HESBURGH LECTURE SERIES 2012 Program - Alumni Association ...

Harvey A. Bender, Ph.D.
Professor, Biological Sciences; Director, Human Genetics Program
Biography
Harvey Bender is a professor of biological sciences and director of the Human Genetics
Program at the University of Notre Dame. He also serves as adjunct professor of medical
genetics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Bender received his undergraduate
training at Case Western Reserve University, majoring in chemistry and English. His graduate
studies in developmental genetics were undertaken at Northwestern University, where he
received both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. Bender served as a U.S. public health fellow in Categories
genetics at the University of California (Berkeley) and has held postdoctoral positions as a
Ethics, Family, Science, Social
Gosney Fellow at the California Institute of Technology, and as a visiting professor at the Yale
University School of Medicine and Law. His active research activities involve the epidemiology
Concerns
of human genetics disease, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Bender is a fellow of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a founding fellow of the American
College of Medical Genetics, and a fellow of Notre Dame’s John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. Bender was
the founding director of the Regional Genetics Center at South Bend Memorial Hospital, which was sponsored by the University
of Notre Dame, Indiana State Department of Health, Indiana University School of Medicine, and the Memorial Hospital of South
Bend. He presently serves as the director of the Cancer Genetics & Risk Assessment Center of the Saint Joseph Regional Medical
Center of South Bend, Ind.
Bender was elected a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Foundation in 2001, and a Kaneb Teaching Fellow at the University of
Notre Dame in 2003. In 2006, Governor Mitch Daniels named Bender a recipient of the Distinguished Hoosier Award, one of the
highest honors given by the State of Indiana to its citizens.
Lectures
Altered Destinies: Genetic Advances and Social Implications
Advances in genetic technology are often over optimistically hailed in the press and by the general public as panaceas to
eliminate human misery. On the other hand, the pessimists among us are more likely to voice recurring fears of a white-coated
Dr. Frankenstein. Neither, of course, has it right. The new genetic technologies are not products of “mad” science. Nor do they
offer instant solutions to long-standing questions of human health and heritage. But as the gateways to a new and broader
understanding of our genetic destinies and concomitant social choices, they need to be part of our collective storehouse of
biological knowledge. Only an informed public can deal rationally and ethically with the many new choices before us. This lecture
will review advances in genetics that have so absorbed the public interest in the past decade: the human genome project, the
identification of genes that cause disease, and the development of diagnostic tests and treatments for such disorders. This, in turn,
will serve as the framework and foundation for a discussion of our social and ethical responsibilities and options that will confront
us all in the decades to come.
Genetic Enhancement and the Brave New Millennium: Science, Politics, and the
Human Genome
Bender believes that Aldous Huxley wouldn’t be the least surprised to learn that the instruction set detailing information as to
how each of us develops from our beginning as a one-cell egg through our infancy, childhood, and adulthood is now available
with the announced near completion of the Human Genome Project, which has both mapped and chemically delineated the
entire array of human genes. However, it is doubtful that even his fertile imagination could have envisioned the impact of such
endeavors ranging from the redefinition of health and disease to the commercialization and interest conflicts of the industrial and
scientific communities. Are we now about to embark upon a future where genetic enhancement will be the norm? This discussion
will explore some of the exciting genetic advances of the last decade and present some potential challenges facing our society this
new millennium.
12 The Hesburgh Lecture Series, 2012 Program