How far should we alter our bodies and our brains? Should we control the creation of new life forms?
A short film competition to encourage the creative communication of some of the social and ethical issues being generated by our increasing ability to manipulate and control life has been launched by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) today (14 January).
The BIOS Centre at LSE wants budding film makers to tackle questions raised by advances in the life sciences and biomedicine in a two minute video.
Professor Nikolas Rose, Director of BIOS, Professor of Sociology, said: ‘We believe that biology is going to have the same implications for the 21st Century as developments in digital information technology had in the last century.
‘With our ability to “re-engineer” our bodies and our brains, come new social, political and ethical challenges – and these will become increasingly important for all of us as science pushes back the frontiers of what’s possible.
‘The social and human sciences need to understand and communicate the implications of these developments and to open them up to democratic debate. That’s why we’re looking for fresh and interesting ways of communicating some of our research on these issues to people outside of the academic community.’
The winner will receive £200 in Amazon vouchers and two runners up will win £50, also in Amazon vouchers. The winning videos will also be posted on LSE’s website, iTunesU, Youtube, and SchoolTube.
The winning video will be one in a series of online videos that BIOS is producing on its research called Research@BIOS.
Entrants have the choice of two short audio clips to use as the basis for their film. These are downloadable from: www2.lse.ac.uk/BIOS/videoCompetition2011/assets.aspx
They can use any method they like to make the film including stop-motion, cell animation, 3D, typographic or live action.
More details about the competition are available from the BIOS website.
The BIOS Centre at LSE is an international centre for research and policy on social, ethical and legal aspects of the life sciences and biomedicine. It’s areas of research include reproductive technology, regenerative medicine, social aspects of the neurosciences, biosecurity, synthetic biology, translational biology and bioethics.
