Speaker 1: I got pregnant right away, and I had a really
Speaker 1: easy pregnancy. I felt great, I exercised, I did all
Speaker 1: the prenatal career one is supposed to do. Around week
Speaker 1: thirty seven, the doctors determined that he was breach and
Speaker 1: so scheduled a sea section, and I went in very
Speaker 1: excited to become a mom.
Speaker 2: When Laurie Strong and Goldberg arrived to give birth to
Speaker 2: her son, Henry, it was the first time she'd been
Speaker 2: to the hospital since the day she herself was born.
Speaker 2: She'd always considered herself a healthy person and her husband
Speaker 2: was too.
Speaker 1: I had had very little experience in the medical world.
Speaker 2: That that was about to change.
Speaker 1: I had a sea section, so they had to kind
Speaker 1: of like bring him up to where I could see him.
Speaker 1: And as they did that, because baby's hands are sort
Speaker 1: of wrapped up around their faces, the doctors noticed that
Speaker 1: he had an extra flap of skin on his right hand.
Speaker 2: The baby was whisked away to the nick cue before
Speaker 2: Laurie even got a chance to hold him, but she
Speaker 2: figured everything would be fine. She's an optimist. She celebrated
Speaker 2: with her friends and her husband in the recovery room
Speaker 2: until the doctor came back.
Speaker 1: He explained that Henry had a serious but not uncommon
Speaker 1: heart defect called tetrology a flow, and he showed us
Speaker 1: a picture of a healthy heart and a heart of
Speaker 1: tetralogy a felow, and seriously, my husband and I could
Speaker 1: not tell the difference. So I remember having this feeling
Speaker 1: like you must be in the wrong room, like you
Speaker 1: you should be next door or down the hall or somewhere.
Speaker 1: You couldn't vastly be talking about our child.
Speaker 2: But he was, and the news only got worse from there.
Speaker 2: Two weeks later they learned the cause of the flap
Speaker 2: of skin on his hand and the heart defect, and
Speaker 2: that the two things together can be a sign of
Speaker 2: a fatal genetic condition called Fanconi anemia.
Speaker 1: And our life just took a ninety degree turn.
Speaker 2: That meant Henry would need a stem cell transplant to
Speaker 2: save his life. Henry's doctor told Laurie and her husband
Speaker 2: that the best way to save their child was a
Speaker 2: stem cell transplant using the umbilical core blood from a sibling,
Speaker 2: what people in the medical community refer to as a
Speaker 2: transplant from a matched sibling donor. At the time, a
Speaker 2: stem cell transplant was possible from unrelated donors that the
Speaker 2: likelihood of success was much lower.
Speaker 1: Absent a sibling donor, he had a zero percent chance
Speaker 1: of living till kindergarten. In the meantime, he was going
Speaker 1: to have to have open heart surgery when he was
Speaker 1: five months old.
Speaker 2: Henry survived the surgery and recovered well, and Laurie and
Speaker 2: her husband, who had always wanted three kids, started trying
Speaker 2: for their next time one.
Speaker 1: Our life quickly became essentially just playing Russian Roulette with
Speaker 1: our children's lives, right because the disease is genetic, and
Speaker 1: every time we had a baby, we had a chance
Speaker 1: that the baby would have the same fatal disease as Henry,
Speaker 1: and we had a chance that the baby would be
Speaker 1: a perfect match. And so life got scary, really almost
Speaker 1: at the moment of parenthood.
Speaker 2: I'm Lauren and Rora Hutchinson. I'm the director of the
Speaker 2: Ideas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.
Speaker 2: On today's show, we'll go back to the late nineties
Speaker 2: to the first ever attempt to create a save your sibling.
Speaker 2: Is it ethical to create a life in order to
Speaker 2: save another? From Pushkin Industries and the Johns Hopkins Berman
Speaker 2: Institute of Bioethics. This is playing God for Laurie Strongen
Speaker 2: and her family. The task at hand was to figure
Speaker 2: out how to save their child's life. They also wanted
Speaker 2: to have more children. Each time they did, they'd have
Speaker 2: a chance about nineteen percent that an embryo would be
Speaker 2: both free of the disease and a match for Henry,
Speaker 2: and if the pregnancy was successful, hopefully save his life.
Speaker 2: But that also meant that about eighty percent of the
Speaker 2: time they wouldn't get the right combination, let alone have
Speaker 2: a successful pregnancy. In the meantime, though Henry was growing up.
Speaker 1: He was fun, playful, and just a spirited, brave kit
Speaker 1: So it was very easy when anyone was with Henry
Speaker 1: to completely forget what was looming ahead because his life
Speaker 1: was so not just normal, but just magical.
Speaker 2: When Henry was still a baby, Laurie became pregnant with
Speaker 2: her second child, a boy named Jack.
Speaker 1: And we found out when we got the test results
Speaker 1: that our second child, who is now my twenty seven
Speaker 1: year old son, Jack, was healthy, and that was everything
Speaker 1: to us. We also found out he wasn't a genetic
Speaker 1: match to Henry, but at the time Henry was like
Speaker 1: six months old, his blood was totally normal, and it
Speaker 1: felt like something that was far out into the future
Speaker 1: and we weren't worried about it.
Speaker 2: During her pregnancy with Jack, Laurie learned something else too.
Speaker 1: We got a call from a doctor who said, what
Speaker 1: would you do if I told you you could knowingly
Speaker 1: get pregnant with a baby who's healthy and a perfect
Speaker 1: genetic match to Henry? And I said, yes, that sounds like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, too good to be true.
Speaker 2: Eventually, lots of doctors would become involved in caring for Henry.
Speaker 2: One of them was John Wagner, based at the University
Speaker 2: of Minnesota. John studies novel therapies to treat fanconiananemia and
Speaker 2: other causes of childhood cancer.
Speaker 3: We know that there was urgency, but it wasn't an
Speaker 3: immediate urgency in that Henry was doing okay, So we
Speaker 3: had some time, not indefinite, but some time.
Speaker 2: John thought, if we can create embryos by IVF and
Speaker 2: then screen the embryos for genetic diseases, we can also
Speaker 2: screen to see if they would be a genetic match
Speaker 2: for a sibling with Fanconi anemia, using a technique called
Speaker 2: pre implantation genetic diagnosis or PGD. John's team would determine
Speaker 2: where the embryos were negative for fanconianemia and a genetic
Speaker 2: match for Henry. If they were, blood could later be
Speaker 2: collected the baby's umbilical cord and used as a stem
Speaker 2: cell transplant. Using cord blood for a stem cell transplant
Speaker 2: was still experimental at this time, and this particular combination
Speaker 2: of technologies had never been used to create a savior sibling.
Speaker 3: Laurie was very eager to try this because there was
Speaker 3: no good other options for her at her child, so
Speaker 3: we began the process.
Speaker 2: The new process went like this, Laurie and her husband
Speaker 2: would have embryos created by mixing her eggs and his
Speaker 2: sperm in the lab, and then genetic tests would be
Speaker 2: performed on them to see if any were negative for
Speaker 2: Fanconianemia and a match for Henry. If they were fortunate
Speaker 2: enough to get the right combination, doctors could implant the
Speaker 2: embryo into her uterus and the resulting baby would be
Speaker 2: free from disease and their umbilical cord blood could be
Speaker 2: used to save Henry's life.
Speaker 1: The stakes were so high and at this point now
Speaker 1: he's almost three, and remember when he was first diagnosed,
Speaker 1: they said, he's going to need to have a transplant
Speaker 1: by the time he's five, and a pregnancy takes nine months.
Speaker 1: That's what it takes.
Speaker 2: So the clock was ticking and this approach had never
Speaker 2: been successfully done before. But John and his team were
Speaker 2: working with another family at around the same time to
Speaker 2: try to create a sibling donor.
Speaker 3: Concurrent with Lourie Strongen and Alan Goldberg's attempt at having
Speaker 3: a baby, there is also Lisa and Jack Nash, who
Speaker 3: was the other family that was undergoing the procedures in parallel.
Speaker 2: The Nash's daughter Molly was around the same age as
Speaker 2: Henry and also had fanconi anemia. Her disease was progressing
Speaker 2: rapidly and they were running out of time, but as.
Speaker 3: Luck would have it, Lisa Nash was then pregnant. During
Speaker 3: the pregnancy, we were concerned that we might still not
Speaker 3: have enough time, but as it would turn out, in
Speaker 3: August twenty ninth, two thousand, Adam was born.
Speaker 2: Adam Nash was the first Savior sibling to be born
Speaker 2: via this new combination of technologies, a medical triumph. As
Speaker 2: for Laurie and her family, they did IVF and the
Speaker 2: embryos were tested but the first round was unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: It was really hard, but the promise of it was everything,
Speaker 1: and so we just went back and did it again. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I went through IVF nine times in three years, and
Speaker 1: it was absolutely devastating. And then I'd come home and
Speaker 1: I'd see Henry and Jack and I'd be like, no,
Speaker 1: he's not I can do this again.
Speaker 2: Laurie had been doing everything she could to conceive through IVF,
Speaker 2: but meanwhile Henry was getting sicker. He would need to
Speaker 2: have a stem cell transplant as soon as possible. Eventually,
Speaker 2: they got to the point that there wasn't time for
Speaker 2: another round of IVF, let alone a nine months pregnancy.
Speaker 2: John had to make a tough call.
Speaker 3: I told them that I think that we have no
Speaker 3: more time. We're going to have to go with an
Speaker 3: unrelated donor. We can't keep doing this indefinitely, even though
Speaker 3: I knew that Laurie's heart that she wanted to continue,
Speaker 3: but on the other hand, we didn't have more time.
Speaker 2: Henry would need to proceed with a transplant from an
Speaker 2: unrelated donor who was as close a match as they
Speaker 2: could find, but they knew the odds of success would
Speaker 2: be much lower than with a savior sibling.
Speaker 1: Henry ended up in the hospital with a problem due
Speaker 1: to his low platelets, and we ran out of time,
Speaker 1: and the very best chance at that point for him
Speaker 1: to have a life life was to go to transplant.
Speaker 2: He lived for two difficult years after his transplant, but
Speaker 2: much of that time was spent in the hospital. Laura
Speaker 2: and her husband did everything they could to normalize life
Speaker 2: for him there and give him a semblance of childhood.
Speaker 2: On December eleventh, two thousand and two, Henry passed away
Speaker 2: at seven years old.
Speaker 1: He was so brave and resilient and funny, but ultimately,
Speaker 1: fanconi anemia is a tough adversary, even for the strongest
Speaker 1: and the bravest.
Speaker 3: I think that, of course, it was difficult for Laurie
Speaker 3: and Alan to accept that this was not going to work.
Speaker 3: It's almost, you know, given the caret that this is available,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't always work. And then they tried and
Speaker 3: tried and tried and tried and tried, and it still
Speaker 3: didn't work. And then he goes to transplant and then
Speaker 3: he dies of a complication from the transplant. And you know,
Speaker 3: when I say we, you know because I feel that
Speaker 3: I played a role in that you know, really felt
Speaker 3: that we tried everything, and I think in part that
Speaker 3: made it harder is like, you know, no matter what
Speaker 3: we tried, it just didn't work. And we tried and
Speaker 3: tried and tried.
Speaker 2: Fanconi anemia is a tough adversary, which is why John
Speaker 2: and others looked to novel ways of treating the disease.
Speaker 2: But what happens when the treatment isn't just derived from
Speaker 2: medicines or techniques, but also materials from another human The
Speaker 2: process generated tons of debate about the ethics of creating
Speaker 2: a child for the purpose of being a stem cell
Speaker 2: donor to his sibling. It was the first time that
Speaker 2: PGD was being used not only to choose an embryo
Speaker 2: without genetic disease, but also to choose between unaffected embryos
Speaker 2: because of their genetic match to another person, and John is,
Speaker 2: the pioneer of this new combination, was acutely aware of
Speaker 2: these ethical dinammas.
Speaker 3: The principal ethical issues that we had to efface was
Speaker 3: that we were testing an embryo for certain genetic advantages
Speaker 3: to us and to the child that existed with fancorninemia,
Speaker 3: that is HLA match or tissue matching. But that tissue
Speaker 3: matching was of no inherent benefit to that baby to
Speaker 3: be born. You know, would this child be used as
Speaker 3: spare parts? These were the terms that were being thrown
Speaker 3: around in those days, which was obviously creating a public response.
Speaker 3: The other parts of all this were, you know, what
Speaker 3: is the concern that we were going down the slippery slope. Yes,
Speaker 3: first we were eliminating a disease. That was a good thing,
Speaker 3: but the tissue matching might just be the first foray
Speaker 3: into something more such as sex selection, such as choosing
Speaker 3: on other traits. All we wanted to do was to
Speaker 3: save the life of Henry.
Speaker 2: People outright accused John and his team of crossing lines
Speaker 2: that shouldn't be crossed. He found it difficult to respond, what.
Speaker 3: Does this mean when someone says, you know, you're playing god?
Speaker 3: How did it go from that conversation where we're trying
Speaker 3: to save a life? But what they were focused on
Speaker 3: was all those unborn embryos.
Speaker 2: When Laurie went public with Henry's story in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one, lots of people had opinions for her as well.
Speaker 1: Some people were like writing it like, why didn't these
Speaker 1: people just let these deformed children die? To me, that's
Speaker 1: unethical to not try to save your child, to not
Speaker 1: fight to avoid like catastrophic medical consequences, that is unethical.
Speaker 2: Coming up, I dived deeper into the ethical questions about
Speaker 2: save your siblings with my colleague Jeffrey Khan. Today, stem
Speaker 2: cell transplants using umbilical core blood have much higher success rates,
Speaker 2: and medical advances make it easier to find an acceptable
Speaker 2: match without the need for save your siblings. But back then,
Speaker 2: when it was all very new, it was hard to
Speaker 2: navigate the ethical implications that came up. When John Wagner
Speaker 2: found himself doing this novel work with the Nash family,
Speaker 2: the first family he worked with, he called up his
Speaker 2: colleague Jeffrey Kahan to get his take. At the time,
Speaker 2: jeff was the director of the Center for Bioethics at
Speaker 2: the University of Minnesota, where John was working to help
Speaker 2: save the lives of children with Fanconi anemia. Today he's
Speaker 2: my colleague and director of the John Hopkins Berman Institute
Speaker 2: of Bioethics. So as a parent, hearing Laurie's story really
Speaker 2: can't help but affect her on a personal level. And Jeff,
Speaker 2: I know you're a parent too, and I'm sure we
Speaker 2: can just completely relate to how Laurie and her husband
Speaker 2: would have just wanted to do everything they could to
Speaker 2: save their child, and also how they would have loved
Speaker 2: their child that they were trying to create as a
Speaker 2: result of all the rounds of IVF that Laurie went through.
Speaker 2: But maybe you don't even need to be a parent
Speaker 2: to understand that the journey that Laura and her husband
Speaker 2: went on.
Speaker 4: I think you're right, Lauren, And I will say on
Speaker 4: a personal level, for me, a little more insight in
Speaker 4: that I was on the faculty at the University of
Speaker 4: Minnesota when this case was unfolding and Laurie and her husband, Allen,
Speaker 4: and their kids came to Minneapolis for a treatment for Henry.
Speaker 4: I have two sons and they're more or less the
Speaker 4: same age as Henry and Jeff, and so it was
Speaker 4: very close to home for us. I will say, when
Speaker 4: this was unfolding, you sort of have to ask yourself,
Speaker 4: what would I do as a parent? Wouldn't I do
Speaker 4: anything I possibly could? How can you not try everything
Speaker 4: when you're trying to save the life of your child?
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, So wow, you were really there at
Speaker 2: the time as this was all unfolding.
Speaker 3: JEF.
Speaker 2: So, before we go further into hearing more about the
Speaker 2: ethical elements of the case that unfolded, could you just
Speaker 2: tell us a bit about the existing technologies that were
Speaker 2: being used for the first time in a new way.
Speaker 4: There was an ability to make embryos outside the body
Speaker 4: through in virtual fertilization that was not such a new
Speaker 4: technology at this point, and there was a newer, younger
Speaker 4: technology called pre implantation genetic diagnosis or sometimes preimplantation genetic testing,
Speaker 4: where a single cell could be removed from a very
Speaker 4: early stage embryo by a biopsy. That technology had been
Speaker 4: used up to this point to determine whether an embryo
Speaker 4: was carrying a genetic disease, and a decision could then
Speaker 4: be made about whether to implant that embryo. What was
Speaker 4: novel about this was the combination of IVF plus PGD,
Speaker 4: not just to determine whether the embryo was going to
Speaker 4: carry a genetic disease in this case, fanconi anemia, but
Speaker 4: if the embryo was negative for fanconi, we need to
Speaker 4: test to see whether that embryo would develop into a
Speaker 4: baby whose core blood could then be used to be
Speaker 4: transplanted into and save the life of Henry in this
Speaker 4: story of the older brother. So that was the kind
Speaker 4: of aha, wow, nobody had thought about putting the technologies
Speaker 4: that existed. They weren't new technologies, but the combination of
Speaker 4: using them in this way was novel and started to
Speaker 4: ring all sorts of alarm bells. Frankly from an ethics.
Speaker 2: Perspective, So just to be clear, then with this prestidure,
Speaker 2: it's not Crisper's so there's no gene editing going on.
Speaker 2: It's purely the selection of the embryos.
Speaker 4: Right, So this is twenty years ago a little bit
Speaker 4: more actually, So there wasn't gene editing. CRISPERD hadn't been
Speaker 4: discovered yet, So it was really just a way of
Speaker 4: making as many embryos as you can, which required you know,
Speaker 4: going through IVF and then testing those embryos in the
Speaker 4: way that I had described. So it wasn't modifying embryos,
Speaker 4: but rather selecting embryos based on the genetic composition.
Speaker 2: But this new technique did raise really big ethical questions
Speaker 2: because it was the first time that it was being done.
Speaker 2: So could you just bring us back into that twenty
Speaker 2: years ago the first time it's happening. What were some
Speaker 2: of the discussions in terms of the ethics that were happening.
Speaker 4: The world of bioetics at that moment knew about pgdability
Speaker 4: to test embryos outside the body and was really analyzing
Speaker 4: the right kinds of things, or the acceptable kinds of
Speaker 4: things that this testing could be used for. So the
Speaker 4: idea was pretty clear that it makes sense to test
Speaker 4: embryos when you're trying to avoid the disease in the
Speaker 4: child that will be born. Now important to say, when
Speaker 4: you're testing embryos and choosing one versus another, you're not
Speaker 4: choosing the same eventual person with and without the disease,
Speaker 4: but you're effectively choosing one person versus another, right the
Speaker 4: future person. So the arguments were about where's a line
Speaker 4: between sort of obvious genetic disease that better for the
Speaker 4: child to avoid right having, versus something that isn't really
Speaker 4: a disease, or maybe worse that is sort of selecting
Speaker 4: to identify traits that we more thought of as enhancements
Speaker 4: or physical characteristics like eye color, hair color, height, intelligence,
Speaker 4: musical aptitude. What would stop people from using the same
Speaker 4: technique not to avoid having a child with cystic fibrosis
Speaker 4: or fancone anemia, but rather selecting an embryo that was
Speaker 4: most likely to be a musical right or have blue
Speaker 4: eyes right and blonde hair. It starts to sound very eugenic,
Speaker 4: and so that was the discussion. How do we make
Speaker 4: sure that the technology can be used in ways that
Speaker 4: seem appropriate and ethically acceptable, but prevent the kinds of
Speaker 4: you know, misuses from happening. When no one thought about
Speaker 4: this idea of using the same technology to both make
Speaker 4: sure you're having a child that will not be affected
Speaker 4: by a genetic disease, and while we're at it, let's
Speaker 4: make sure there's a genetic match for another sick child
Speaker 4: in the family. I mean, that seemed like wow, way
Speaker 4: out of bounce to us. No one had thought about that.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't that people were concerned of this procedure,
Speaker 2: as it was people were more concerned about what it
Speaker 2: would lead to in the future.
Speaker 4: It may sound a little quaint to talk about this now,
Speaker 4: you know, in twenty twenty three, because there are companies
Speaker 4: that are offering exactly what we're talking about. You can
Speaker 4: use genetic testing services on embryos that were created by
Speaker 4: IVF and the I'll tell you, you know, the likelihood of
Speaker 4: a whole range of things, disease likelihood, but also things
Speaker 4: that they claim are about, you know, traits that probably
Speaker 4: we would think of as not being diseases. And that's
Speaker 4: that's sort of what we were worried about happening twenty
Speaker 4: plus years ago, and trying to guide the technology to
Speaker 4: be used in responsible ways. Maybe we weren't so successful.
Speaker 2: So, Jeff, at the time when this was unfolding, did
Speaker 2: the reactions from the public about the ethics surprise you?
Speaker 4: This took up a lot of air in media. It
Speaker 4: was a very widely covered watch story, and you know
Speaker 4: a few things that were sort of a little surprising
Speaker 4: to me. One was, isn't this planning God? Actually, that
Speaker 4: was a question that many many journalists asked, and it
Speaker 4: was like, well, no, you're not modifying anything. You're just
Speaker 4: selecting embryos that are, you know, otherwise made, and you
Speaker 4: make decisions about which to implant all the time. This
Speaker 4: is sort of adding a layer of information about which
Speaker 4: to implant and why. So that was one. The second
Speaker 4: was aren't the parents wrongly motivated by deciding to do this? Right?
Speaker 4: They're having a child to save their other child, which
Speaker 4: to me sort of harked back to you know, everybody
Speaker 4: thinks about having children and why they have children, why
Speaker 4: they don't have children, and we don't quiz them about that.
Speaker 4: We don't say, tell us why you want to have children.
Speaker 4: It doesn't work like that, right, People have children for good, bad,
Speaker 4: or no reason. So it didn't make sense to me
Speaker 4: to sort of drill down so much on you the
Speaker 4: parents to say that their motivation was bad. Well, what
Speaker 4: do you mean Their motivation is trying to save the
Speaker 4: life of their very sick son in this case, that
Speaker 4: seems like a pretty good motivation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so that really ties into what I want
Speaker 2: to ask you next about the conflict between ethical concerns
Speaker 2: and society's perspectives and then individuals rights as families to
Speaker 2: decide what to do about their own family. Could you
Speaker 2: talk a bit about that tension, how it plays out
Speaker 2: in this case in particular.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this case I think is a very unusual one
Speaker 4: because of that, the sort of foundational commitments that it
Speaker 4: puts in conflict are pretty unusual to see them, you know,
Speaker 4: put together this way. So we talked to a fair
Speaker 4: amount about when, if ever, can we restrict people's right
Speaker 4: to pro create, to have children, and you know, we
Speaker 4: don't do that in liberal societies, and that's sort of
Speaker 4: a commitment that we you know, some of the recent
Speaker 4: court decisions notwithstanding, there's a long history of people getting
Speaker 4: to decide for themselves, right, So we're very very careful
Speaker 4: in treading on individual decision making about reproduction. So that's
Speaker 4: one commitment. The other is we don't take advantage and
Speaker 4: exploit children, right, that's another really kind of foundational commitment.
Speaker 4: We protect children, and so we don't treat children as
Speaker 4: mere means, right. We treat them as ends unto themselves.
Speaker 4: And so we have a kind of a case where
Speaker 4: it feels like we're on the cost pier of treating
Speaker 4: children in a way that would be exploitive at least
Speaker 4: and maybe as mere means at worst. But to prevent
Speaker 4: that from happening requires us to restrict or tread on
Speaker 4: individual decision making about reproduction. That makes it almost impossible
Speaker 4: for us to figure out what to do, except to say,
Speaker 4: let the parents decide for themselves.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Jeff, great to talk with you today.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Lauren. Great to talk to you as well.
Speaker 2: As we heard for Laurie Strong in the decision was
Speaker 2: an uncomplicated one. All she was trying to do was
Speaker 2: save the life of her son, Henry. But she knows
Speaker 2: that it isn't just about her family.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing that I learned. All of us are
Speaker 1: the beneficiaries of many people who made tremendous sacrifices as
Speaker 1: the first or the second or the third to try something.
Speaker 1: And when you're the first person to try something, or
Speaker 1: maybe the second or third, you're rarely the beneficiary of it.
Speaker 1: Doctors learn, they make adaptations and improvements, and ultimately it works,
Speaker 1: and we all have benefited from scientific discovery on the
Speaker 1: backs of other people. This one was on my back,
Speaker 1: my husband's back, in my family's back. That's how it works.
Speaker 1: It was never only about Henry.
Speaker 2: Next time on playing God. Computer control brain implants can
Speaker 2: treat diseases like depression and Parkinson's in cases where all
Speaker 2: other types of treatment have failed. But these implants can
Speaker 2: change more about the brain than the disease they meant
Speaker 2: to treat.
Speaker 1: So there were questions about who was actually the narrator
Speaker 1: of the life at that point. Was it the technology
Speaker 1: or was it the person? Was it some kind of combination.
Speaker 2: When it comes to altering our personalities by implanting electronics,
Speaker 2: where do we draw the line? Are we giving computers
Speaker 2: too much control over who we are when we allow
Speaker 2: them to alter fundamental human traits like our emotions? And
Speaker 2: if it's okay to change our moods, what about other
Speaker 2: things like our intelligence? That's next time on Playing God.
Speaker 2: Thank you to our guests in this episode, Laurie Strongin
Speaker 2: and John Wagner. Playing God is a co production of
Speaker 2: Pushkin Industries and the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.
Speaker 2: Emily Vaughn is our lead producer. This episode was also
Speaker 2: produced by Sophie Crane and Lucy Sullivan. Our editors are
Speaker 2: Karen Schakerjie and Kate Parkinson Morgan. Theme music and mixing
Speaker 2: by Echo Mountain Engineering support from Sarah Bruguerre and Amanda Kaiwang.
Speaker 2: Show art by Sean Krney, fact checking by David jar
Speaker 2: and Arthur Gompertz. Our executive producer is Justine Lang at
Speaker 2: the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Our executive producers
Speaker 2: are Jeffrey Kahan and Anna Mastriani, working with Ameliahood. Funding
Speaker 2: provided by the Greenwall Foundation. I'm Laurena Rura Hutchinson. Come
Speaker 2: back next week for more Playing God. If you're interested
Speaker 2: in learning more about these stories and discussions, visit the
Speaker 2: Berman Institute's Guide to the podcast at Bioethics dot Jhu
Speaker 2: dot edu, forward slash Playing God, or find us on
Speaker 2: social media at Berman Institute