The Ethics of Editing – I. Glenn Cohen, Professor of Law, Harvard University – The Many and Varied Ethical Issues that Relate to Advancing Technologies

I. Glenn Cohen, James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law and faculty director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics at Harvard Law School, delivers an interesting overview of the many and varied ethical issues that pertain to new and emerging technologies.

Professor Cohen is a noted expert on the nexus of bioethics (often referred to as 'medical ethics') and the law, inclusive of the health law. Cohen is also heavily involved in the education opportunities regarding the civil procedure. Cohen has spoken at countless legal, medical, and industry conferences at spots all across the globe. His celebrated work has been featuredin or covered by, numerous media outlets including PBS, ABC, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, The NewYork Times, Mother Jones, the New Republic, and many more.

Cohen talks about his extensive background and training in law and medical ethics, as well as philosophy. Cohen's expertise covers a wide swath of subject matter, from artificial intelligence and healthcare to gene editing, organ transplantation, food and drug law, translational medicine, and others. Cohen talks about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural net applications as they relate to predictive medical applications and decision-making specifications for patient care.

Cohen expands our understanding in the areas of pattern recognition as it relates to medical applications, and how algorithms must adapt to differing variables, for example, the differences between people such as racial makeup, citing a specific example about breast density and mammograms. He explains that the algorithm training data must accommodate all the options and variables in order to produce successful outcomes/results. And he discusses privacy issues as they relate to data.

The Harvard professor details electronic health records, and how some physicians are experiencing burnout with the input of data, and how it is critical that data be input accurately and thoroughly in order for viable medical information to be helpful. He discusses reproduction, cloning, and some other issues related to genes within the context of technology. Cohen delves into gene editing further, discussing a particular case in China. Cohen explains that there was no real medical need for the gene edit and that caused quite a stir.Cohen talks about other use cases, and where things will go in the gene-editing world, and how regulations surrounding gene editing will perhaps become more relaxed if the benefits are justified. Cohen states that in the future we will probably see more debate about what is acceptable and what is not, in regard to gene editing. While there is clear prohibition right now, things could change as more scientists around the globe push the envelope.