KNUST Faculty of Law to hold 2nd public lecture May 6

The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Faculty of Law is set to hold its second Legal Scholars and Lawyers Public Lecture on May 6, 2022.

The online event will host Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery to speak on the topic, ‘Healthy Bioethics: Making Good Choices about Genome Editing.’

The speaker is a Professor of Health Care Law at the University College, London, and a visiting Professor of Bioethics Governance at the University of Oxford.

Synopsis of Lecture 

This lecture explores the characteristics of good decision-making on the deployment of technologies that offer the opportunity to improve human health and well-being but are seen by some to compromise fundamental human values. 

We have good reason to hope that genome editing of plants might promote food security and of mosquitoes might play an important role in the control of malaria and filarial infections. 

These are important issues for Ghana. Yet we also know that concerns have been raised about the safety and moral implications of using these techniques.

Scientific advances must be made responsibly but we should not rob the vulnerable people of protection unless there are good reasons to do so.

Countries across the world have established independent expert multi-disciplinary bioethics committees (as recommended by UNESCO) and many have developed their work through forms of deliberative democracy.

The experiences of the UK and in particular the recent work of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics on genome editing offers an opportunity to reflect on this approach and how it needs to be applied to provide a sound foundation for healthy public bioethics.

These issues have a public character concerning our common lives, but they engage our personal value systems. Good governance needs to establish the legitimacy of decisions in the context of moral pluralism but where there is shared commitment to getting these right.