Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed the lunch. It would be much worse to have a talk before lunch. And so let's talk about LibreOffice on KDE Plasma. This is my vanity slide. Yes, I'm my nickname. My nickname is Bubli. I'm a LibreOffice developer, and I'm one of the people who brought LibreOffice on KDE Plasma to you. Of course, like no way I did, or I would be able to do all of this alone, and all those guys and girls worked on the project as well. They contributed the code. They tested, reported, triaged bugs, and actually very little of what I'm going to talk about today would be possible without them. Unfortunately, I don't think any of them is here, but some of them have their co-workers around. I see you, Tobias. So let's give them some small round of applause. Before we start, thank you. Okay, LibreOffice on KDE Plasma. Is there anybody in this room who doesn't know what LibreOffice is? Never heard of. Everybody sort of knows. So yeah, just to reiterate, it's the best free and open source office suite out there. I'm sorry Caligra, and I'm sorry Apache OpenOffice, but that's just how it is. The Document Foundation is a non-profit entity. It's a bit like KDE Foundation, and it's the entity behind LibreOffice. I would also like to bring this the sister project of LibreOffice, which is a document liberation project. It is a set of import filters and reverse engineering tools to import documents from various ancient binary proprietary formats and convert them to open formats. But it's a bit tangential to the rest of the talk. I just wanted you people to know that this project exists. Okay, I like telling stories, so this is a brief history of LibreOffice on one slide. It all started in 1984. Some of you have not been alive by the time yet. With BroDude, whose name was Marco Beriz, he created a word processor, a text processor for 8-bit computers, and in the course of time he built the entire company around this word processor and later added the spreadsheet processor and the presentation tool, and the company's name was Star Division, and Star Division got acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999. Allegedly, it was for Sun, it was cheaper to buy the entire company than to buy Microsoft Office licenses for everybody. But I think it's just an urban legend. So as Star Division got acquired by Sun, the project got renamed to OpenOffice, and its first version got released in 2002, and then the second version and the third version, and then in 2009, or Sun was acquired by Oracle and two years later. What happened is that Oracle discontinued support for OpenOffice and laid off all the employees that were working on the OpenOffice. But even before this happened, some smaller group of OpenOffice developers decided to somehow do away with what they perceived as some sort of authoritative, let's say, dictatorship of Oracle and decided to do things their own way. So they forked the project and named it LibreOffice, and two years after that, finally the non-profit foundation supporting LibreOffice and its development got established. As you perhaps know, LibreOffice is a multi-platform software. What does it mean that it simply runs or is better or worse integrated into different operating systems? And which operating systems are those so officially supported by document and released by document foundation is Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. So if you had had to LibreOffice or or document foundation or those binaries are the ones for those operating systems are the ones that you can download from from the official page. Then there are, of course, like multiple Linux distribution that add bit their own sugarcoating or remove the stuff they don't like upstream. And this is what you what you can, what is shipped with your favorite Linux distribution probably. And then there is some small set of non-official meaning like not officially endorsed and supported by document foundation distributions mostly based on some Unix-like operating system like, for example, FreeBSD or Haiku. So, yeah, now I would like to move the focus to the Linux operating system. If it was like this, it would be there would be just one front-end to rule them all. That would be, of course, perfect, but Linux is all about choice, isn't it? So, on Linux you can actually pick up three different flavors of like how the front-end looks like and how well is it integrated into the desktop. The first and the oldest one of them is the generic X11 front-end. It's pretty ugly.  Then there is integration with GNOME desktop environment based on GTK. I actually thought that this GNOME front-end is a bit older than the KDE one, but I checked GitLux this morning and they are about the same age. So, it started in 2004. It was started by Michael Meeks and in 2011 it got ported to GTK3 and brought to perfection by Quailin McNamara. About the same age, the KDE or Qt, well, it was not Qt based yet. KDE front-end was born in the same company. It was SUSE and the KDE3 based front-end was started by Jan Holaszewski and five years later it was ported to KDE4. But it was actually how to say that. So, I had this talk once or twice and whenever I started to talk about like KDE4 was not really a KDE4, but it was just some wrapper around X11. People got pretty bored. So, I'm not going to talk about that in detail, but fast-forward eight years later in 2017, two years ago, two things happened. Million Wolf created KDE-KF Plasma File Picker. It was some, I will talk about it a bit later. So, the front-end, the user interface was still GTK3 based, but as a Plasma File Picker was run over this GTK3 front-end as a separate binary. And later in 2017, first Qt 5 based proof of concept of the entirely new interface for the LibreOffice was created by Jan Marag Logowski. So, as I said, LibreOffice is a multi-platform software. So, if you want to write LibreOffice code, does it mean that well, it exists? Like, do you have to write the GTK code and at the same time a Windows API code? And if you want to write for, if you wanted to work on Mac, do you have to write Quartz code? Does the multi-platform code look like this? Well, sometimes it does, but not too often. Well, the answer is no and no. So, we have some sort of interfaces. So, on the left, there is some sort of like core library, which is like some core functionality. Do something, for example, open a dialog and set its size or open a file picker and do it in such a way that only text files will be shown. So, this is a generic functionality and it's some sort of contract between the core library and the front-end library. This will be the core, will be implemented in some generic C++ code and the front-end in some some platform-specific code. So, to open a dialog, we create a new queued dialog and then we resize it. To open a file picker, we create queued-based file picker and then we set its filter. And similarly, if you want to copy text to clipboard, we can write some generic C++ code doing that in the core and then re-implement the same functionality in using the appropriate API of queued library. So, this is some kind of like once again, like more or less the same, some kind of diagram, how it really works. I named this woman up there, cell instance, because the class actually implementing this is called cell instance and if I'm talking about some platform-dependent functionality, what exactly do I mean by that? So, I divided this functionality into the two categories, basic and extended, basic functionality that's, yeah, well, just like the basic stuff. So, create the windows, connect them to the window manager, make them look like natives. So, make LibreOffice look like any other KDE application, add some native menus to that, add some, like, make file and folder pickers behave and look like any other folder pickers on KDE platform and then comes the extended functionality. So, everything else beyond basics. So, users want to copy paste text or images. They want to drag file from file manager to the office application. They want to, just like I do right now, they want to present stuff on the whole screen and LibreOffice, just like, for example, Firefox, has, comes with some set of extensions. So, those are some extra modules you can install on top that come with some extra functionality that is not in core and one of the most famous LibreOffice extensions is Walmux, which is some sort of advanced template manager. Yes, and when you present, you of course want to sometimes embed videos and animated gifs and various media content into your slides. So, yeah, that looks like quite a lot of work, right? So, yeah, that was, I looked approximately like this when I realized how much work that's gonna be. We can do it and with it. Okay, how did we make this happen? So, the first step, the thing I did not want to talk about, KDE for LibreOffice integration, the windows you saw on the screen were not native windows, those were X11 windows and the events that were being processed were not native Q events, but those were X11 events. So, if we wanted to, like, transition between KDE 4, KDE 5, if we wanted to port this to Qt 5, it was not possible because Qt library put accessing all the X11 functionality directly to an end. So, we had to, it was obsolete in Qt 5 and we had to write it a new. So, the very first step was to do away with X11 windows and replace those with native Q windows or Q widgets. And what do we need to do with those windows? Of course, like, they need to be opened and closed. Optionally also, like, with this kind of annoying nagging dialogue, if you want to close the window, oh, you have unsafe changes, don't forget to save them. It would be also nice to be able to maximize and minimize window and set their size and also remember their size to be able to restore it later and over the main window, we can open, we can open dialogues which can be modal, like, for example, printing dialogue, which means the window underneath is blocked as long as this dialogue is open or they can be more less. For example, spell checkers. So, while I checked what's the current spelling gonna be, I can still interact with the underlying window. But not all windows are created equal. Yes, like, there are those trivial cases, the main window, the dialogue, but there are also tool windows. I guess I will, I hope I will, for example, this is a tool window, some kind of dockable thing. So, I want to be able to to dock it and undock it and similarly, I can undock the toolbar. I want to be able to dock it again. So, the next step, since we now have the windows are native and that means that nice bonus of that is that they receive queue events. So, what we simply do is that we map those queue events that come our way to the LibreOffice events and process them the LibreOffice way. Yes, and then like those pie events, I mean like keyboard presses and mouse clicks, but since not all events are user-driven, we have also some additional events dispatcher for, for, I don't know, like as you import the file, the progress bar moves, or the extensions come with their own set of events. And yes, so now we can open the windows, we can resize them, do things with them, we can process the events, and it's time to put some content into the windows. So, the way this is done is that, as I said, this is a queue main window. It has a central widget, and there is one giant central widget, which is a custom widget. And yes, and then we paint. We take a queue painter and queue style option to style the widgets in the native way and to create, to create the queue images here, for example, we have an ex, we have a button and then we simply paste the bitmap onto the custom widget and like, it's like some sort of patchwork. Like we, we compose the final bitmap in the window from, from the queue images made of like all those individual widgets. And of course, like having native windows comes with some, some nice side effects. So, for example, we can now support the native menus. So, and the nice bonus of that is that we have the integration with the global menu for free. The only thing we need to do is to map LibreOffice menu structure to Qt menu structure. And also the native tooltips are now possible. Before it was sort of misery to resize and position the tooltip correctly. We don't have to do that anymore because the Qt will do it for us now. So, here's some nice screenshot of the global menu. And while we are aware at improving look and feel, we, for example, something that we're proud of, we improve the look and feel of this, of this notebook bar. This looks like Windows 95 and this is how the native tab bar looks like. I will, I will simply quickly, quickly jump through the, because I don't have that much time left over the file breaker functionality. As I said, there was some initial work done by MillionWolf. That was a separate binary that communicated with the Core LibreOffice over, over standard in and standard out. It was a bit of a hack, but it was pretty easy to, to port it to the new code. And yeah, basically like the same principle, some like generic codes where the programmer says open a file picker and some platform-specific code that actually opens the file picker and does things with it. Things like, there are some slight differences between when you open the file or whether you want to save into the file and then you have to retrieve the URL you want to save into or you want to open switch to folders, set the filter, like what kind of, what type of files you want to see. And also, it would be nice to have some access to files on the remote shares. And since there are some things that come only with LibreOffice, like for example, there's another thing I'm personally proud of because I worked on that you can encrypt and sign the file with GPG key. So there's this nice checkbox up there where you can, upon saving the file, you can pick, check the checkbox and it will get encrypted with your GPG key. And for those with need those custom controls, those checkboxes or listboxes, and we want to be able to get and set their value. Okay, so once this is done, we can put our feet up and relax, right? Unfortunately, no, only when we, like when we got the code into this shape and then users started to report bugs and we discovered all those things that users do with their office suite. So for example, they copy and paste and they drag and drop and they use extensions and they create slideshows and it was pretty overwhelming. So yes, like I don't know, like I don't have that much time left, like to go into much, much detail that like we had to implement copy and paste. This is again like the same generic scheme, like there's some interface, the generic that like gets the content or puts the stuff into Clipboard or it's from Clipboard in a generic way in the core. And here it is reimplemented in terms of Qt API. And what's also a bit interesting is this special case, special sort of selection Clipboard on X11. So it's not like control C, control V, but like putting the stuff that's selected, that's highlighted by mouse up there into the Clipboard and for that we needed to implement some sort of lazy handling or lazy loading, which means which means not putting the data into Clipboard immediately, but only like put it there when it's available and when somebody else wants to read. More or less the same with the with drag and drop, like this internal drag and drop within one application, but also from outside, from other text editor or from file manager. And this was also quite interesting problem with the extensions. The extensions do all kinds of things, they open their own dialogues, they open another window, they execute commands and they can even add their own user interface elements. And unfortunately sometimes the extensions run in a different thread. And this presents a little bit of a problem because everything that happens in user interface in Qt has to be run in domain thread and if it isn't, all kinds of weird things happen like crashes and deadlocks. So we somehow had to to trim this interface or to get it into shape that every single user interface access happens in the main thread. Yes, and then there was like 10,000 paper cuts, lots of rendering glitches, bad access to system fonts, users that don't type with the Latin scripts like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, need support for input methods. Of course it would be nice to have the interface accessible and it is. Yes, at the end of the day there was the slide show. I have to admit that Impress was the thing we tested the least because what you usually do, you put some data into spreadsheet or you type some text in the text editor and you don't present stuff on dual screen every day, right? So we didn't really test it this and we didn't really think about those corner cases. So if you run the slide show in LibreOffice Impress, you have like two windows on two different screens. Sometimes they are the same, sometimes they aren't because you have a special presenter console. Sometimes the slides can have some multimedia content, embedded videos or as you have seen those animated GIFs. So those are handled as embedded Qt windows. And we also had to add some elementary support for OpenGL because sometimes the transitions between the slides can be implemented with OpenGL. So yeah, maybe you now think this is great. Can I try? Where can I get this nice stuff? It's all in LibreOffice Master so you can build it yourself, of course, but you don't have to. If you want the latest and greatest, you can download the Daily Builds from LibreOffice.org or you have it shipped with your Linux distribution. The first version that has this is LibreOffice 6.2, which is stable by now. It has been released in February this year. And every major Linux distribution adopted it. You just have to install an extra package, which is called KDE integration. And of course, by transitivity LibreOffice 6.3, has it as well, has been released earlier this month. And I have to say by now this stuff is relatively bug-free. So there are not many open bugs and if there are some corner cases. And with this, I'm at the very end of my talk. So if there are any questions or comments or offers of beer or criticism, I'm all ears. Offer that beer. How is the network access stuff going to work? Are you working on KIO integration for LibreOffice or how is that? Not yet, but it's planned like it doesn't work with KIO. We simply enable the URL startings with WebDAV or SMB or like those things. There is an integration with GIO, but KIO, that's a missing feature. Okay, thank you. It's planned. I think there was some GSOC project like announced for the next year. Like it's one of the possible GSOC projects to pick. More questions, way back there. So this Qt integration, could that also be used on non-unix platforms? Like Windows and Mac. Yes, people tried to build it on Windows and it compiles. But certainly it's not in the state, it compiles ship it. Other questions? Yes. Maybe you didn't even consider it, but how about the Wayland support? Does it work? It should, but at the moment it doesn't. There is some crash because of, yes, some corner case. And it's reported as a bug against one of the Qt Wayland, I don't know, libraries. And I predict an app image question from over here. You just wait. Well, not app image, but I was going to ask if there is any consideration to create a mobile version of LibreOffice. And if there is, if you are considering using Qticami for it. App image. I don't know what that is. I'm sorry. If you are considering making a mobile version. What version? A mobile version. Mobile version. Oh, yes, there is LibreOffice for Android. And that's some separate application. And there is even some integration for the iOS. But I think, I'm not involved in this, but I think the plan is more like if you want LibreOffice on mobile. There is LibreOffice online. Rather go that way, like somehow force this LibreOffice online onto the mobile platform because it's less work. So my prediction was terrible, I guess. I think to answer the first question that came along, as far as I understand LibreOffice now uses the KDE file dialogs. Yes. And so such that, at that point, my project that I worked on carrier fuse, it would be converted to a local URL. Yes, that would be, that would be like, really. And so that will kind of solve the carrier issue. We had problems with this, with writing onto WebDAV because LibreOffice is this kind of K unique application. Is that a thing? That's the correct word. So we had trouble with writing on WebDAV and we were looking into ways how to fix this problem and I was particularly looking at this KIO fuse. But it was, it was like two years ago and it was in the pretty bad shape. It's better now, sir. Woohoo! We got time for one more, if someone wants to ask a question. And otherwise, I will tell everyone. I forgot to show. Yeah. If there are no other questions, I'd like to thank Katarina again.


If my microphone is live, that's good. Well, welcome everyone to the session which we are now formally calling what if anyone can edit the human genome? And the question, it's an interesting why ask that question today because we could have asked it last year or two years ago or 10 years ago or 15 years ago. And the reason I think it becomes topical today is that there's a new tool for editing the human genome that makes it easier for anyone to edit the human genome because it used to require a lot of sophisticated lab equipment and now it requires less sophisticated lab equipment. So we're gonna talk about some what ifs but I think one of the key points of this session is to separate the what if from the what is and to try to maybe, yes there are things that we can talk about but the more fantastical of them have been discussed for a long time and it's not new to this technology but there are some questions and issues that are being raised and will be, will have to be addressed by this new technology and so that's what we're gonna be talking about. So let me introduce our panel to my immediate left is Catrine Bosley, she's CEO, Chief of Editas Medicine which is a company now that's intending to come up with products based on this new technology which I'll call CRISPR and I won't tell you what CRISPR stands for because it wouldn't help you understand it all and then other people will call it CRISPR-Cas9 and that doesn't help either because it doesn't know, nobody knows what that means but it is a tool that Editas was formed to make use of, right? Yes. And next to her is Thomas Chalberg, he's founder and CEO of Avalanche Biotechnologies which is a company that's using traditional if I can say that gene therapy techniques to address problems, mostly eye diseases but I'm sure if he comes up with a bright idea or his scientists come up with a bright idea they'll address that as well. And next to him is Nita Farhani, Farhani, Professor of Law and Philosophy at Duke University and someone who's written and thought about these kinds of topics quite extensively and next to her is Ri Ping Xiao, she's the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and also a researcher in her own right as I understand. And before we actually start talking to the panel we asked some questions of the general public or the general public that happened to come to the World Economic Forum website and or read the World Economic Forum blog or tweet and the question was what's your first reaction to the debate on editing genomes of human embryos? Now let's back up for a second and say okay, a human embryo that's done on the human embryo could in theory be propagated not only to that individual but throughout the human species. So it's a little bit different than doing therapy on a heart or eyeball or something like that because that kind of technique would be to that individual and would end with that individual's demise. If you do something to the embryo, it's possible that the embryo could turn into a functioning human that could then turn into a reproductive human that could pass the gene on to another person in the society. So the question, what's your first reaction to the debate on editing genomes of human embryos? And I'll read the answers excited because of the potential health benefits, excited because of the potential to enhance human beings in other ways, which I'm sure we will have interesting things to say about worried because of the unknown biological consequences of heritable genome edits, worried because of inequality of access arising from the cost of future interventions, worried because it goes against my religious beliefs. Neutral because although the science is new, the discussion is the same as for previous technologies and don't know, which is always the safest answer. And I think what we'd like to do is show you what our viewers or what the people who came to the website, how they voted. So why don't we have a look at that? Now, I suppose I should have done this in the other order, but can I see a show of hands from people in the room of how many people are excited about this technology? So, fine. And how many people are worried about this technology? I won't, I like that. People are worried and excited at the same time. Excellent. And how many are neutral about this technology? All right. Neutral, worried, excited. And okay, I'm assuming everybody else doesn't know, so I won't even ask that. So why don't I start with you, Katrina? First of all, do these results surprise you? People seem to be very enthusiastic. And this is again, we're talking about the what if. This is the future, this isn't happening today, but what if we could do this? So people seem to be excited more than worried. Well, I think that the first one, excited about the potential health benefits, it does not surprise me, because I think that folks who understand that there are many diseases where we understand the connection between a genetic mutation and a disease, oftentimes those are diseases that are very serious and poorly served by other therapies. So the idea that we could actually do something about it, people get that. So that one doesn't surprise me. The second one surprises me that there's that degree of excitement and potential to the way this is stated to enhance humans in other ways. I'm not quite even sure what that would be. That to me strikes me more as science fiction, but I think that there are a lot of that one and I would have concerns about, frankly. And then the worries, I think, are, you know, coarser worries about technology that is this new. And so I maybe would have expected those percentages to be a little higher. I think folks in the room got to vote twice, which probably is maybe a better balance if there's both excitement and concern. I don't know the format, whether maybe people could vote close. It looks like it adds up to 100%. By the way, just for anybody who's interested, there were about 270 people who responded. So it's not a huge sample. And well, does anything about the sampling surprise you, Tom? It does. I mean, I think what strikes me about the question is it's really editing genomes of embryos, right? I think there's two categories. One is what I call gene therapy or gene editing for as a pharmaceutical drug for adults to treat or prevent diseases. There's a very clear regulatory framework in place in the United States and with health authorities around the world to study the effects of those therapies and to make them available to the public. And separate from that, this is really going well beyond that. This has been one of the reasons that I said it's neutral because the science is new. But the discussion has been the same as for the last 30 or 40 years since we've had a recombinant DNA technology, people have debated this question. And generally, the consensus in the scientific community is let's restrict ourselves to somatic cell manipulation. Somatic cell are these cells that belong to an adult fully grown or not changing, not being passed on type of cell. Correct versus germline cell gene therapy and scientific communities agree that germline cell gene therapy or embryonic gene therapy should be off the table, at least for now. And so it does surprise me to see excitement around this more controversial field. I think the technology is new. But again, the discussion, technology is neutral. It's neither good nor bad. It's just the applications that we choose for it that can be used for benevolent or malevolent purpose. So your take? My take is similar in that I'm neutral in some ways. But I'm surprised that more people aren't neutral. And I'm also unsurprised that more people aren't neutral because I think this is a problem of communicating science so that people really understand the state of the technology and where we are with genome editing to date. So earlier this year, the first germline that is heritable type of modification of human embryos was approved by the UK to go forward at least in limited situations. And that was changing a different thing, which is if you think of the fertilized embryo when the sperm and the egg come together, you have the nucleus and then you have the mitochondria that surrounds the nucleus. The mitochondria really provides the energy for the cell. Whereas the nucleus, about 99.9% of traits of who we are, what we think of as genome material that makes us who we are, is within the nucleus. So the modification that was approved was of the mitochondria, but that is heritable. And so we're already doing germline modification. That was a pretty significant debate because people were worried about the slippery slope of crossing over between changing cells in current generations versus changing cells in future generations. We've crossed that threshold. Here's a new threshold. The answer to that debate for many people was, well, this is just modification of the mitochondria. It's not modification of the nucleus, and that's decades away at least. And then a few months later, CRISPR-Cas9, one of the first experiments in non-viable human embryos was published. And people said, oh, actually, it turns out you may be able to edit the nucleus as well. So I think the debate, the discussion about slippery slopes, about whether we should be doing health changes or enhancement changes or both, that's a debate that's been going on for a very long time. Now it's just a much greater reality and a much sooner reality than people expected it to be. So I'm glad that people are excited about it. I think we need to continue to have a democratic deliberation about exactly what applications we as a society are going to embrace and which applications we think are ones that should wait or that we might never cross the line for. But overall, this isn't such a dramatic change other than the time frame from which we can actually do these things. Ping, what do you make of these results? And do you think there, I don't know the nationality of the people who responded, but do you think that different countries would have different responses? Yeah, from this result, I'm not surprised. I largely agree with them. But the sample, maybe you take it mainly from local, right? I'm not sure. I think a little bit surprised to me, the religious beliefs, this get a 0% always. There are some people who have religious concerns, religious considerations. Here in this population, at least based on this outcome, it seems no one concerned about. Yeah. Technically, still, we talk about decades or centuries away to get the genetical modification technology mature. As a physician scientist, I am optimistic. Since this, I think, is inevitable, the way people are going to use it to deal with life-threatening disease, these CEOs over there. Doesn't matter how difficult, technically, or those regulatory concerns, but that cannot stop the development of the technology. So the new chapter, I think, starts. So Nida mentioned this experiment that was done here in China of modifying a human embryo, not a viable one, but to try to repair a defect that would have led to a lethal disease. Was there any response here in China to that, because it did cause some discussion in America? I'd like to say a few words about that case. That was published from a Guangdong group in the journal called Protein and Cell. In May this year, you may all familiar with the publication. We do hear different voices. Many people think, at least scientifically, nothing not a concern for ethnic issues. It's kind of a waste to use. But I'm surprised the government didn't organize any discussion for ethical or regulatory concerns. In the scientific community, scientists have different opinions. Absolutely. So personally, I think, for research, it's fine. But we did have a very reliable regulatory body to give us a good night's sleep. So does this kind of, yeah. So the response was what maybe even led to this discussion that we're having, does that make it harder for your company to move forward in other areas because you get tarred with the same brush of doing something that people might be ethically uncomfortable with? It's interesting. I think that if you want to work in this field because you care about trying to help people with the diseases that this technology may be able to help, this is part of the dialogue. So it all comes together. And it's part of being able to responsibly develop the applications that I think there would probably be broad agreement, makes sense, somatic cell therapy, therapeutics. You also have to be able to be a contributor and part of the dialogue on these possibilities that are much more complex, much less clear. And so I think that for me personally and I think for the people who work in this field, we want to be responsibly part of that dialogue because we do want to be able to pursue these other applications that are so compelling. And do you have to do both? I don't think you can completely separate them because if you're working in the field scientifically, you want to be contributing to that broader debate. There are just many more constituents who are important to have in that debate beyond just the scientific community. But that raises, Ping mentioned this notion of having some sort of discussion, public discussion. So you're in a private company, Tom. Is there something that you would hesitate to do?  I mean, what do you do if you think maybe we're doing something that's close to the line? I think what we're really focused on with the technology that's available today is improving human health and bringing products forward that are having a really great risk benefit to patients. And I think there's many, many opportunities that both provide great risk benefit to patients and also are great markets to sell products and build the business into. So this is not something we spend a lot of time thinking about from a day-to-day perspective because our products are very clearly in the mainstream of pharmaceutical products that are there to cure diseases. I think as we move forward, I mean, as we move from the what is now to the what if anybody can edit the human genome, we have to have more discussion and also a lot clear regulatory framework. We don't really have a regulatory framework in place today for someone deciding they wanna edit their own genome. It's really around companies who sell and market products and make marketing claims based on those products that all of the health authorities monitor and look after, but if this were sort of a paradigm shift into a place where one could in their own garage, cook up something to modify their own genome, that would be a very different framework in sort of societal conversation. Yeah, so I'm just wondering actually that's an interesting point. I don't know if any of you have been in the conference center and heard the drones going around and you think, oh, I could out and buy a drone, but it turns out that if you wanna fly a drone over some thousand feet or something like that, you have to have approval from the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration. So can you imagine any way of putting controls on a garage version of editing the genome besides people's good faith and love for humanity or whatever? The technology is pretty complex right now, so the idea that there's do-it-yourselfers who could be editing the genome of the embryos that they might want to bring into existence, I think, is pretty far off. But that being said, the regulatory structure varies very much country by country. So one of the things that was wonderful about the way the UK went about approving mitochondrial transfer is they have an explicit regulatory body called the HFBA, the Human Fertilization Embryology Authority that oversees reproductive technologies. They also have something called the Nuffield Bioethics Council, which is a council that looks at the bioethical issues from many different scientific discoveries and advances that come up. And HFBA did a long and very involved and publicly engaged process of looking at mitochondrial transfer, the first germline editing technology that was approved, and engaged the public in the UK and engaged the worldwide community in a conversation scientifically about what the realities were, the safety risks, the efficacy issues with respect to that technology. The Nuffield Bioethics Council separately did a very detailed and very notable ethical analysis, again, widely engaging the public in a dialogue about what the appropriate uses of this technology would be, what populations it could be applied in. And at the end of that process, then there was a significant debate within the House of Commons and the House of Lords before it was actually approved in the UK for use in a very limited population of individuals who are affected by this disease. That, I think, is a great regulatory process. It involves scientific discussion, ethical discussion, broad public dialogue, government entities, public, non-profit, sort of the full spectrum across society. In the US, we don't have anything like that. And part of it is that it's very difficult in the United States to be able to talk about reproductive technologies at a governmental level. It's a very divisive political issue. It is one of the fault lines within the US society around people who are pro-choice versus pro-life. I think Ping is quite right that the fact that the poll showed that 0% of people cited religious objections shows that this is not a representative population because there are many people who have religious objections to doing any sort of changes to human embryos and they view the research itself as problematic if they think that the embryo itself represents life. And so that's clearly not what the pulse of the broader public is. So can I imagine controls being in place? I think the UK models for us a good way to think about it. I think we need to do something like that on an international level, but also at a country-backed country level where we engage truly every segment of society looking at the scientific promise because there's great promise in these technologies and to realize that great promise we have to also consider at the same time what the constraints are for how we're gonna use it because as the shadow of all of this that Katrinaine mentions is you have to be prepared anytime you're talking about this to have the background of eugenics, the idea that people are gonna select for only certain types of individuals and select out treats and that we're gonna end up with a very conformist kind of society. And that's a big fear that we've realized in society in the past. And so it's not an unfounded fear, it's not a fictional world. We hope that we've made great progress since the American eugenics movement, since Nazi Germany, since the many different types of eugenic policies but all we have to do is look around the world's day and see that there continues to be selective pressures against populations. So there is a way, but it's a way that we have a big gulf between where we are in the U.S. and where many countries are to get there. The thing about me is such a regulatory framework as the one that Nita described in the UK. Is that a viable model? We in the United States haven't adopted it. I don't imagine a lot of countries are gonna go that direction. So what should be done? What other options are there? I mean, it's great if you live in the UK, but nobody else has quite followed that strict of a model. Joe, as I mentioned in the beginning, when the paper published from China, our government didn't have any discussion or any regulation to give scientists guidance. Whether we can adapt the UK regulations or U.S. regulations, that's really dependent on the government's decision-making process and the decision-makers. So far, I didn't heard anything about the concrete regulation yet. I hope in the near future, we will work out something. But by my understanding, maybe international organizations can provide global guidance. Yeah, so is, I mean, does that complicate your work in, or do you avoid international collaborations so that you don't wind up in a situation where you have one country, a member of a team, working with one set of rules and another with another? Where we collaborate, we collaborate a lot and hope to do a lot more of that. It's very much driven by the scientific and the clinical goals and who are the best people in the world to work with. And the patients we hope to help over time, we wanna help them wherever they are. So the international aspects, certainly there are local regulatory frameworks that need to be, of course need to be met on a country-by-country basis. In terms of developing medicines, that's relatively consistent across countries. There's always some local differences, but over a couple or three decades now, there's been a lot of work across international regulatory authorities to try to harmonize those regulations wherever possible. Again, this is for developing medicines because I think there's a realization that finding a common scientific standard for developing medicines made sense. And so, again, still some local differences, but there's a really pretty good degree of harmonization in terms of new medicine development. So I wanna, since we've got you here, I wanna go, I said there's a difference between what if and what is. What, I mean, you don't have a product yet, but what do you think is gonna be the first application in terms of medical use of some technology like CRISPR? Well, there's a long list of specific genetic targets that we're working on and that some others are working on. I'm wishing you exactly which one would come first. But some of these targets are a little bit easier in terms of the type of genetic repair that is required, and some of them are a little bit easier in terms of delivery. Delivery is a big challenge in this field and actually folks who worked on, dare I say, traditional gene therapy, which feels like an oxymoron, but work that's been done in other fields of genomic medicine, some of that can be adapted and leveraged to work with the CRISPR technology. So we can try to bring together different parts of the technical solution, but across all of the genetic diseases we would hope to help, it's a spectrum in terms of degrees of difficulty. So one of the ones that we're working on that is perhaps on the easier end of the spectrum, it's a genetic disease of the eye and genomic medicine work in terms of delivery, some of the work that Thomas's company has done, help us have ways to deliver to the eye and that may go more quickly. There's also, well, CRISPR is that specific technology that's capturing the imagination and the energy of genome editing. There are some earlier technologies for genome editing, one in particular called zinc finger nucleases where folks have worked on that for a number of years, it does work and the folks that have developed it have advanced that into clinical development. In fact, just yesterday or the day before in the United States, the Cominant DNA Advisory Committee of the NIH did a review and gave the approval to go forward with the first in vivo or in the body test of a zinc finger nuclease based medicine to advance into human clinical trials. So there have been good progress and careful, thoughtful work done by, this is a company called Sangamo, to take that form forward. Different specific technology but the same kinds of considerations with regard to safety and what's the appropriate application. By the way, I'm asking questions but I'm gonna turn to the audience to ask questions as well and if any of you wanna jump in, just jump in because that would make life easier for me. Maybe you could talk a little bit about why genome editing is hard to do. I think everybody thought when there were specific gene problems that could be leaked when they found a gene for cystic fibrosis, for example. The gene was damaged, fixed the gene, put it back in, the disease is cured, wasn't that simple. So maybe you could say what the issue is that CRISPR might help solve or that you have faced in trying to put fixed genes back into people. Sure, so when you think about gene therapy, technology, I'd say there's two major challenges or limitations that folks have been working on over the past couple of decades. One is efficiency of delivery, which Katrina mentioned. That means when you're using DNA, it's a highly negatively charged molecule. How do you get it through the cell membrane into the nucleus where it can do its job as DNA? So we have a number of delivery technologies or delivery strategies to help do that efficiently. One of the most popular ones is using a recombinant virus. Okay, so viruses are professional deliverers of DNA to cells, that's what they do. And so by swapping out the viral DNA with recombinant DNA, you now have what we call a gene therapy vector. And this can now professionally present your DNA into cells. As we've advanced this technology more and more, the delivery is getting better and better. But it's still a real challenge. Some diseases you need to transmit or transduce only a small number of cells in the body in order to have a big effect. One thinks of hemophilia, you can think about macular degeneration which Avalanche works on is a very, very small area of the retina or color blindness, which is another product. We have a very small number of cells need to be transduced by this recombinant virus. Okay, so that's a big limitation and it's getting better but certain applications are closer than others. I'd say the second major limitation has been specificity of once you have the DNA in the cell, what does it do? What are the off-target effects and what's the sort of efficiency and the specificity? So what does off-target mean? So you can imagine if you're trying to edit a specific gene and change one base pair to another or change a series of DNA to a different series of DNA, you don't just have effects on that target strand of DNA, you may have effects throughout other areas of the genome and those can be deleterious, they could cause social mutagenesis, we've seen examples of that clinically. And so how often does it do the right thing and how often does it do something else, right? So type one and type two error. And this has been also rapidly improving with CRISPR being the latest technology that is highly specific and efficient once you're inside the cell. And so I think both of these technologies are improving along the way, but they've been the major challenges of gene therapy technology innovation.  What do you think in terms of research challenges has to happen next in terms of improving the technology of getting specific genes into specific cells? Like Thomas summarized, off-target definitely is the most serious. That's the difficulty to overcome. In the field, people are making progress quickly. At least at this moment, they know the technique, how to detect which gene is off-target. It's become more and more clear, but what's the long-term consequence biologically is not clear. And these kind of consequence could be long-lasting and heritable, can pass from generation to generation and maybe change the population. So that's really a big concern. So that goes back, I'll come back to you, don't worry. Oh, I'm sorry. That comes back to the question of do you want to change a few cells in the retina of an adult or do you want to change one or two cells of an embryo and have it propagate through the entire species? And I think it's a good time to talk about the other question that was posed to people before this session began. And the question was, whose opinion do you trust most in deciding whether the genomes of human embryos should be edited? And so the options were international organizations, national government, scientific journals, health and pharmaceutical companies, doctors, religious leaders, and nonprofit organizations. I guess that begs the question of what kind of nonprofit organization, but never mind. Maybe this time I'll go in the room first since you've heard about these things and we can see how the room varies from the people who are online. Can I see a show of hands for international organizations? Okay, there's a few people there. National governments. Ooh, that's interesting. No, not too much trust going on there. Okay, thank you. Scientific journals, should they be deciding? Well, scientific journal man. Not surprising, a couple others. Okay, health and pharmaceutical companies. No, not too many there. Okay, doctors. Oh, so people are comfortable. Okay, religious leaders. No, not too many religious leaders. Non-profit organizations. Presumably they don't include friends of the national zoo or something like that. Why don't we add a couple? Excuse me, I think we need some more options. Well, I was gonna say, I mean, maybe all of the above is. How about ethicists? Ethicists. Oh, some ethical hostility going on here. That's funny. Or just scientists, not scientific journals. I see, all right. Well, actually, I didn't, never mind. Can we see the results of how people voted overall? Scientific journals. Well, I can tell somebody in the audience is gonna be pleased. So yeah, some people are, pharmaceutical companies didn't do very well outside of this room either. So, Nita, I'm gonna ask you to respond to this since you obviously feel there should be other players in the game, including bioethicists. Why? Why are bioethicists?  Yeah, well, okay. A little self-serving, but never mind. I'm sure you have a broader explanation as well. Right, so one thing that I think is interesting is just seeing some of the smaller numbers. People don't trust governments necessarily and I think that's unsurprising to me and probably right given the history of state-sponsored use of technologies like this can lead to bad results. I think individual choice is a better place to be leaving the decision-making about the use of this technology than it would be in the hands of governments because if one of the major fears of the use of this technology is leading to some sort of eugenics, leading to misuse of the technology, individuals making choices about how to have healthy children is likely to continue to lead to a great deal of diversity. People are gonna be making choices to bring healthy children into the world not to bring all blonde-haired blue-eyed children into the world or all children who can play the violin really well and not play sports, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's unsurprising to me. It's surprising the deadening response in this room of the lack of interest in ethicists playing a role and I think that's in part, I'm gonna in defense of ethicists say that that's a little bit of a misunderstanding of what the role of ethicists has been. It's not to put stops on technology going forward. That's an approach that certainly some bioethicists take which is to say have a moratorium on all types of progress in society if there's any risk, don't do anything at all. But a different approach from one that I certainly adopt is more regulatory persimmony. It's to say regulate no more than is absolutely necessary because what we should really be doing is enabling good scientific progress to go forward and scientific progress that happens without any sort of oversight whatsoever historically has not been the best science. It's science that is not replicable oftentimes because it isn't done with open transparency to ensure that the results are really robust results. It's done often in silence or on populations of individuals who aren't able to give their full and informed consent. And so informed consent, which is now a very thick concept one that's really adopted and respected worldwide is a concept that's still relatively new. Maybe 50 years ago, it became a recognized bioethical principle and is now part of research on humans and part of the process by which research actually occurs. And so those types of things, I think most people would agree that they would like their consent to be given or research is conducted on them or research is conducted on the population. Those are bioethical principles. And those principles come from not ethicists making the decision on their own. It's not some people sitting in a room and thinking they know best for society what should be done. It's recognizing that it's a process of engaging the public in democratic deliberation. And so there are principles that bioethics brings to the table like non-malificence, non-harm to people, autonomy and freedom of academic research and of research going forward, of public beneficence, things that actually benefit the good of people and justice more generally access to technologies. These are things that can guide a discussion but a discussion ultimately, I think is what needs to happen because international organizations can certainly serve a leadership role. Scientific journals have an essential part to play in making sure that only good research ends up being published and preventing bad research from being integrated into society. But also every person in this room and every person in society has a place in the debate as well and in the decision about who we should trust and whether or not to edit the human genome. Those are people who should be part of the conversation to help guide what the international norms will be and to guide what kind of research we're gonna allow to go forward and celebrate going forward and fund going forward and which research we think is more detrimental potentially or more concerning because of the heritable and long-term effects. Well, I have an idea about that. Do we have a microphone that we prepared to hand to the audience? I wanna ask the audience to get ready if they have questions but there's someone in the audience that I'm gonna take a chance of asking a question of given the fact that we're talking about this topic. No microphone, that's too bad. It's gonna come. So here's the question and I'm gonna ask Dr. Drazen who's sitting in the back and is an editor of a scientific journal and this is my concern about scientific journals. Let's say someone sends a paper like the paper that was appeared in Protein and another journal to the New England Journal of Medicine and you look at it, scientific journal, make a decision about whether it's ethical or not and you decide it's not. You don't tell anybody you've made that decision because you don't talk about papers that you don't accept. So how does the debate get furthered in terms of openness if scientific journals are the ones that are making the decisions? Because if it's a positive decision, we'll know about it but if it's a negative decision, we'll never know about it. So now there's a microphone behind you if you wanna answer that. And I forgive me for putting you on the spot like this but I'm sure you're good at it. I'm on the spot all the time. Yeah, exactly. I think the question is that you're suggesting that journals have more of a role in society at large than we are prepared or have the ability to take. NPR doesn't do a story on something. It doesn't mean the story is dead. It means NPR didn't think it was worth airing. We have to make this decision all the time. Somebody will sooner or later publish it who feels that it's appropriate to have a discussion about. And a lot of it will depend on the reasons why we thought that an article shouldn't move forward. And if we thought the science was terrific but that the ethics were marginal, somebody may disagree with us. In fact, I have found that probably the most peripatetic group of people we deal with are the bioethicists. You can put up a question and you can always find a bioethicist that agrees and disagrees with us vehemently. And so we would make a decision but that doesn't mean that the information would be suppressed. It would be brought out by someone who felt that it was worth defending and there will be somebody. There's enough outlets that it's not being suppressed. It's just whether we wanna, the journal that is publishing it is going to invest editorial capital at the time it's published and intellectual energy after it's published defending its decision. And we would decide whether this is one worth doing or not. We make that decision all the time. Right. I should explain. I think I forgot to introduce myself and why he meant that Jeffrey Jayson mentioned NPR. I'm Joe Palca. I work as a reporter for NPR and I'm a science correspondent and we cover a lot of things that are in these journals. But again, the thing that I'm curious about and need to talk about it is that we ask the question whose opinion do you trust most and scientific journals at least in that poll and some in the room said this was a great idea. The trouble is people are turning to journals to make decisions and if the answer is well somebody will publish it then that's not really a decision. But anyway, it struck me as an interesting question. And. Okay. To some extent when you see an article published in a journal at least according to how the world now functions. I can't say how it's gonna function in five years time. It's an external grade of the work. So if it ends up in a journal what people wonder about it's editorial standards versus one that has very high editorial standards that tells you something independent of the article itself. I'm only, okay, never mind. We can go on. I like this, I like this discussion but maybe I should broaden it out more. Do, does anybody, ah, we have a hand up and we have a question. Thank you. My name's Steve Kramer. I'm with the International Civil Aviation Organization completely out of this topic. But, Neeta, I didn't hear your question when you posed it or I would have probably been a little more positive. But what I think I heard when I looked at the poll I couldn't answer the question because there wasn't a none of the above or a collective. And I think the collective is what's necessary, what you described as the process in the UK. So I'm interested in how would we replicate that? You talked about the challenges in the United States but how do you make that model a model that can be adopted and guidance be provided globally? I think that's a great question. One of, I said on the US Bioethics Commission and the project that we're undertaking right now is to try to define what is the process of democratic deliberation on bioethics? How could we exactly do this thing which is have a broader democratic deliberation about complex emerging technologies like this one? So I think one of the things that I liked seeing on that poll was international organizations. And I think even an organization like the World Economic Forum, this could serve as a leadership vehicle by which democratic deliberation could happen where you engage scientific organizations and communities, you engage other international organizations and you organize a series of debates and a series of contributions both scientifically and ethically to figure out what is the state of the science? Have people like Katrina and Thomas and Ping talk to us and really be realistic about where are we? What are the applications that are possible? What are the applications that are truly science fiction? And get the science right and get the science right and then translate it in a way that is accessible to the public because the problem is too rarely does the science actually become accessible to the public so that they can engage in the process of democratic deliberation.  What is a designer baby? We've been designing babies since the beginning of time and not at all, right? I mean so much of this is well beyond our control and will remain well beyond our control but we make it accessible to the public. This is the role of people like Joe as well on NPR to be able to share what the scientific results are in a way that's accessible and then organize a series of debates and conversations and collaborate on coming up with what we think are a set of standards, right? We have the charter on human rights. That's a great vehicle for trying to understand what basic principles are that can then be applied to other organizations. We need similar types of international leadership to have a charter on what we think is appropriate and inappropriate for technologies that truly impact not just this generation but many generations to come. So I think there is a process. It isn't easy but it does require international leadership and engagement of all of the relevant stakeholders. Okay, somebody behind me, that's very bad. I'm Jessie from software industry which is very non-related to this topic but there's something I'd like to ask is at the beginning when I saw the first question about whether you are excited, worried, or neutral, I select a neutral but actually as the conversation goes I've become more worried. The reason is I just imagine about the future if we can modify a genome. And there are a lot of things like for example within a country the rich people they may pay to modify their gene to be better or smarter and then even between countries countries can use that as a weapon which they can make their people better. So maybe this is a really kind of a crazy idea but I think I'm just really a little bit worried about it. I want to see the views from the panel. How do you guys think about that in the future? Do you think she's right to be worried? Yes, she is right to be worried and be cautious. We don't know for the many of the mutations or the consequence if we really do the editing in the Gemini cells or the M-Droid. That's very different from somatic cells. Somatic cells, you only change the individuals but Gemini cells or M-Droid, you talk about you know different generations could be change a human being, change our evolution. We have big reason to worry about. I think that the nature of your concern is exactly why Nina is saying it's important to have that broader debate. I think some of the ideas of what people are worried about are really much more in the realm of science fiction. Could you, some of the things that you described but I think that the concerns are very legitimate and very real and that is why I think this forum and session is here and that there are gonna be a lot of different points of view on that that have to be considered. I think that's also why those of us that are working in this field are not doing that kind of germline modification. We're really focused on helping people who have those serious diseases that are in need of treatments but it's great to have this kind of dialogue now particularly when it's more in the realm of science fiction because you wanna have the debate in a thoughtful, deliberative way and it does, it takes time. It does take time. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think if you, with what's possible today, no, I'm not worried about effects happening today, right? I don't think the technology is that far advanced yet but if you take it to the extreme where we have unlimited both breadth and specificity of power to manipulate our own genomes you can imagine, one can imagine a few different layers of concern. One would be unintended consequences. We don't know what one change, how that might ripple through the rest of the genome and how that may impact health of that person and subsequent generations. Another sort of category is potential loss of biodiversity. One could imagine that if it's on TV that everybody should go for this new mutation in this gene and then everyone goes that way, could that open up a narrowing of biological diversity that could have massive unintended consequences like disease proliferation and less of the populations protected. So these are things that are far, far off in the future, not possible today but one can imagine that. Then of course, the third one is what about liberty and individual choice and privacy and whenever there's technology like this that can be so powerful, who's really making the decisions, can somebody be coerced, are there inequalities that can come out of this kind of technology and that's sort of a third new bucket of concern. So sure, there are theoretical concerns that I think we'll have to look at as we move forward and as the technology advances, not necessarily a concern today but something to keep in our sights for the future. Sorry, as you were talking, I just thought something spun into my head. So there is a big debate, even though what you guys are talking about is not particularly contentious about repairing damaged genes but some people don't like any genetically modified organisms whatsoever. And I wondered if people would be okay with somebody who was genetically modified because we're discussing labeling in this country of labeling food that's genetically modified so that people have to wear a GMO on their lapel or something like that. Anyway, maybe not. Let's go ahead. My name is Richard Jefferson. I'm a professor of biological innovation in Queensland and founder of a social enterprise called Cambia. I think we might actually be teased by one of the comments you said about evolution in realizing we're looking at angels on the head of a pin here because we haven't defined what biological identity is and there's one of the largest revolutions in biology ongoing as we speak and a little spraking for a colleague, Rob Knight, is speaking later today about in the being human area and it seems that there's a new theory of evolution that's emerging called the Holo Genome Theory which basically recognizes that most of what makes us what we are is microbial and it is constantly changing anyway. So thinking of ourselves as a fixed, persistent element is part of the misunderstanding of evolution that we've endured for the last 150 years and now that we're discovering that the vast majority of all metazoa, including ourselves, are microbial and these are not adjuncts. They are what make us what we are. We're already doing genome editing with lunch and so it's fascinating to reconcile the nature of biological identity and whether that influences very much our comfort zone and our familiarity which affects very much the ethical considerations. I want to respond to that. I think that's a wonderful comment and contribution whether it's the microbiome that's changing all the time and the way we conceive of ourselves as human or the mate selection that we've been doing forever that's already a form of genome editing. We're doing genetic modification all the time. We're doing changes that are heritable all the time and it's figuring out if there's a difference in degree or kind and what the ethical implications of that difference in degree or kind might be but also recognizing where we are and what it actually is touching upon. So this idea of being human, the challenge that people feel that it's somehow unnatural. Most of what we have done since the beginning of time is unnatural in some way. I mean it's doing things, every time you take a medicine it is unnatural in the way that it changes disease or it extends our lifetime. So I think it's absolutely right to put those types of concerns into a broader context and understand what is it that we're really talking about? What are the concerns really? And that's part of the dialogue that needs to happen and I think that's a really nice way to capture what some of those concerns are and some of the challenges to the traditional mantras that have been advanced that guard against doing these types of changes. Just encourage people to be familiar with the work of Rob Knight who's here, exceptional scientist to talk about being human in an hour or two and also look on Wikipedia about the holo genome theory. It's really quite an impressive reconsideration of evolution. Well, we humans have had multiple takedowns throughout our lives and historically of understanding who we are, where we are, what our importance is. And yes, I still, I'm very proud of my bacteria. So I'm always saying nice things about them. Any other questions from, yes, there's a question back there. Eric Daly from Beijing Review. I was just wondering, I think all the talk of prudence and deliberation is very admirable. But I think that if you think of a country where scientific prowess is quite high but you might not have the ethical constraints, the first country to tackle genome editing on an embryo and to derive benefits from that, might the question and say the US where we have more deliberation not be phrased as a matter of saving people's lives? In other words, will the government be compelled to go ahead and to catch up with a kind of a, I won't say arms race, but kind of benefits race, not be started in that case. Thank you. Yeah, well, I think that, yeah, well, maybe I should ask the panelists. But if somebody comes along and said, look, I'm here today because my beta thalassemia gene, which would have been lethal, was knocked out of my embryo. I mean, we do it in a passive way by selecting embryos that don't have the disease. So this is a more active way. I mean. It's a pre-implantation diagnosis. And so I don't want to dismiss your question. I think that it is one that has to be part of this consideration, but there's a little bit of what Nidu's saying. Among the technologies that exist today, if you are concerned about a particular genetic mutation for some of them, you can assess embryos prior to implantation and then only select ones that don't have that particular mutation. Now that is not available to everybody in the world right now. So there is a disparity there. But frankly, there's also a disparity in nutrition and education and a lot of other things that are profound in terms of creating a healthy human being. And so, yes, there is that concept, but I think there's also a wider range of disparity of technologies that support and enable optimal health. Well, we've actually reached the end of the time we have and what I'm just realizing and feeling quite terrified about is I'm supposed to summarize our discussion. And really, it can't be summarized except in the sense, there are parts of it that can be in the sense that there are things that there's general agreement that we can pursue without risking ethical conundrums or complaints. But I think the question is a very provocative one because somebody said that people would be in favor, people in Congress would be in favor of therapeutic cloning. This is in the United States. If they could cure baldness. And so there's a certain question in my mind if you can show a clear cut benefit from something that still has an ethical baggage associated with it, it's gonna complicate the discussion quite a lot. As a member of the media, the simplification of I'm cured will compromise the more thoughtful discussion that an ethicist or a research scientist would bring to the topic. So in conclusion, I think this is going to be a discussion that's gonna go on. But I do think it's important to remember what's real and what's hypothetical as you were calling it, what's science fiction. And right now, we do have the luxury of some time to talk about this topic because mostly the things that we're most scared about are science fiction at this point. So I think with that, I'll say thank you very much to the panel and thank you for the audience for your great questions. Thank you.


This is the OTP presented by Farm Bureau Health Plans. More than health care coverage, it's a better experience. Visit FBHP.com to learn more. With Amy Wells, I'm Mike Keith. This Saturday night, the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame will induct a new class, the class of 2023, and our own Keith Bullock will be inducted. He joins us on the OTP. What about the Hall of Famer? I know, right? I feel like I can't even look him in the eye anymore. Like, too big a time. No, but I mean, really, truly, it's something that I know you have seen other people going into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame.  But now for it to be you, does it kind of feel like it's about time? You know what?  And I know I played really hard here, like Javon, Eddie, Steve, like all the guys. But we never really, to me, like I never really accomplished maybe two goals that I had. And, you know, one was to win defensive MVP and two was to win a Super Bowl. But that being said, you know, I got to play behind Albert Hainesworth, who was a runner up or within the top three of defensive MVP. I played on some teams that had Super Bowl capability, but for whatever reason, you know, we just didn't get over the hump.  Like I never got to play in the Super Bowl, but I was prepared for all the days that I went out there and practiced and then that I put into my craft. So, yeah, it's pretty cool when people recognize, you know, what you did.   So there was a mind state, there was a way to go about things that I learned just like when I got to college, there was a way to go about it. So it was fun. The whole process was fun.  It was cool. So my question is actually for Keith and so I've got an event coming up in July, July 22nd where we're going to celebrate a new class of inductees for the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. I'm just wondering if you're free on July 22nd. Oh, what? I think the hall is calling. Oh, wow. So talk to me about now that you've had time to absorb all of it. The night you were told at Nissan Stadium, Brad Willis shows up out of nowhere, you're speaking with Rand Carthon. You think you're there for just an event. As you go back through that, you seemed very shocked. I was. Where are you? OK. I was because of, you know, we did our normal thing the last 10 and 11 years. You've been my teammate. Amy's been my teammate. So it's like, KB, we were doing was a fan recognition. Right. Introducing Rand. So I was like, yeah, of course, like I said, if I'm in town, I'm down.  You know, so there's no telling what maybe he's trying to get like a raffle going. I don't even know. And then he's asking me, what am I doing July 22nd? I'm like in my head. I'm like, oh, me and my brothers, we're supposed to be going to probably in Portugal and then he's like, I think he's like, well, and then he hit the question. I was like, yeah, of course.  You know what I'm saying? We can go there. We'll make that up. We'll make that time up.  Like I watched the game from afar through a different lens and I'm, you know, privileged to do that kind of like your lens. You sure differently than the fan as do you. So, you know, I'm not really thinking about any more honors from football. So especially here is great that I'm inducted here in the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame because, you know, this is where I lived half my life. You know, I got here at 22 and, you know, to be recognized as during that era of the 2000s is one of the better, you know, athletes, football players in Tennessee. That's pretty cool. Your daughters did not get to see your career because they weren't here. Right now, we're focused. I was focused. What does this moment mean to them? You know what? I don't, I don't know if I don't know, I don't know. It's funny because when my wife told them, they were like, isn't daddy already in the Hall of Fame or something like that? But that was inducted in my high school in Rockland County and all those things where I'm from. But yeah, it's just interesting. So they never saw me play. Kira, my oldest, knew of me playing because she was about two or three when I retired. And then the other two come so their ages are 15, 10 and 13. Yeah, they just see me as that they know what I did. But I don't I think this will be a great introduction to like, OK, my dad is, you know, it's just I remember I don't need. I don't even take them to games. I remember the first Titans game I took them to my two oldest. They were probably like nine and seven. You know, I'm going to have football daughters, you know, I got them on the field before the game.  They're not throwing a football or nothing there picking the grass. It's like they never seen grass that soft. I was like, yeah, it sounds familiar. You know, it's going to be cool. It's going to be cool to see that's going to be a cool night for us as a family, you know, because my wife was around the whole time. We were dating. We were together, but we weren't married.  Remember that? It was a I don't know how cold it was cold. She got frostbite. So from San Francisco, so she, you know, she's not up on weather. She had just moved to New York. It wasn't great. But that is a cool thing to be able to. Reflect on with your family, reflect on with your daughters, but also really take a moment to really appreciate what it is that you accomplished in your career, because I'm sure that, yes, you've been out of it for a decade. You have done an incredible amount of stuff from a business perspective.  But to be able to take some time to really reflect on that, being a little bit further removed than right when you decide to retire. And so there's all those emotions and feelings now that you're kind of out of that. Are you excited to be able to kind of look back on your career and say, all right, I did actually do something. Yeah, I mean, I think as a former player, we all reflect. I think we reflect more often than we lead on. You know, a part of my reflection as a Titan is, you know, you look at our running backs, right? Earl Campbell set the tone. Then you had Eddie George. Then you had Chris Johnson and you have Derek Henry. And you have some good guys in between. But those are our pillars and the fabulous four. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? And I say that to say, you know, right now and then they're all great. Pick which one you want. You know what I mean?  There are a lot that I look back and I like that played here. And I gave it all. But I feel that, you know, like Eddie did and Earl Campbell did and CJ did and Derek is doing. I feel like I set the tone for what it is to be a linebacker for the Tennessee Titans Titans fans. Listen up, open a Titans checking account from Pinnacle with at least $100 and a recurring direct deposit by August the 18th. And you could win two tickets to five Titans home games. Details at TitansBanking.com Titans checking from Pinnacle. Play hard. Bank easy. Member FDIC. I've just been handed breaking news Titans fans. It's official. Seat Geek is now the official ticketing partner of your Tennessee Titans. That's right. The deal is finalized. Seat Geek is the newest member of your Titans family. If you haven't heard the name yet, Seat Geek, you'll be hearing it a lot more this season and for seasons to come. That's Seat Geek. Whether you're buying or selling tickets to Titans games or any live event in Nashville, Seat Geek is the place to do it. Seat Geek, the new official ticketing partner of your Tennessee Titans. So Titans fans can thank. What are you most proud of in your career? I'm most proud of that win. Two things. OK.  I was AFC defensive player of the week. The next week I got hurt. We started that season 0 and 6, but we were trending to sneak in the playoffs. I really believe if I didn't get hurt, we would have beat San Diego on Monday night or something. It was a night. Christmas night. It was a night game so you know I was going to show up. No, I really missed you that night for sure. Yeah, it showed in the ballgame because we talked about it on the broadcast.   That team 2001 and then I became a starter, like I knew how to do it. I knew what it was, how it was supposed to be done. You know, we look back now, it might be done a little different. And that's good because organizations are supposed to evolve and change. You know, you have to go through your periods and that's fine. But for me, I'm most proud that I left it like how, you know, those guys kind of left it when I left. How much do you keep in touch with guys you played with? I think a lot. I think I think we do a fairly good job. I think Miss Amy has done a great job of with the alumni weekend and which allows, you know, people now obviously with the Oilers Organization, but with guys I played with with the Titans. You always have those guys that, you know, you might have hung out with and they were only here for this time of the year. You know, through OTAs up to camp and then they get cut at camp. But they're still good people, you know, through football. Obviously we're all out here competing. It's a job. It's a game. But there's a personal side where people more than we are athletes.  And I think that it's great living back here in Nashville and being able to, you know, even if I can't make every event for an alumni weekend, you know, I'm sure to get to one and then you reconnect with somebody. Yeah, let me get your number. You're into this or what are you doing now? You might be in the same business or you got kids that are playing volleyball or, oh, I'm here for all that. So it's pretty cool in this phase of life to reconnect with those guys.  And I think those opportunities coming together, you know, help for that as well. Amy Adam Strunk has done so many things and has helped reconnect. I mean, the Oilers players to the Titans players and the Oilers players to the Oilers players and the Titans players to the Titans players. It's one of the best things she's done. And then she's connected to guys in different ways. Amy Adam Strunk and Chris Johnson.  I had never seen anything like that.  But, you know, just to really observe Mr. Mara, I practice every day talking to the GM and I'm like, OK, like I saw the business side of it and I didn't get to see that. And, you know, once a giant, always a giant. Like, I remember, you know, they just got a hotel Beckham Junior and I played for the Giants and once upon a time for a cup of coffee. I was there for a season, but I reached out. My little nephew wanted to go to practice. Yeah, come on through and they treated me. And I was like really impressed by that. And I think that and I know that Miss Amy is that she's trending. She's doing that like she does that, you know, as a former player. You know, there was a time, obviously, when Mr. Adams died and ownership was in limbo, where it wasn't welcoming at all to come around or, you know, feel as a part of the organization. And I think that, you know, while I know for a fact that that is part of the same goal and more importantly, for those old time guys that were in Houston, that probably felt they got left behind for a couple of decades, her rolling out the red carpet for them.  You know, here's my number. Anytime you're in town, come get a cup of coffee. There you go. I think that's so nice. It's been so fun to see as someone who has now been with this organization for a while, who's seen players of kind of different eras be able to come together and bond a little bit and share those stories, because at the end of the day, playing in the National Football League, playing for the Tennessee Titans is a very elite fraternity. And so to be a part of someone who played in the NFL, who played for the Tennessee Titans and is now being recognized for your contributions in something like the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame, that's like elite of elite when it comes to fraternities. And there are some pretty incredible Titans names in the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. Mike Keith, Amy Adams, Shrunk.  Well, but you think Titan's people and Steve and Jevon and Keith and Frank and I mean, it's a I mean, you guys were the building blocks. You were the pillars as we get ready to move into the new stadium. It was the foundation you laid that takes us there. And, you know, the fan base has been tremendous. But I mean, those days and, you know, those teams, those were magic Sundays. And I think we have a lot more to come, which is really fun. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, you speak about those players, those men. I, unfortunately, unfortunately, they didn't get to play here as long as I did for a 10 year career with the Tennessee Titans.  But they set the tone. They set the foundation with that first season in Adelphia Stadium in the Coliseum. That's what it was called. The Adelphia Coliseum. The Adelphia Coliseum and just that set the tone for my career. You know, that set the tone for my career. I remember the next year we had a losing season and, you know, I just remember the last game of the season. I think we played the Bengals. And because that was the game that was postponed due to 9 11. Yeah. And it was just a game that was like, I was rainy. It was, I remember, like, and we lost. And I just remember the fans, like the ones that stayed and came like clapping, giving us like a, like, and we lost. And like, since they're like, that's what it's all about. And like, you know, I played for three things.  So, you know, that's when the fan, it used to be myself, but that's when, you know, you're realizing you're playing a professional game, you're making money.  Hey Titans fans, hard to decide what's the best part of a Duncan run. Is it the coffee or the classic $1 donut, the $2 stuffed bagel minis, or the $3 sausage, egg and cheese that you can add to that coffee? Or of course, you just get to leave the office. The answer of course is yes. Time for a Duncan run. Great deals on food for one, two or $3 with a medium or larger coffee. America runs on Duncan. Keith Bullock is our guest on the OTP. We are talking about the fact that this Saturday night, he is part of the 2023 class of the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. The dinner is sponsored by the Tennessee Titans and it's going to be another fantastic event. Best player you ever played with. Can you name one? Yeah, just honestly, off the top of my head, I was at Chris Johnson. And I say that because I had been playing and there are people before that, you know, I could put in there for sure. But I say Chris Johnson because at that time we're playing a style of football, tough defense, run the football, slug it out. It was just tough. We're a tough club.  We might not. It was like that like season. We got a little electrifying because we got Vince Young, Lindell, Pac-Man that, you know, but Chris Johnson, he was the first guy in a long time that is like, whoa. You know, when you see when when he gets his space and he did his thing, he was very fun to watch was a great teammate to play with in that sense that as a defensive player, as a linebacker, it's like, OK, you can't let anybody another running back play better than Chris on Sundays because he's the only running back that should shine. We got the best running back in the league and I already know that it's hard to get, you know, some notoriety. So for me, defensively, it was one of my missions and it had always been whoever we're playing against to shut shut them down and my match up was typically a running back tight end. But when Chris Johnson got here, I took it a little more personal and it was just fun. It was fun. I saw it just up the top of my head. Good answer. You've got the Mr. Monday Night name just locked up. You will be Mr. Monday Night for all time. What was it about those prime time games? Those big moments that really made Keith Bullock shine.  So if if you watch the Titans every Sunday, I'm shining just about every Sunday, you know, but then when you get on television for me, it was easy. Like I like those moments. One of my favorite players is Ocho Sinko just because, you know, he talks to talk and you walk the walk and he walked the walk for the most part. And like that's kind of just how I felt about myself. And then you're playing prime time. They're putting all these cameras in your face. Half the reporters don't even know who you are. Like don't know your career. So, you know, I'm not backing down from a challenge.  Certain things of confidence that it's like, you know, I remember when Lance Schulters was here and we were playing the AFC Championship against the Raiders and he tells Jimmy Wise, like Jerry Rice, he's a crybaby. He's always crying. He's calling Jerry Rice a crybaby before the AFC championship game. If you don't think this is bullet board material and then Jimmy comes to me.  Have you known Jerry Rice to be a crybaby? I'm like, I have Lance said it. He said it. You know, it just is what it is. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, it's just only the greatest receiver of all time. Yeah, it's OK. So yeah, just fun times. What do you think about all of it? And you could think about different moments in different games. Wasn't it just fun? Yeah, it was it was fun. People ask me all the time they come into my shop. I'm ringing them up. I'm making them a latte. They're asking me stuff about what's going on with the Titans. I'm like, sir, my six o'clock called out. I had to get here. I ain't even thinking about the Titans. But then we get to conversations. It's like, yeah, do I miss it? That's the famous question. Do you miss it? It's like, no, I did it. Like I literally did it. Like, I feel every challenge that a coach had given me throughout this game, every challenge I give myself, every challenge a teammate had given me, a reporter has given me, an opponent has given me. I've stepped up to that challenge and, you know, just stepping up as part of it. Sometimes you don't, you don't, you know, succeed. And that's part of it to get your butt back out there, practice, how do I figure it out? And all of that, it's your job at the time, but it's fun, you know, but this is your job. Which is fun. You love it. Yeah, absolutely. You know what I'm saying? But you played with such joy. Yeah. That's why I enjoyed watching you so much every single week and you practiced with joy. And you had joy in the locker room. And it's like, man, that is just, that's the way to do it. Yeah, I definitely, I played with a purpose. You know, at first it was, in high school was to get a scholarship, to get out of foster care. Then when I got to Syracuse, I got around some guys that were, you know, Hall of Fame, Marvin Harrison, Government, like, and I was like, oh, so that's how you get to the NFL. So I started working, working, working, and I was on my journey and then I get here. And I learned from the foundation that was set by, you know, those guys that I've been naming.  And you got to figure out how to do it. And that's why I say, you know, when it was my turn, like, they're like, here you go, Keith. And we were four and 12 and a five and 11. But you got to figure it out. You got to figure out how to be a leader on defense to, you know, help the offense, to help the team, to help the coaches, to help this whole thing get going. And, you know, it kind of reminds me of being the owner of a coffee shop. All right, I've got one more. Do you have another one or? No. Okay, Keith Bullock. Who's the best player you ever played against? Best player, the best player I've ever played against is definitely, there's no order and there's no, like, off the top of my head is Peyton Manning. Really? You know, you got to think about it. Think about all the teams we had here. If the Coles didn't have Peyton Manning, how many times do we win the AFC South?  And that's funny you asked that question. I thought about this the other day.  Obviously we had some down years, but those are the years we didn't have a quarterback, so yeah, it just goes to show what, you know, the quarterback position does, and hey, I don't feel no kind of way about that.  You had some luck against him. Yeah, no, some luck, and I made a couple. No, no, no, no, no, definitely some luck, and I made a couple plays, but Peyton Manning isn't gonna allow you to make plays against him. You know, he's, you know, so that's what I'm saying. Like certain guys can keep you in your place, and he's one of those guys, and you gotta have some luck against the sheriff. Well, Peyton Manning's in the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. He is. And this Saturday night, Keith Bullock will be part of the group that joins him. We're just so proud. I mean, and this is gonna be such a special night for everyone in the Titans family to see one of our very favorites, and there's still 53 jerseys all around town and all around the region, because we love you, Keith Bullock, congratulations, and can't wait to see you Saturday night. Appreciate you all. For Keith Bullock and Amy Wells, I'm Mike Keith, thanking you for listening to the OG.


Hello fellow family and welcome to another episode of reviews for you. Yes, I am still around unfortunately for you guys But that aside, let's jump into a couple of channels today So today's episode is a little bit special. We're gonna take a look at some channels under 100 subscribers So let's get straight into it. So our first channel is again for gaming the show I like the presentation of this actual channel art. I like the avatar It's very unique you got that nice GG and that's sort of the icon for the whole channel As you can see it's in the banner, which is a very good little technique and I like the color codes Well, so green that's quite cool. It's awesome. And then you got the banner, which is actually a Raj of awesome art, which I do like which is actually my favorite It's probably the troll face or the Skyrim beast. So that's pretty cool I like looking at that. So there's a plus on that side. We've got some links Which is also good. So we've got mega donation and paypal donations are always good But I wouldn't advise making that me probably your main one. You got your Google plus Facebook and Twitter So yeah, usual links social. That's good Now I would love to take a look at the channel trailer, but fortunately, there is no channel trailer Get those channel trailers done. Remember you're selling your product your channel as a product salad. Okay, so let's go into videos Okay, so straight away. I am impressed with the thumbnail design. I do like the little GG in the corners. That's very well done It's very easy to read it gets straight to the point. They look very well Titles looking very interesting. I catch him very good good use of characters, which I like here Yeah, it's something that's very well done very well presented very easy to read straight to the point titles are all there Everything seems to me on point here. So congratulations. You're done while there. So yeah, that's brilliant He's filling up his playlist. Now. Remember guys people like to binge watch him What's the best thing for binge watches the playlist? It's already there. So they don't have to click next episode So fabulous keep doing that. That's very well done. So yeah, the about page is all there It's very well done filled out you guys some nice set of goals all your links are there, which is absolutely brilliant So remember guys to fill out your about pages because it does help you feel through the spam I keep saying but generally again for gaming well done. You are on the right path So I will hit subscribe but guys definitely head over to game for gaming I'm sure to see you some improvement everything's looking fine and dandy So I think the German will go far so out on buddy. Hope to see you in the future And for our next channel today guys, we have quantum now straight away I am actually very impressed by the banner and avatar. It's very well done Very simplistic gets to the point names there. It's very unique and the banner is absolutely lovely I mean very abstract just got you games behind it, which is very cool It's unique to the touch and it's quite surprising the only has 39 subscribers And the only thing I would say they'll let you down here is just your Google plus link Maybe throwing your Twitter me throwing Facebook throwing your player. Me All that sort of stuff that that'd be awesome to see straight on the banner because then you know So should be out there to connect to everybody connect fans. It'd be fabulous. I say fabulous a lot with that being said Let's check out the trailer Okay, so it's very well thought out trailer I love the fact that he's also kind of a channel called Afro XT too And he does note that down and he makes himself well known. It's very well presented very well spoken So, yeah, I'm quite impressed with that channel trailer. Well done. So let's have a look at the videos tabs The only thing I would massively say is obviously it seems a bit of an oldish channel from six months ago It looks like you start a re-upload. But would that be instead the thumbnail design is actually mind-boggling brilliant so the only thing I would really suggest is that you upload more consistently because Your layouts fine everything's looking very dandy there. You just need more content So that's what I would suggest. Let's take a look at the playlist yet So we've got the walk-in dead season two. It's good to have a playlist even though It's only just the one but obviously at the moment you're very short on content So yet again the comment would be the same more content and the about page could use a lot of work I mean definitely start to fill out your Description definitely throw some links in there. You missed out on a lot of opportunity for first time people to come in And sort of see what you're about see where they can reach you Fan engagement is always the best in what easier way is it to just send a tweet out to you and get a response It's morally Uplifting and it will do you a lot of benefit in the future. So guys, I'd like to say I'm a little I'm very impressed with Quantum's design at the moment Artistically, it's very up there. It's very at the top of the table Just needs more content and fill out that about page But from that it looks like you're on the rise So I'm going to hit subscribe and hopefully you guys will too and let's support each other in the future And that'll be all for today ladies and gentlemen if you want to get yourself into reviews for you Please post below a comment. Yep. Just a comment saying that you want to be spotlighted I will try to pick you up next episode I'm going to shoot for three channels to definitely get them in there so I can get some more content to review So anyway guys, this has been it's just jord and thank you for tuning into reviews for you See you later. Bye