Arts & Lectures
2001-2002 Season Lecture Series News Release
For Immediate Release

March 19, 2002
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@sa.ucsb.edu

Leading scientist Gregory Stock delivers the lecture
“Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future”
at UCSB Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall

Summary Facts:

Dr. Gregory Stock, a prolific author and recognized authority on the impact of new technologies on human society, will present the lecture Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future, based upon his latest book of the same name, on Monday, April 22 at 4 pm in UCSB Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. This is a free event. Dr. Stock is the Director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at UCLA’s School of Medicine. He explores critical technologies poised to have large impacts on humanity’s future and the shape of medical science. His goal has been to bring about a broad public debate on these technologies and their implications, leading to wise public policies. He is particularly interested in the implications for society, medicine and business of the human genome project and associated developments emerging from today’s revolution in molecular genetics.

Dr. Stock’s most recent book, the just published Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future (Houghton Mifflin), looks far beyond a future of cloning people. Stock postulates that as scientists rapidly improve their ability to identify, screen and manipulate genes, people will want to protect their future children from diseases, help them live longer and even influence their looks and abilities. The book has won praise from Alvin Toffler and James D. Watson and further establishes Stock as one of the foremost thinkers about genetics. Glenn McGee, author of The Perfect Baby and Editor in Chief of The American Journal of Bioethics, claims, “Gregory Stock has the imagination, courage and scientific vision to look at our future square in the face. This is the most important book ever written about what we could do to make better people. Even when Greg’s beautiful future scares me, I cannot put his book down because it challenges everything I thought I knew about human nature.”

Dr. Stock has also edited Engineering The Human Germline: An Exploration of the Science and Ethics of Altering the Genes We Pass to Our Children (Oxford University Press 2000), a three-part examination of some of the most exciting questions science has to offer, with essays by leading scientists and thinkers. Stock’s 1993 book Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism (Simon & Schuster) claims that humankind and technology have combined into a new global entity, a living extension of humankind acting through a complex system of computers and offering a promise of ever-greater prosperity.

Among his other books is the best selling volume on ethical dilemmas The Book of Questions, which has been translated into seventeen languages and is in its fifty-fifth printing. Sequels to the book include The Book of Questions: Business, Politics, and Ethics and a new book that will explore how coming technologies will reshape our everyday lives.

This lecture by Gregory Stock is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, books by Gregory Stock will be available for purchase and signing.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.

©2002 UCSB Arts & Lectures, University of California, Santa Barbara