The Most Important Ethics Question You Face in Biosciences?

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There's a lot of ethical issues aranging from what you're willing to do in terms of genetic, genomic modifications. What do you do with people who who have volunteered for trials and now you know that there's a way to treat them? It's just, it's not the case that yelo ethical issues come up rarely. They come up a lot. I'm, i've long practised, maybe it's out of my ignorance, the notion that many things there may not be a definite answer for,. But you needat answer in order to persist to come up with a better answer.

“The world of innovation is very much one of toggling between survival and then thriving,” says Noubar Afeyan. Co-founder of Moderna and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, the biomedical innovator, philanthropist, and entrepreneur credits his successes to his “paranoid optimism” shaped by his experiences as an Armenian-American. Exceptional achievements like the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine, he believes, aren’t usually unpredictable but rather the result of systematic processes that include embracing unreasonable propositions and even unreasonable people.

He joined Tyler to discuss which aspect of entrepreneurship is hardest to teach, his predictions on the future of gene editing and CRISPR technology, why the pharmaceutical field can’t be winner takes all, why “basic research” is a poor term, the secret to Boston’s culture of innovation, the potential of plant biotech, why Montreal is (still) a special place to him, how his classical pianist mother influenced his musical tastes, his discussion-based approach to ethical dilemmas, how thinking future-backward shapes his approach to business and philanthropy, the blessing and curse of Lebanese optimism, the importance of creating a culture where people can say things that are wrong, what we can all learn by being an American by choice, and more.

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Recorded January 6th, 2021 Other ways to connect

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