PET Director Sarah Norcross had a fun afternoon in Newcastle at a STEM event organised by the British Fertility Society (BFS). Groups of students from years 10 and 11 put themselves in the shoes of policymakers. They had to decide whether or not genome editing should or should not be used for for the following purposes.
Remove the gene that causes Huntington’s disease
Insert a gene that protects against HIV
Alter genes to correct short-sightedness
Alter genes to increase height
The students also had to indicate whether they thought the use of genome editing in each scenario was a treatment or an enhancement.
There was much debate, quite a lot of laughter and sometimes the group could not reach a consensus on their answer. All the participants were female which was a shame as when it came to the question about height several of the groups said that they thought their male counterparts would be very much in favour of allowing that!
This activity was developed from the Basic Understanding of Genome Editing project which PET carried out with Genetic Alliance UK which was funded by Wellcome.
Some of the other STEM event activities included CPR, learning about mitochondrial donation, and bioinformatics, as well as a wide range of careers talks.
PET is grateful to the BFS for a fantastic opportunity to engage with such a great bunch of school pupils at this STEM event.