Department of Sociology
The Second Annual Missouri Life Sciences and Society Symposium
The Second Annual Missouri Life Sciences and Society Symposium opened with Jane Maienschein's keynote, "Whose Views of Life?: Embryos, Cloning and Stem Cells." Here, Professor Maienschein (Regents' Professor of Philosophy and Biology and Director of the Center for Biology and Society -- Arizona State University) is greeted by Symposium organizer, Peter M. Hall, Professor Emeritus.
Symposium speaker, Assistant Professor Charis Thompson (University of California, Berkeley) visits between sessions with Garland E. Allen, Professor
of Biology (Washington University in St. Louis) who served to introduce the keynote speaker.
Graduate students (left to right) Kuo-Yang Tang, Amy Lane, and Maxim Kokushkin attend a symposium session.
Shobita Parthasarathy, currently in a post-doctoral fellowship at Northwestern University, spoke on "U.S. and U.K. development of genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer".
Session discussant, Professor Mary Jo Neitz (MU Sociology) with speaker, Assistant Professor Karen-Sue Taussig (University of Minnesota, joint appointment in anthropology and medicine and faculty associate in the Center for Bioethics) and session presider, Assistant Professor Beth Barham (MU Rural Sociology). Professor Taussig spoke on "Technologies of the Self: NatureCulture and the Desire for Regenerative Medicine."
Session presider Jacquelyn Litt, (MU's Director of Women's and Gender Studies and Associate Professor, Women's and Gender Studies and Sociology) with speaker Professor Françoise Baylis (Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia and Consultant to Canadian Federal Government on stem cell and reproductive health issues). Professor Baylis' topic was "Embrionic Stem Cell Research: Policy and Politics."
Graduate student Kendra Yoder waits for a symposium session to begin.
The medical and political import of the symposium topic drew Missouri State Legislator, Representative Judy Baker (in red -- 25th House District).
Among the notables attending the 2005 Life Sciences and Society Symposium were Professor Jay Gubrium and Chancellor Brady Deaton.
The symposium's closing keynote, "Technology, (Im)mortality and the Rhetoric of 'Choice'," came from Associate Professor Barbara Koenig (Stanford University, Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences -- Executive Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics).
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University of Missouri
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