I am that certain type of nerd, having attended the Vancouver session. Spirited conversation ranged from the ethics of using genetic testing to predict behaviour to the wisdom of setting genetic information free. One clip from the show involved a teen on trial for drug charges whose DNA reveals a tendency to addiction. Another involved terrorists replicating the smallpox virus, using genetic information available to anyone with an Internet connection.
"I can't watch ReGenesis and not think of all the things that are a little wrong," UBC professor Simpson said at the forum. "And I forgive it all, because it's communicating to a group of people, getting them interested in science, psyched about science."
Though she pointed out some inexact science in the scenarios that served to simplify complex ideas, Edwards and Outerbridge insisted that ReGenesis largely focuses on what is possible or what will be possible soon. Ingram reminded the crowd that with science in constant flux, what was fiction only a couple of years ago is now fact.
"I can promise you, you're going to have your DNA sequenced before you're dead," Edwards told me. "Just think about that. There's your genetic code, and people can look at it and make predictions about you."
That was the topic of much discussion at the forum. Should tests be available when there are no known prevention or treatment options? Who should get access to the results of genetic tests? Employers? Insurers? How predictive are genes of behaviour, anyway? Simpson points out that IQ tests, for example, are not accurate predictors of future success, and genetic tests are equally bad predictors. As Greene of the Ontario Genomics Institute put it: "We're not just genes."
Those were some heady topics, but in our interview Edwards talks passionately about what he sees as "the biggest failure to communicate in the history of mankind": global warming. He uses that example to illustrate why it's crucial to get scientists and community members speaking the same language, and how a show like ReGenesis can help with that goal, "getting the public familiar with science, familiar with the scientific method, familiar with uncertainty."
"We'd known about (global warming), but we were ineffective communicators as a scientific community, or the media didn't have the appropriately receptive ears. They didn't understand. They couldn't interpret uncertainty. They thought uncertainty, therefore nobody agrees," he said, frustration evident in his voice. "It wasn't uncertain that it was happening. Sure, it was uncertain the extent to which it was happening, the degree of some of the downstream effects – is the earth going to rise by a degree or a degree and a half, is the ice going to melt in 2030 or 2080? That's uncertain. But the fact that it was happening was not uncertain, or that man was doing it."
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