49:28,330 --> 00:49:30,570 students understand that and I think that's that's great. 987 00:49:30,650 --> 00:49:33,050 Yeah, but I often feel like that's great. 988 00:49:33,050 --> 00:49:36,370 I do sense the public conversation is more about 989 00:49:36,370 --> 00:49:40,210 extending a healthy life than extending the years, and that is 990 00:49:40,210 --> 00:49:43,770 great. But I often feel like in human, 991 00:49:43,770 --> 00:49:47,930 I don't know history, it's like 99.4% of. 992 00:49:48,330 --> 00:49:50,810 Of us can sort of get that and strive toward that. 993 00:49:50,810 --> 00:49:53,930 But then there's like the last fraction of the population that 994 00:49:53,930 --> 00:49:56,010 just is going to push the science forward. 995 00:49:56,450 --> 00:50:00,130 And I feel like there are researchers who look at aging as 996 00:50:00,130 --> 00:50:02,970 a disease and they don't want to die. 997 00:50:03,450 --> 00:50:06,850 And there's some tech entrepreneurs who are heavily 998 00:50:06,850 --> 00:50:11,570 invested in living to 500 years and there's different 999 00:50:11,570 --> 00:50:14,930 strategies. It's like reducing damage to DNA 1000 00:50:14,930 --> 00:50:17,810 and other organs and. And a lot of people, I think it 1001 00:50:17,810 --> 00:50:21,130 was like Aubrey de Gray. I think I read his book when I 1002 00:50:21,130 --> 00:50:23,050 was in my 20s and he's like a crazy man. 1003 00:50:23,050 --> 00:50:25,370 Like people think he's completely out there. 1004 00:50:25,370 --> 00:50:28,010 He's long beard. He has a really interesting Ted 1005 00:50:28,010 --> 00:50:30,170 Talk and he's trying to prevent. Death. 1006 00:50:30,290 --> 00:50:31,930 Yeah. And then there are people who 1007 00:50:31,930 --> 00:50:35,330 are kind of biohackers, right? Folk who are trying to implement 1008 00:50:35,330 --> 00:50:38,090 CRISPR engineering in their homes and creating these kinds 1009 00:50:38,090 --> 00:50:40,050 of homemade recipes. I mean, there's always going to 1010 00:50:40,050 --> 00:50:43,770 be a fringe population that is interested in. 1011 00:50:44,470 --> 00:50:48,430 Doing things that I think society finds to be repugnant or 1012 00:50:48,430 --> 00:50:51,390 or problematic. These can be case by case. 1013 00:50:51,390 --> 00:50:52,710 They could also be research programs. 1014 00:50:52,710 --> 00:50:54,870 So a lot of people are still interested in longevity, 1015 00:50:54,870 --> 00:50:57,670 continuing to reduce the effects of aging. 1016 00:50:58,030 --> 00:51:02,190 And I think it's important to differentiate between 1017 00:51:02,390 --> 00:51:05,510 understanding and doing kind of these proof of principle things 1018 00:51:05,990 --> 00:51:09,990 in a way that is controlled and scientific. 1019 00:51:10,110 --> 00:51:13,390 And by scientific, I mean, you know, do you have a hypothesis? 1020 00:51:13,790 --> 00:51:17,390 Are you doing things in a way that is consistent and rigorous 1021 00:51:17,390 --> 00:51:19,630 in the kinds of experiments that you're running and the kinds of 1022 00:51:19,630 --> 00:51:21,070 investigations that you're doing? 1023 00:51:21,510 --> 00:51:24,670 And are you reporting that science that you're doing in a 1024 00:51:24,750 --> 00:51:27,910 format and in a way that is accessible to other scientists 1025 00:51:27,910 --> 00:51:30,830 so that you can get review and you can, you know, get feedback 1026 00:51:30,830 --> 00:51:32,350 on that? And that's how we grow human 1027 00:51:32,350 --> 00:51:34,510 knowledge. And I think expanding human 1028 00:51:34,510 --> 00:51:38,190 knowledge in a lot of ways and in ways that don't always make 1029 00:51:38,190 --> 00:51:40,390 sense, again, kind of thinking about basic science is great 1030 00:51:40,390 --> 00:51:42,030 because you never know when you're going to need that 1031 00:51:42,030 --> 00:51:43,580 information. I think, you know the 1032 00:51:43,580 --> 00:51:47,540 coronavirus pandemic was such a great example of that where this 1033 00:51:47,540 --> 00:51:50,660 mRNA vaccine was something that was developed, technology that 1034 00:51:50,660 --> 00:51:53,260 was developed and just it's found it's time the same thing 1035 00:51:53,260 --> 00:51:55,020 with coronaviruses. There's very few people in the 1036 00:51:55,020 --> 00:51:57,180 world that actually study coronaviruses and they ended up 1037 00:51:57,180 --> 00:52:01,100 being overnight phenomenons. You know, and it's it was until 1038 00:52:01,100 --> 00:52:04,340 very recently a just the smallest thing that very few 1039 00:52:04,340 --> 00:52:06,980 people in the world did and and ended up being huge and it took 1040 00:52:06,980 --> 00:52:12,060 that investment from public resources and companies into. 1041 00:52:12,980 --> 00:52:15,780 These just basic signs. We never know what's going to 1042 00:52:15,780 --> 00:52:18,620 hit in order for that information to be there for when 1043 00:52:18,620 --> 00:52:22,300 we needed it. So it's not a bad thing that 1044 00:52:22,620 --> 00:52:25,060 there are always going to be people that have different goals 1045 00:52:25,180 --> 00:52:28,420 than the rest of society. And as long as they're supported 1046 00:52:28,420 --> 00:52:32,020 and doing things as ethically as they can in the most rigorous 1047 00:52:32,020 --> 00:52:34,260 fashion, you never know when that knowledge is going to be 1048 00:52:34,260 --> 00:52:36,540 helpful. The problem is, when you start 1049 00:52:36,540 --> 00:52:38,260 to hurt others, you start to hurt yourself. 1050 00:52:38,700 --> 00:52:40,740 Right. And also reject scrutiny. 1051 00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:43,120 Yeah, because I think we should all be under absolutely. 1052 00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:46,520 Like, whether it's from lawmakers or journalists or 1053 00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:50,200 whoever, we should all be implementing checks and balances 1054 00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:51,960 on things that can potentially affect us all. 1055 00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:53,600 Yeah. And in my classroom we talked 1056 00:52:53,600 --> 00:52:54,800 about that. You know, as a research 1057 00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:58,720 scientist, who am I beholden to? Well, we have a lot of ethics 1058 00:52:58,720 --> 00:53:01,800 committees for working with stem cells, for working with animals, 1059 00:53:02,160 --> 00:53:05,520 for working in laboratory spaces, environmental health and 1060 00:53:05,520 --> 00:53:08,460 safety. Ohio Safety, we have to write a 1061 00:53:08,460 --> 00:53:11,060 lot of safety protocols and we have to educate our students 1062 00:53:11,060 --> 00:53:12,660 before they can enter the laboratory. 1063 00:53:13,060 --> 00:53:15,860 And then you know once the science is done, while we have 1064 00:53:15,860 --> 00:53:19,140 the peer review process and how does that work and the 1065 00:53:19,140 --> 00:53:22,660 publication process, things like how do you get funding to even 1066 00:53:22,660 --> 00:53:26,460 do the science and what kind of review process is done for the 1067 00:53:26,460 --> 00:53:28,820 funding and what kind of accountability do we have as 1068 00:53:28,820 --> 00:53:30,620 scientists, the people who pay and. 1069 00:53:31,090 --> 00:53:33,930 Read and review, review our research and and these are all 1070 00:53:33,930 --> 00:53:36,730 processes and a lot of people are involved in just the 1071 00:53:36,730 --> 00:53:41,050 decision to start an experiment. A lot of people have had input 1072 00:53:41,130 --> 00:53:43,570 on your ability to do that before any science actually 1073 00:53:43,570 --> 00:53:46,690 happens in the kind of academic setting that we have in 1074 00:53:46,690 --> 00:53:49,490 university laboratories today. And that's all really new 1075 00:53:49,490 --> 00:53:50,930 information for a lot of students. 1076 00:53:50,930 --> 00:53:53,890 You can't just buy a lot of the reagents. 1077 00:53:54,520 --> 00:53:57,360 Necessary to buy pack yourself. A lot of them are just simply 1078 00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:00,120 not accessible to people who haven't gone through some of 1079 00:54:00,120 --> 00:54:03,080 these regulatory processes. Yeah, I love how, you know, as 1080 00:54:03,080 --> 00:54:05,240 you're you're an academic scientist, you just sort of 1081 00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:07,240 outline the kind of hoops you have to jump through the 1082 00:54:07,240 --> 00:54:09,640 necessary. To do the first experiment, to 1083 00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:13,040 do any kind of science, we have to have all of this safety stuff 1084 00:54:13,040 --> 00:54:14,280 in place. We have to have all of this 1085 00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:18,200 ethics training and the safety training, and we need approval 1086 00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:21,800 to even do the science. And so it's not as simple as I'm 1087 00:54:21,800 --> 00:54:25,570 going to become. A backyard biohacker. 1088 00:54:25,570 --> 00:54:28,490 It's much harder than that, and I think it's really comforting 1089 00:54:28,490 --> 00:54:32,050 to know that there are these checks and balances in the way 1090 00:54:32,050 --> 00:54:35,450 that research is done today. Yeah, must kind of rub you the 1091 00:54:35,450 --> 00:54:38,170 wrong way when you do see a backyard biohacker where they're 1092 00:54:38,170 --> 00:54:41,290 just kind of injecting things in the selves and you know they've 1093 00:54:41,290 --> 00:54:45,050 leapt over all of the hurdles that are there for a reason and 1094 00:54:45,050 --> 00:54:47,010 they can either hurt themselves or worse. 1095 00:54:47,090 --> 00:54:50,060 Yeah, and. That hurts them the most. 1096 00:54:50,060 --> 00:54:52,620 They are putting disinformation out into the world and 1097 00:54:52,620 --> 00:54:54,660 pseudoscience, which is a problem for everyone. 1098 00:54:54,660 --> 00:54:56,220 It's a problem for us as a society. 1099 00:54:56,220 --> 00:54:59,140 But at the end of the day, they're hurting themselves and 1100 00:54:59,460 --> 00:55:01,340 people hurt themselves in all kinds of ways. 1101 00:55:01,340 --> 00:55:03,860 So how is this any different? Again, kind of thinking about, 1102 00:55:03,860 --> 00:55:05,620 you know, people are always going to find ways to try to 1103 00:55:05,620 --> 00:55:08,140 destroy themselves. And if this is their way of 1104 00:55:08,140 --> 00:55:12,220 doing that, we live in a country for good or bad where they have 1105 00:55:12,220 --> 00:55:15,620 the freedom to do that. I am even more of the wrong way 1106 00:55:15,740 --> 00:55:18,780 when people are in places of responsibility and have gone 1107 00:55:18,780 --> 00:55:22,340 through her in these hoops and lie about their work or do 1108 00:55:22,340 --> 00:55:23,700 things that haven't been approved. 1109 00:55:23,700 --> 00:55:27,140 And these kinds of scientific Mavericks are very, very rare. 1110 00:55:27,140 --> 00:55:31,940 But but it does happen. And that is kind of a community 1111 00:55:31,940 --> 00:55:34,140 response, right? Are your colleagues or the 1112 00:55:34,140 --> 00:55:36,860 scientists working in your lab? Are your funding agencies really 1113 00:55:36,860 --> 00:55:39,380 making sure that you're doing the work that you have? 1114 00:55:39,380 --> 00:55:40,660 And so that's an accountability thing. 1115 00:55:40,660 --> 00:55:44,240 It's, again, very rare. But it happened recently with, 1116 00:55:44,360 --> 00:55:48,000 you know, some CRISPR editing in China a few years ago at caused 1117 00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:52,000 a lot of global backlash for good reason. 1118 00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:55,760 And I'm glad that it got so much backlash, but it still happened. 1119 00:55:55,840 --> 00:55:59,200 And these things can still happen unless we make sure that 1120 00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:02,080 we are creating scientific environments and communities 1121 00:56:02,080 --> 00:56:05,880 where not only ethics training, but that circle of integrity is, 1122 00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:09,520 is being maintained. Yeah, they feel like, you know, 1123 00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:12,060 you have a. You put the burden of 1124 00:56:12,060 --> 00:56:15,980 responsibility on yourself for having a well informed public 1125 00:56:16,580 --> 00:56:18,900 from a science perspective. Because I mean how many. 1126 00:56:19,060 --> 00:56:21,740 We can name so many examples where there is a just 1127 00:56:21,740 --> 00:56:24,660 misunderstanding with the technology or the science, like 1128 00:56:24,660 --> 00:56:26,820 stem cells and we all sort of freak out. 1129 00:56:27,460 --> 00:56:30,700 But we're it's all based on misconceptions or a lack of 1130 00:56:30,700 --> 00:56:34,380 fundamental understanding. And it's hard to understand. 1131 00:56:34,580 --> 00:56:36,820 Because exactly right. You could you have a PhD and 1132 00:56:36,820 --> 00:56:39,880 it's still kind of. Because understanding what's 1133 00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:44,000 possible involves a lot of stuff, and I think I try to get 1134 00:56:44,000 --> 00:56:46,800 my students to understand. It's really hard to understand. 1135 00:56:46,800 --> 00:56:49,080 But these are the places you can look for information. 1136 00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:51,280 This is how you should evaluate information. 1137 00:56:51,480 --> 00:56:53,960 And this is background knowledge that you need to have to at 1138 00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:57,720 least start to understand where technologies that are 1139 00:56:57,720 --> 00:56:59,760 successful, the kinds of things that they've had to do to get to 1140 00:56:59,760 --> 00:57:03,440 that point, so that you can feel trust in the scientific 1141 00:57:03,440 --> 00:57:07,510 enterprise, or you can be. A critical thinker or critical 1142 00:57:07,510 --> 00:57:10,310 scientists of the world, A citizen of the world, and be 1143 00:57:10,310 --> 00:57:14,310 able to at least evaluate where the sources are coming from and 1144 00:57:14,310 --> 00:57:16,430 the kinds of perspectives and opinions they're going to have 1145 00:57:16,430 --> 00:57:19,870 based on their role in the scientific or public enterprise. 1146 00:57:19,910 --> 00:57:22,310 And I think an informed citizenry is really important. 1147 00:57:22,310 --> 00:57:24,670 You don't need, you shouldn't need a science education to 1148 00:57:25,150 --> 00:57:27,650 know. That you should be able to trust 1149 00:57:27,850 --> 00:57:31,650 a different source that's kind of a part of a bigger kind of 1150 00:57:31,650 --> 00:57:34,730 conversations about civil society and our ability to 1151 00:57:34,730 --> 00:57:38,090 critically assess information, of which scientific information 1152 00:57:38,090 --> 00:57:40,850 is only a small subset of the deluge of information that 1153 00:57:40,850 --> 00:57:43,210 people are encounter encounter every day. 1154 00:57:43,530 --> 00:57:46,410 One thing I really love bringing it back to the movies a little 1155 00:57:46,410 --> 00:57:50,570 bit is the sense of realism and the accuracy that's being 1156 00:57:50,570 --> 00:57:52,180 achieved. Lately. 1157 00:57:52,180 --> 00:57:55,660 Especially with. Science fiction movies, there's 1158 00:57:56,340 --> 00:57:58,300 you had brought this to my attention. 1159 00:57:58,300 --> 00:58:00,620 There's this group called the Science Entertainment Exchange, 1160 00:58:00,620 --> 00:58:03,460 right? And it's really this group that 1161 00:58:03,860 --> 00:58:09,140 helps film makers get access to scientists from all different 1162 00:58:09,140 --> 00:58:13,580 fields so that they can enhance the accuracy of the science 1163 00:58:13,580 --> 00:58:15,660 they're trying to portray in film. 1164 00:58:16,210 --> 00:58:19,810 And a really good example is the movie Interstellar, where the 1165 00:58:19,810 --> 00:58:22,490 filmmakers, I think Christopher Nolan, the director and writer, 1166 00:58:22,490 --> 00:58:26,210 he met with Kip Thorne, a physicist, and they helped try 1167 00:58:26,210 --> 00:58:28,770 to figure out what would a supermassive black hole actually 1168 00:58:28,770 --> 00:58:31,690 look like. And and we saw it on screen, 1169 00:58:31,690 --> 00:58:33,730 right? And to my knowledge, I guess 1170 00:58:33,730 --> 00:58:37,130 that's like what a massive black hole would actually look like, 1171 00:58:37,210 --> 00:58:39,810 what the gravity would do to the light and color. 1172 00:58:40,150 --> 00:58:41,990 I think that's great. You know, it's because why not 1173 00:58:41,990 --> 00:58:44,110 just get it right? Yeah, and we are getting it 1174 00:58:44,110 --> 00:58:46,590 right in a lot of cases. And I think that's what makes, 1175 00:58:47,110 --> 00:58:50,670 you know, scifi movies and TV shows and, you know, the things 1176 00:58:50,670 --> 00:58:53,310 that are showing up on the visual screen these days as a 1177 00:58:53,310 --> 00:58:56,070 result of these conversations, such great educational material. 1178 00:58:56,310 --> 00:59:00,030 Because these conversations have been had and they seem realistic 1179 00:59:00,030 --> 00:59:02,710 because they're probably based in some kind of reality. 1180 00:59:03,070 --> 00:59:06,510 And that's in comparison to some of the fantasy like thinking 1181 00:59:06,510 --> 00:59:09,680 that. We had when those conversations 1182 00:59:09,760 --> 00:59:13,760 weren't necessarily happening. And it's certainly nice to see 1183 00:59:14,080 --> 00:59:17,440 science that you resonate with or get excited about portrayed 1184 00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:19,360 on screen. I can definitely say that as a 1185 00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:22,640 result of doing this class and never talk to about that, oh, do 1186 00:59:22,640 --> 00:59:24,320 you do this moving? How do you do this movie? 1187 00:59:24,720 --> 00:59:27,920 And I think it's because we try to see ourselves and the media 1188 00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:29,720 that, you know, we see on the screen. 1189 00:59:29,920 --> 00:59:32,040 It's always really exciting to be able to point to that film. 1190 00:59:32,040 --> 00:59:34,040 It's like that's the science that I do and you can see it 1191 00:59:34,040 --> 00:59:36,460 right there. And it's not always accurate, 1192 00:59:36,500 --> 00:59:38,740 but it's the only way that we assigned. 1193 00:59:38,740 --> 00:59:43,220 Us often have that ability to talk to people and give them a 1194 00:59:43,220 --> 00:59:47,300 little small picture of what we do every day for decades 1195 00:59:47,300 --> 00:59:49,500 sometimes. And it'll show up for like 2 1196 00:59:49,500 --> 00:59:51,300 minutes on on a movie. And that's the thing that'll 1197 00:59:51,300 --> 00:59:53,740 stick with you, right? Not whatever academic papers are 1198 00:59:53,740 --> 00:59:57,140 put out or conversations that I have or talks that I give. 1199 00:59:57,140 --> 01:00:01,860 But that one minute on screen is the work of of so many people 1200 01:00:01,900 --> 01:00:03,340 that can be really exciting to see. 1201 01:00:04,040 --> 01:00:05,480 I'm sure, even if it's only two minutes, yeah. 1202 01:00:05,880 --> 01:00:07,280 Or less. Right. 1203 01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:10,280 Yeah. In your class, I'm sure there 1204 01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:13,520 are common themes and patterns that pop out. 1205 01:00:13,560 --> 01:00:15,760 I mean, I think with Jurassic Park, we're talking about 1206 01:00:15,760 --> 01:00:19,600 hubris, right? And hubris is a big one on in 1207 01:00:19,600 --> 01:00:22,000 sci-fi, right. We just kind of fly too close to 1208 01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:25,480 the sun kind of thing. What else comes out like? 1209 01:00:25,790 --> 01:00:29,270 Most commonly in conversations when you're exploring Scifi. 1210 01:00:29,310 --> 01:00:32,670 Yeah, I think one of the things that, you know, I arranged the 1211 01:00:32,670 --> 01:00:35,910 movie to do is to kind of build up to this idea of you know, 1212 01:00:35,910 --> 01:00:40,070 what does it mean to be human in a technologically advanced 1213 01:00:40,070 --> 01:00:42,110 world. And I think you know the the 1214 01:00:42,110 --> 01:00:45,230 next movie I do in the sequence is Ghost in the Shell where you 1215 01:00:45,230 --> 01:00:50,590 really have these cyber enhanced humans interacting with AI that 1216 01:00:50,910 --> 01:00:54,270 is come to life and it's kind of a terrorist in the society. 1217 01:00:54,750 --> 01:00:58,630 And thinking about how can you tell what is human when we are 1218 01:00:58,630 --> 01:01:01,470 so integrated with technology, whether that be through 1219 01:01:01,470 --> 01:01:06,830 prostheses, artificial organs, artificial bodies, brain 1220 01:01:06,830 --> 01:01:09,710 implants or brain computer interface kinds of structures 1221 01:01:09,710 --> 01:01:13,070 that help to connect the biology of the brain to the technologies 1222 01:01:13,070 --> 01:01:16,590 that we live in the world. And when you start to see in 1223 01:01:16,590 --> 01:01:19,710 parallel from the computer science side, technologies that 1224 01:01:19,710 --> 01:01:23,710 start to look and sound human and. 1225 01:01:24,140 --> 01:01:28,220 Perhaps think like a human, then what What is the boundary of 1226 01:01:28,220 --> 01:01:29,700 what is a human versus not as one? 1227 01:01:29,700 --> 01:01:34,220 And how should we then be treating our technologies and 1228 01:01:34,220 --> 01:01:38,460 people and the intersection thereof when the lines are 1229 01:01:38,460 --> 01:01:41,020 really getting blurred. And I think that's something we 1230 01:01:41,020 --> 01:01:43,580 built up, right, if we start with the genetic engineering 1231 01:01:43,580 --> 01:01:45,420 side. And that's not nature, it's not 1232 01:01:45,420 --> 01:01:48,740 natural, but it is something. But it's still based in biology 1233 01:01:48,740 --> 01:01:51,700 to the spectrum of, well, now we have a lot of technology that's 1234 01:01:51,700 --> 01:01:53,620 starting to interface with biology. 1235 01:01:54,080 --> 01:01:56,600 And independent of biology, starting to look a lot like 1236 01:01:56,600 --> 01:01:59,600 biology. You know, what is human and how 1237 01:01:59,600 --> 01:02:01,840 do we treat ourselves in our societies? 1238 01:02:02,240 --> 01:02:05,800 So yeah, in that movie you have cyber enhanced humans, You have 1239 01:02:05,800 --> 01:02:09,960 a character who's really just their brain is left over from 1240 01:02:09,960 --> 01:02:12,880 death and it's put into a kind of an Android so that it's a 1241 01:02:13,080 --> 01:02:16,720 super soldier. You have other tech like people 1242 01:02:16,720 --> 01:02:20,320 are communicating with other people via telepathy. 1 1243 01:02:20,320 --> 01:02:24,200 character gets hurt and. He he loses his eyes and so he 1244 01:02:24,200 --> 01:02:27,920 has new sort of robotic eyes put in where you can see way better 1245 01:02:27,920 --> 01:02:29,840 and seeing the night, seeing the dark and all that. 1246 01:02:30,560 --> 01:02:32,480 So anybody who gets hurt gets hand in hand stray. 1247 01:02:32,480 --> 01:02:35,240 You lose an arm, you get a new arm, a robotic arm. 1248 01:02:35,640 --> 01:02:38,400 There's also hacking into people's brains so they can 1249 01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:40,160 steal information. They're also putting false 1250 01:02:40,160 --> 01:02:41,800 memories in your brain, which is really interesting. 1251 01:02:42,170 --> 01:02:45,090 So yeah, I guess the question comes back with what is human? 1252 01:02:45,330 --> 01:02:48,770 If you have lost your biological eyes and you have new robotic 1253 01:02:48,770 --> 01:02:50,330 eyes, are you human being anymore? 1254 01:02:50,490 --> 01:02:53,650 You're definitely an enhanced human, but I think we're all 1255 01:02:53,650 --> 01:02:55,610 kind of wondering what to call that. 1256 01:02:55,810 --> 01:02:58,330 Yeah. And I think it's really amazing 1257 01:02:58,330 --> 01:03:01,770 because you can point to, oh, you lost your heart, OK, 1258 01:03:01,970 --> 01:03:03,330 artificial heart. That's not human. 1259 01:03:03,370 --> 01:03:05,490 You're still human. You know, eyes. 1260 01:03:05,490 --> 01:03:08,890 OK, So these individual organs. Don't make us human. 1261 01:03:08,890 --> 01:03:11,530 But certainly that idea of the nervous system, right, the 1262 01:03:11,530 --> 01:03:15,770 brain, the kind of epicenter of, you know, reports people things. 1263 01:03:15,850 --> 01:03:18,610 Yeah. Starts to get at oh, well, now 1264 01:03:18,690 --> 01:03:23,210 you've kind of gone beyond just an individual organ. 1265 01:03:23,410 --> 01:03:25,930 And that's kind of a place that I also try to push back with 1266 01:03:25,930 --> 01:03:28,930 students. So an example of of this is, 1267 01:03:28,930 --> 01:03:31,770 well, there are a lot of things that are increasingly thought 1268 01:03:31,770 --> 01:03:34,490 to. Influence the way that the brain 1269 01:03:34,490 --> 01:03:37,930 works, things like the gut. So you know you are what you 1270 01:03:37,970 --> 01:03:39,890 eat. To what extent is does your 1271 01:03:39,890 --> 01:03:43,290 diet, your microbiome influence the way that your brain work and 1272 01:03:43,290 --> 01:03:45,810 how much does that make you who you are. 1273 01:03:46,130 --> 01:03:50,250 So I mean the fact that we have bodies that have kind of this 1274 01:03:50,650 --> 01:03:53,530 information that goes from all of the body to the brain and 1275 01:03:53,530 --> 01:03:56,930 then back means that there's this feedback network that can 1276 01:03:56,930 --> 01:04:00,890 the brain be the brain? Can you be yourself without, you 1277 01:04:00,890 --> 01:04:04,100 know, your body as it exists? I mean, that's a lot of biology 1278 01:04:04,100 --> 01:04:05,780 that has nothing to do with neuroscience, but it's the way 1279 01:04:05,780 --> 01:04:07,820 that neuroscience interacts with the body. 1280 01:04:08,060 --> 01:04:10,740 I mean that's all new knowledge. Like we we don't know a lot of 1281 01:04:10,740 --> 01:04:13,300 about a lot of that, which is really fascinating. 1282 01:04:13,540 --> 01:04:15,900 The idea of hacking memory is something that people are trying 1283 01:04:15,900 --> 01:04:19,460 to do with engineering individual neurons in the brain 1284 01:04:19,460 --> 01:04:22,980 and trying to code and reaccess them using bring computer 1285 01:04:22,980 --> 01:04:25,980 interface, you know bring computer interfaces allowed 1286 01:04:25,980 --> 01:04:28,020 people to walk again. So thinking about. 1287 01:04:28,330 --> 01:04:31,290 Creating prostheses that access the brain and the spinal cord, 1288 01:04:31,290 --> 01:04:35,090 help paralyzed patients take steps after not being able to 1289 01:04:35,090 --> 01:04:37,690 walk as technology that just came out in this past year. 1290 01:04:38,130 --> 01:04:40,890 These are all things that are, you know, happening in 1291 01:04:40,890 --> 01:04:44,570 laboratories, happening in a lot of tissue engineering labs, a 1292 01:04:44,570 --> 01:04:47,530 lot of different technologies for not only artificial organs 1293 01:04:47,530 --> 01:04:51,370 but in neuroscience, thinking about regenerating the brain, 1294 01:04:51,370 --> 01:04:55,450 enhancing the brain, and so the future envisioned by something 1295 01:04:55,450 --> 01:04:57,950 like Ghost in the Shell. Especially in the advent of 1296 01:04:57,950 --> 01:05:01,350 ChatGPT and all of this AI kind of language modeling that we're 1297 01:05:01,350 --> 01:05:05,230 seeing is becoming again kind of more Gray perhaps than it ever 1298 01:05:05,230 --> 01:05:08,150 has been in the past. And I'm not a computer scientist 1299 01:05:08,150 --> 01:05:11,790 and I'm not sure to what degree programs and computer systems 1300 01:05:11,790 --> 01:05:16,670 like ChatGPT are true AI and the sense of self or being or or 1301 01:05:16,670 --> 01:05:18,510 thought. They certainly sound like 1302 01:05:18,510 --> 01:05:20,790 humans. They certainly able to talk, 1303 01:05:21,510 --> 01:05:24,830 communicate the way and in patterns the way that we do. 1304 01:05:25,210 --> 01:05:28,290 And if that's the only thing that makes us human compared to, 1305 01:05:28,290 --> 01:05:31,210 say, animals, that ability to communicate, you know, that's 1306 01:05:31,210 --> 01:05:34,370 maybe a line or a boundary that some people start to get worried 1307 01:05:34,370 --> 01:05:36,090 about. Yeah, we're going to have to 1308 01:05:36,090 --> 01:05:39,890 work some things out as we start interfacing with technology 1309 01:05:39,890 --> 01:05:41,690 more. And trusting it. 1310 01:05:42,070 --> 01:05:44,990 I think things that sound like us were more likely to believe 1311 01:05:44,990 --> 01:05:47,350 and trust, and to what degree that contributes to 1312 01:05:47,350 --> 01:05:50,510 disinformation and other kinds of scary things that we already 1313 01:05:50,510 --> 01:05:52,030 have as human society is something to think. 1314 01:05:52,110 --> 01:05:54,790 About, but that'll be a tumultuous journey. 1315 01:05:55,390 --> 01:05:58,270 I think movie Like I, Robot is interesting too, because you 1316 01:05:58,270 --> 01:06:01,710 have Will Smith, this character who has a lot of prejudices 1317 01:06:01,710 --> 01:06:04,790 against robots and he hates robots, he thinks. 1318 01:06:05,120 --> 01:06:08,120 He's sort of oldfashioned and he he's skeptical of them. 1319 01:06:08,240 --> 01:06:09,720 He's skeptical of their intentions. 1320 01:06:09,760 --> 01:06:13,080 Even the Mandalorian has a huge subset of that. 1321 01:06:13,080 --> 01:06:17,760 I think being skeptical of human robot interactions is also an 1322 01:06:17,840 --> 01:06:19,280 AI, right this even seller. Film. 1323 01:06:19,400 --> 01:06:22,040 This is happening in all my meetings as well, like I have, 1324 01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:26,920 you know with my team, I have this this AI that I invite on 1325 01:06:27,120 --> 01:06:29,400 that listens to the conversation, transcribes it and 1326 01:06:29,400 --> 01:06:32,520 then pops out, you know, a transcript that I can watch and. 1327 01:06:32,940 --> 01:06:35,780 We joke around about it that I don't even have to be there 1328 01:06:35,780 --> 01:06:38,460 anymore and who is this thing listening to us? 1329 01:06:38,460 --> 01:06:42,260 And it has become a stuff of jokes, but it is enhancement in 1330 01:06:42,260 --> 01:06:46,020 a way, because it's my tool. Yeah, there was a great article 1331 01:06:46,020 --> 01:06:48,940 just the other day about how these kinds of technologies are 1332 01:06:48,940 --> 01:06:53,580 being used in medical settings to help patients remember what 1333 01:06:53,580 --> 01:06:56,100 was just being said in the doctor's office, which. 1334 01:06:56,510 --> 01:06:59,030 You know, most patients apparently lose, don't remember 1335 01:06:59,030 --> 01:07:02,030 80% of what was discussed with their doctor right after that 1336 01:07:02,030 --> 01:07:04,630 conversation. So not only having a record of 1337 01:07:04,630 --> 01:07:07,750 that meeting, but helping doctors to spend less time on 1338 01:07:07,750 --> 01:07:11,590 the administrative stuff so that they have that opportunity to be 1339 01:07:11,590 --> 01:07:13,830 human with their patients. Yeah, to be doctors. 1340 01:07:14,150 --> 01:07:17,510 And so that is not an enhancement of perhaps it is an 1341 01:07:17,510 --> 01:07:19,830 enhancement of the of the doctors where we expected them 1342 01:07:19,830 --> 01:07:23,710 to spend hundreds of hours doing paperwork and very few 1343 01:07:23,710 --> 01:07:25,670 interfacing with patients that this technology has. 1344 01:07:26,020 --> 01:07:29,780 Enable them to live fuller lives and be more present as people. 1345 01:07:29,780 --> 01:07:32,140 Definitely. I mean, it's certainly I get 1346 01:07:32,140 --> 01:07:35,220 time back, yeah. And things are made more 1347 01:07:35,220 --> 01:07:38,100 convenient. How much has that made you more 1348 01:07:38,100 --> 01:07:41,020 able to be human, you know, and to enjoy the human experience? 1349 01:07:41,420 --> 01:07:42,860 Yeah. I can certainly go for like an 1350 01:07:42,860 --> 01:07:45,300 afternoon walk earlier, which is nice. 1351 01:07:45,980 --> 01:07:49,140 Yeah. So as we kind of like wrap up, I 1352 01:07:49,140 --> 01:07:52,740 wanted to talk about, I remember you saying. 1353 01:07:53,040 --> 01:07:55,360 Somewhere that you feel like we're kind of living in a scifi 1354 01:07:55,360 --> 01:07:59,040 film today in a way, given the current pace of change and what 1355 01:07:59,040 --> 01:08:03,520 areas of science do you feel like are most scifi right now? 1356 01:08:03,760 --> 01:08:06,080 Yeah, I mean, I think we already discussed a couple of the ones 1357 01:08:06,080 --> 01:08:08,880 that I'm excited again as a stem cell researcher interested in 1358 01:08:08,880 --> 01:08:12,120 neuroscience. So using stem cells to think 1359 01:08:12,120 --> 01:08:15,120 about how we regenerate the nervous system and the spinal 1360 01:08:15,120 --> 01:08:18,850 cord in particular. I am so excited about these stem 1361 01:08:18,850 --> 01:08:21,850 cell technologies finally making to patients these artificial 1362 01:08:21,850 --> 01:08:25,490 organs that are being developed and and whether animals are in 1363 01:08:25,490 --> 01:08:29,770 the dish and are finally being able to cure people with 1364 01:08:29,970 --> 01:08:35,970 biological drugs using cells and tissues instead of relying on on 1365 01:08:35,970 --> 01:08:38,729 medicines that have been recycled or reused or really, 1366 01:08:38,729 --> 01:08:42,689 really hard to control. They just don't have the 1367 01:08:42,689 --> 01:08:45,970 complexity right that some of this biology has the capacity to 1368 01:08:45,970 --> 01:08:46,569 do. So that's. 1369 01:08:46,840 --> 01:08:50,600 What I feel really excited about in the science that is happening 1370 01:08:50,600 --> 01:08:53,160 today and is making it to clinical trials, things like 1371 01:08:53,160 --> 01:08:56,279 being able to use CRISPR engineering to genetically 1372 01:08:56,279 --> 01:09:00,920 modify cancer cells to be CAR T cells, right to be a really 1373 01:09:00,920 --> 01:09:04,960 powerful cancer therapy. The idea that you can hopefully 1374 01:09:05,000 --> 01:09:08,920 edit the cells of patients with sickle cell disease so that you 1375 01:09:08,920 --> 01:09:11,680 know millions of people with sickle cell don't have to suffer 1376 01:09:11,680 --> 01:09:15,479 their whole lives. These are really, really great. 1377 01:09:16,680 --> 01:09:20,720 Strides that bioengineers have made in the last 20 years in the 1378 01:09:20,720 --> 01:09:23,880 advent of gene editing and stem cell research. 1379 01:09:24,240 --> 01:09:28,680 That is just the stuff of of scifi films and it's only going 1380 01:09:28,680 --> 01:09:30,120 to get better. All of the stuff that we're 1381 01:09:30,120 --> 01:09:31,880 seeing right now is just first generation. 1382 01:09:32,200 --> 01:09:35,120 So you can't, I mean we can only imagine what this will look like 1383 01:09:35,120 --> 01:09:37,760 in 50, a hundred years. They'll be looking you know at 1384 01:09:37,760 --> 01:09:41,240 the twenty 20s and the 1990s as being so old schools and when 1385 01:09:41,240 --> 01:09:43,029 they look at. You know, the films and the 1386 01:09:43,029 --> 01:09:46,790 books that we thought were these out of the world things, they'll 1387 01:09:46,790 --> 01:09:49,950 think it was fantasy and they'll probably have other things to 1388 01:09:49,950 --> 01:09:52,470 write about, other kinds of technologies that are going to 1389 01:09:52,630 --> 01:09:56,350 be more on the mind than kind of for teen gene editing, perhaps. 1390 01:09:56,350 --> 01:09:58,830 Who knows? It's nice to think about what 1391 01:09:58,910 --> 01:10:02,350 this era of science will look like, you know, 100 years from 1392 01:10:02,350 --> 01:10:04,790 now when we couldn't even imagine this era of science even 1393 01:10:04,790 --> 01:10:06,030 20 years ago. Totally. 1394 01:10:06,580 --> 01:10:10,180 My last question is, you are in your class using science fiction 1395 01:10:10,180 --> 01:10:13,580 to understand technology and the ethical implications. 1396 01:10:13,980 --> 01:10:17,500 What do you say to science fiction writers and film makers? 1397 01:10:17,500 --> 01:10:20,300 What kind of movies do you want to see as a scientist and as 1398 01:10:20,300 --> 01:10:23,060 someone who clearly thinks very deeply about science fiction, 1399 01:10:23,220 --> 01:10:27,020 what kind of stories and how are the stories told? 1400 01:10:27,300 --> 01:10:30,340 What would you hope? For, you know, I think the 1401 01:10:30,340 --> 01:10:33,970 beauty of science fiction. Is not necessarily technology, 1402 01:10:33,970 --> 01:10:35,850 right? It's how humans interact with 1403 01:10:35,850 --> 01:10:38,730 that technology. And there are so many human 1404 01:10:38,730 --> 01:10:41,610 stories and at the end of the day, right, science fiction are 1405 01:10:41,610 --> 01:10:46,130 just human stories. And so having conversations with 1406 01:10:46,130 --> 01:10:49,250 scientists about what they're excited about and laboratory 1407 01:10:49,730 --> 01:10:52,850 reading, going to conferences, just having those interactions, 1408 01:10:52,850 --> 01:10:55,690 things like that science fiction forum for film makers I think 1409 01:10:55,690 --> 01:10:58,650 are really remarkable because they start to open up 1410 01:10:58,650 --> 01:11:01,810 conversations between. You know, folk who are spending 1411 01:11:01,810 --> 01:11:04,170 a lot of time in the laboratory are really, really excited and 1412 01:11:04,170 --> 01:11:07,050 have a lot of knowledge about their specific subdiscipline, 1413 01:11:07,050 --> 01:11:09,570 what they're excited about. And I think science fiction 1414 01:11:09,570 --> 01:11:13,890 authors have this remarkable ability to take a step back from 1415 01:11:13,890 --> 01:11:17,490 again being in the weeds and look at the forest and perhaps, 1416 01:11:17,490 --> 01:11:22,130 you know, look at continents and and worlds and think about what 1417 01:11:22,170 --> 01:11:25,010 all of these, you know, real things that we're doing it what 1418 01:11:25,010 --> 01:11:29,030 they could become. And you know, we feel inspired 1419 01:11:29,030 --> 01:11:30,950 by science fiction. I hope science fiction becomes 1420 01:11:30,950 --> 01:11:33,030 inspired by us. But that can't happen unless 1421 01:11:33,030 --> 01:11:36,390 those conversations happen. Yeah, and maybe more hopeful 1422 01:11:36,470 --> 01:11:38,910 stories as well. You know, I think more Gattaca's 1423 01:11:38,910 --> 01:11:40,550 would be. Yeah, and we're living in a 1424 01:11:40,550 --> 01:11:44,630 great, hopeful time. And the the hope should make 1425 01:11:45,030 --> 01:11:48,850 stories that. Are enriching enough lifting and 1426 01:11:48,850 --> 01:11:52,050 hopefully we see more of those hit film instead of, you know, a 1427 01:11:52,050 --> 01:11:54,770 lot of the depressing stuff that we end up seeing, unfortunately 1428 01:11:54,930 --> 01:11:57,610 or fortunately, because as you said, I think it teaches us 1429 01:11:57,610 --> 01:12:00,130 about hubris and ways that things can't go wrong. 1430 01:12:00,130 --> 01:12:01,130 A. Little bit above a. 1431 01:12:01,130 --> 01:12:03,730 Little bit of both. Well, where can people go to 1432 01:12:03,730 --> 01:12:05,890 find out more about your work if they want to? 1433 01:12:06,170 --> 01:12:09,090 Yeah. So I have just recently moved to 1434 01:12:09,090 --> 01:12:12,370 Tufts and so I'm just starting my laboratory there, so 1435 01:12:12,370 --> 01:12:14,970 information. About me and some of the stuff 1436 01:12:14,970 --> 01:12:20,210 we do in my lab can be found on our tough faculty pages and 1437 01:12:20,210 --> 01:12:23,050 hopefully you see more work coming out in my lab on how we 1438 01:12:23,050 --> 01:12:25,290 can use stem cells to regenerate the spinal cord. 1439 01:12:25,290 --> 01:12:28,970 You know, as we continue doing this great work and I hope to be 1440 01:12:28,970 --> 01:12:32,690 working more on this class and thinking more about how we can 1441 01:12:32,690 --> 01:12:35,610 use science fiction and integrate that into our 1442 01:12:35,610 --> 01:12:39,290 educational model for getting people excited about research 1443 01:12:39,290 --> 01:12:42,090 and about the science that we do as bioengineers. 1444 01:12:42,430 --> 01:12:45,870 But also to think about these bigger picture things, ethics, 1445 01:12:45,870 --> 01:12:48,430 society and what our role as scientists are in the world. 1446 01:12:48,670 --> 01:12:51,230 Great. Well, we will leave it there. 1447 01:12:51,310 --> 01:12:53,430 Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. 1448 01:12:53,470 --> 01:12:54,590 Yeah. Thanks so much, Dustin. 1449 01:12:54,590 --> 01:12:58,110 It was really great to be here. Thanks for listening to this 1450 01:12:58,110 --> 01:13:00,870 episode of Curiously. I hope you enjoyed this 1451 01:13:00,870 --> 01:13:02,710 conversation with Dr. Nisha Iyer. 1452 01:13:03,430 --> 01:13:05,870 Stay tuned for more conversations with people I meet 1453 01:13:05,870 --> 01:13:06,390 along the way.