Dr. Mukherjee will discuss genetic engineering and its ethical implications.
Tuesday, March 22 2016, 7 PM
Lecture, Q&A, and book signing co-sponsored by The King's English Bookshop
at Kingsbury Hall - 1395 Presidents Circle, Salt Lake City
Limited seating still available: tickets.utah.edu
The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer” Siddhartha Mukherjee will deliver the 2016 Tanner Lecture on Human Values at the University of Utah’s Kingsbury Hall on Tuesday, March 22 at 7pm.
Dr. Mukherjee will discuss the magnificent history of the gene and respond to a defining question of the future: What becomes of being human when we learn to “read” and “write” our own genetic information?
“Moving beyond his study of cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee now brings his remarkable insights to genetic research,” said Obert C. & Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center Director and history professor Bob Goldberg. “As before, he expertly weaves science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us of the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.”
Dr. Mukherjee has devoted his life to caring for victims of cancer, a disease that sickens and kills millions of people around the world each year. In The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Dr. Mukherjee gives readers a fascinating look into the origins and causes of cancer, its deadly effect on the human body, how it has virtually enveloped modern civilization, and the epic battles that are taking place to control, cure, and conquer it. His engrossing book has won a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. It is also the subject of a PBS documentary by Ken Burns.
Dr. Mukherjee is a Rhodes Scholar, physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Fellow at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, a Staff Cancer Physician at Columbia/NYU Presbyterian Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at Columbia University. He has been published in Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Neuron, Journal of Clinical Investigation, The New York Times, and The New Republic.
Dr. Mukherjee's next book (due May 2016) is The Gene: An Intimate History.
In line with the Tanner Humanities Center’s mission to “promote humanistic inquiry and exchange” this event is free and open to the public. Dr. Mukherjee will speak for approximately 50 minutes followed by a Q&A with the audience, and later – a book signing co-hosted by The King’s English Bookshop.
During his visit to the University of Utah, Dr. Mukherjee will also meet with students and faculty from the University’s School of Medicine and members of the community.