Common Decency & Common Sense

July 9, 2008 — dsobsey

 On July 5th, the parents of a five-year old child with autism reported that they were asked to leave a Smitty’s restaurant in Edmonton, Alberta because their daughter was disturbing the other customers. According to her mother, when they tried to explain that her behaviour was part of the child’s disability and that she would calm down quickly, the restaurant manager said in that case the family should not take their child out in public. But that is only one of many stories…. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Ableism, Appearance norms, Applied ethics, Disability, Disability and the law, Discrimination, Families, Law and public policy, Marginalization, Mild rants, Norms and normalcy, Public policy. Tags: . 2 Comments »

What Sorts of World: A synthetic biology survey developed by my students

July 9, 2008 — wolbring

the World is yours to shape

Dear readers of this blog,

As you are linked to various networks I hope that you send this post through your networks so that the students get many responses to the synthetic biology survey they designed. They worked very hard on the survey. You find the survey here.

I am the convener of a team of four undergraduate students (all in the bachelor of health sciences in my faculty, three finished the first year, one finished the second year) that looks into the ethical, legal, social. issues of synthetic biology. They the “Calgary iGEM Ethics Team” will present their finding -which will include the results of the survey- at the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition iGEM.

“The International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition is the premiere Synthetic Biology competition and currently the largest Synthetic Biology conference in the world. Working at their own schools over the summer, participants use standard biological parts to design, build, and operate biological systems in living cells. During the first weekend of November, they share their work at the iGEM Competition Jamboree at MIT and in competition for a variety of awards for excellence. They add their new parts to the Registry of Standard Biological Parts for the students in the next year’s competition.” For details, see here.

The Calgary iGEM Ethics team is the first undergraduate team to present on the ethical, legal, social issues of synthetic biology at iGEM.

Thanks again for your help.
Cheers
Gregor

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