Team:Bio Without Borders/Public Engagement

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Public Engagement & Outreach

For public engagement, we first decided to run two sessions of the public forum "Editing Our Evolution". This forum was designed by the Boston Museum of Science as part of the Building With Biology grant that aimed at creating outreach events for museum settings. The forum asked participants to respond to scenarios where gene therapy and gene editing were used to edit the human genome. The forum was a great success, and we were inspired to create a forum of our own. "Who's Looking at your Genes?" is a forum around the issues surrounding genomic privacy. This subject resonated with our team, which is diverse and has representation from groups that are potentially affected negatively by the unrestrained use of DNA-based technology. DNA testing is becoming routine and widespread within our society, touching everything from immigration law to personal genome exploration to catching serial killers. What are the ramifications of the accessibility of our DNA information? How should society respond? Who are the gatekeepers? Our forum was designed to raise awareness of the issues and get the public thinking about how we should shepherd this technology so that it is used for the good of all.