#20 - Evelyn Brister: Recreating Nature and the Wild with Genetic Engineering

What if we could recreate our forests, using biotech to bring back trees that are extinct? We now have that technology. We could replant a modified American chestnut tree all across the eastern United States. But should we do it?

A conversation about genetic engineering, human intervention, nature, the wild and what is meant to be.

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Evelyn Brister is a Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, USA. She is President of the Public Philosophy Network, a professional organisation that supports philosophers in collaborative teaching and scholarship outside their academic communities. She is the editor, with Robert Frodeman, of A Guide to Field Philosophy (Routledge, 2020), a collection of essays examining collaborations between philosophers and policymakers, and she has written over 20 journal articles in philosophy and environmental science.

Evelyn’s current research examines how values shape the use of biotechnology for conservation as well as other issues in land use and management. In 2020, she took part in a workshop with Revive & Restore to assess the possible application of genomic tools to plant and wildlife conservation.

Read Evelyn’s paper, ‘Not the Same Old Chestnut: Rewilding Forests with Biotechnology’: https://www.acf.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2020-Brister-Newhouse-Env-Ethics.pdf

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