meeting one

Ladies and gentlemen, if you can please take your seats, we’re going to get started. Commission members, if you’d please take your seats.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, if you would, please, take your seats, we’re ready to get started. While Diane is standing, I’d like to introduce her as your designated federal officer which makes this meeting legal.

 

Good morning, I’m Amy Gutmann, and I’m President of the University of Pennsylvania and the Chair of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Our Vice Chair, Jim Wagner, will introduce the first session.

 

I want to thank our panelists. We have had a terrific first day so far of presentations and questions. As someone once said, good questions outrank easy answers. Nobody tried to give us easy answers, and I thought all the questions from commission-members and public were really excellent and will help us a lot.

 

Let me invite Dr. Kaebnick and Dr. Buchanan to come to the table. We’re not going to take a break. We’re hardly going to breathe as we move into the fourth and final panel of the day. As they are getting in place, the fourth panel deals very specifically with ethical issues of synthetic biology.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re about to start. If you would all take your seats, please. Welcome back for those of you who were here this morning, and those of you who are new, welcome to what has been to this time at least — and I’m sure will continue to be a very interesting and engaging set of discussions.

 

Could we have our speakers come to the table. And if others could take their chairs, we’ll get under way. Thank you.

 

Commission members, we need you as well, actually. I see them filtering up. I saw Nita out there. And there’s Bonnie in the back of the room.

 

So that there is ample time for our speakers to present and for us to ask questions, let’s do get under way.

 

Our first speaker is Dr. Drew Endy. He is an Assistant Professor of Bio-Engineering at Stanford University. Dr. Endy is the director of BIOFAB, an open facility advancing biotechnology and he is the President of the BioBricks Foundation as well as being a member of the National Academies’ Committee on Science, Technology, and Law. Dr. Endy, we are happy to have you here with us today. Why don’t you begin?

 

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct pleasure and honor to introduce a true defender of not only health and Human Services but the ethics and responsibility that goes along with providing great health and Human Services to our nation. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

 

[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]