The First Roskilde Science Sunrise Conference 2008

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Roskilde University is the host of the annual Roskilde Science Sunrise Conference.

The Science Sunrise initiative has been installed to provide an international forum for discussing important new scientific developments and the broader societal, cultural, political, ethical and other challenges such developments may bring about.

The First Roskilde Science Sunrise Conference 2008

Surviving Ourselves: The Human Condition

August 13-15, 2008, Roskilde University, Denmark

How are we to act and interact in the century ahead? Shaping the future and grappling with its complexities is a challenge to ourselves and at the same time a matter of surviving ourselves since history seems to teach us that we are as much problem makers as problem solvers.

What might be the impact on the human condition of two major scientific breakthroughs about to be announced:

(1) the laboratory creation of primitive life, and

(2) the possibility of genetic recreation of dead DNA ("awakening the dead")?

By bringing together some of the most renowned politicians, scientists and public figures together this first Roskilde Sunrise Conference provides a unique forum for discussing some of the scientific, ethical and political consequences of these two new possibilities for the human race in the 21st century.

Invited speakers:

Mark Bedau / Reed University
David Deamer / UC Santa Cruz
Drew Endy / MIT
Gerald L. Epstein / Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC
P. Luigi Luisi / University of Rome
Donald W. Pfaff / Rockefeller University
Pamela Silver / Harvard University, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Steen Rasmussen, FLiNT Center, SDU, Denmark
Robert M. Friedman, Vice President for Public Policy, J. Craig Venter Institute

For further information, please visit our website: http://sunrise.ruc.dk

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