Keynote Speakers

Dr. Gregory Stock has a Doctorate in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University, and an MBA from Harvard University.  He is a passionate advocate for a broad public debate on new bio-medical technologies and their implications, leading to wise public policies surrounding their realization. Of particular interest to him are the implications for society, medicine, and business of the human genome project and associated developments emerging from today’s revolution in molecular genetics and bioinformatics. A prolific author and recognized authority on the impact of new technologies on human society, Gregory has edited Engineering The Human Germline: An Exploration of the Science and Ethics of Altering the Genes We Pass to Our Children.  His best-known work is Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future, which won the Kistler Book Award for Best Science Book for 2002.

Margaret Atwood has been a dominant presence in the Canadian and international literary world for almost 40 years.  Her prolific writing has been translated into over 20 languages.  She has won many national and international writing awards, including the Governor-General’s Award and the Booker Prize.  Witty, urbane and provocative, join Margaret as she dares us to look inside of “Pandora’s Box” with her.  Drawing on her best-selling 2003 novel Oryx and Crake for inspiration, Margaret asks where genetic research could take us if we leave our compassion and ethics behind.  After her speech, Margaret will be taking questions from our delegates.

(From The Hollow Men (1925), by T.S. Eliot)

Grant Gillett, MBChB, PhD, is Professor of Medical Ethics at the Bioethics Centre and Professor of Neurosurgery at the Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago. He also teaches philosophy – a discipline that he sees as one that helps answer the fundamental questions of mind and body that confronted him throughout his practice as a neurosurgeon. Grant obtained his doctorate in Philosophy at Oxford University and has authored The Mind and its Discontents (1999), and Bioethics in the clinic: Hippocratic reflections (2004) as well as over 200 articles in general philosophy, philosophy of mind, medical ethics, philosophy of psychiatry, and philosophical theology. He is a member of the New Zealand Medical Association Ethics Committee and of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Ethics committee.  His views are often sought by media on issues such as stem cell research and the "right to die" debate (most recently during the Terry Schiavo case in the United States).  His current research interest lies in topics to do with genetics and cultural reality, subjectivity in medicine, and moral issues surrounding human identity and action.