SXSWORLD

TRADE SHOW EXHIBITS & CUSTOM ENVIRONMENTS An Austin-based Exhibit company ready to make your brand step up and stand out at SXSW. Contact us today. 888-836-8442 info@ImagecraftExhibits.com www.ImagecraftExhibits.com A S X S W P R E F E R R E D V E N D O R C U S T O M – R E N T A L S – P O R T A B L E S – E N V I R O N M E N T S – M U S E U M - Q U A L I T Y D I S P L A Y S SXSW.COM | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6 | SXS W O R L D 1 1  The CRISPR-Cas9 discovery has also put billions of dollars of potential profits into play. The massive financial stakes have fueled a patent dispute between two groups of scientists, one from Doudna's UC Berkeley lab, and another from the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.  In terms of both animal and plant genomes, the ethical implications of CRISPR are every bit as thorny as these financial struggles. Use at the embryonic stage is particularly troubling. "Human germline engineering," Doudna and 18 other promi- nent scientists and ethicists wrote in an open letter in Science in 2015, raises the specter "of concerns about initiating a 'slippery slope' from disease curing applications toward uses with less compelling or even troubling implications."  For her part, Richardson is less concerned about what she views as far-fetched dangers: "The risks that get most attention are the main plot points in thriller science-fiction-action movies."  The real threat to humanity, Richardson argues, is not the prospect of perfect uber-humans, but lack of scientific progress and financial backing for the time-consuming, detail-oriented labor involved in scientific research. "When the media says we can now create designer babies and we cannot, we're not only stealing thunder from the future. We're also investing in skepticism about the rate and progress of scientific advancement." Dr. Jennifer Doudna will be an Interactive Keynote speaker at the 2017 SXSW Conference.

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