"Ableism" & synthetic biology

Please see the message from Gregor Wolbring below, which is about participating in a survey that his students have designed concerning attitudes towards synthetic biology. I would like to recommend this to you, and to distribute widely. Wolbring is perhaps the leading theoriest of 'able-ism', which says we are heading into a world in which we are always already disabled. It is one of the more sobering versions of transhumanism currently on the market.

"I am the convener of a team of four undergraduate students (all in thebachelor of health sciences in my faculty, three finished the firstyear, one finished the second year) who will compete at theInternational Genetically Engineered Machine Competition iGEM"The International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition is thepremiere Synthetic Biology competition and currently the largestSynthetic Biology conference in the world. Working at their own schoolsover the summer, participants use standard biological parts to design,build, and operate biological systems in living cells. During the firstweekend of November, they share their work at the iGEM Competition Jamboree at MIT and in competition for a variety of awards forexcellence. They add their new parts to the Registry of StandardBiological Parts for the students in the next year's competition."

http://parts.mit.edu/igem08/index.php/What_is_iGEM

The Calgary IGEM Ethics team is the first undergraduate team allowed to look into the ethical, legal, social.. issues of synthetic biology. The students developed this survey and plan to use this survey as one output for its Nov presentation.I sent you this email as you are linked to various networks and I hope that you send this email through your networks so that the students get many responses to the survey they designed.You can find the survey here

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspxsm=u3DnQ2vRzuA2RF_2bMb8KYaw_3d_3d

I hope that the students receive many responses. They worked very hard on the survey.

Thanks again for your help.

Cheers

Gregor--

Dr. Gregor Wolbring

Assistant Professor

University of Calgary webpage: http://www.bioethicsanddisability.org/

biweekly column The Choice is Yours: http://www.innovationwatch.com/commentary_choiceisyours.htm

Nano Bio Info Cogno Synbio Blog:http://wolbring.wordpress.com/

What Sorts of People blog: http://whatsortsofpeople.wordpress.com/