March 31, 1999

Erik Parens, adjunct assistant professor in Vassar’s multidisciplinary Science, Technology and Society program, spoke in Sanders Auditorium on “Testifying before the National Bioethics Commission on the Creation of Hybrid Embryos and Research on Embryonic Stem Cells.” An associate for philosophical studies at the Hastings Center, a pioneer bioethics research institute in Hastings-on-Hudson, Dr. Parens was commissioned in January 1999 by President Clinton’s National Bioethics Commission to research the implications of the recently-isolated embryonic stem-cells. “I am interested,” he told The New York Times, “in promoting a clearer conversation for people from high school students to reporters to Congress to the National Institutes of Health and the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.”