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Ruth Robbins: Good evening, everyone. My name is Ruth Robbins,
and on behalf of the Smithsonian Associates, it's a real pleasure to welcome you all here
tonight. Just to make sure you're in the right room, this is the Genetics Program, not the
Biblical Program.
[laughter]
You're going to be really surprised if you're expecting something about Modern Midrash because
that's not what we're discussing in here. Before I introduce the speaker, can I ask
you to please silence cell phones; they do work down here even though we're way underground.
Tonight you're going to hear a debate between two genetic experts, Susan Wolf and Robert
Green, on a very timely subject, "Is Genetic Information Different?" These two have been
prepping for a while, so I'm looking forward to a lively debate. This program is designed
to give you the opportunity to participate after you hear the debate and the speaker's
rebuttal. We will hope you'll take some time to write some questions for them, which we
will collect during the sherry and sweets break, which is about halfway through the
program. We have index cards for you out there, if you can write as clearly as possible your
questions on those cards and hand them in to either myself or one of the volunteers,
and we'll be able to present them in the second half of the program. As I mentioned, there
is sherry and sweets, the only downside is you cannot bring it back in here, so we've
given you enough of a break time that you can enjoy it outside and chat a little bit.
Before we open the debate, I want to first introduce our moderator, Dr. Eric Green, who
will, in turn, introduce our speakers. Dr. Green is the director of the National Human
Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. There are a lot of acronyms
in both those names, but we're just going to skip over those right now. It's a position
he's held since late 2009. Well, actually, I have to use the acronym: NHGRI, for National
Human Genome Research Institute. It's the largest organization in the world dedicated
solely to genomics research and aimed advanced human health through genomics research. Previously,
he served as an NHGRI scientific director, chief of the NHGRI Genome Technology Branch,
and director of the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center. While directing an independent research
program for almost two decades, Dr. Green was at the forefront of efforts to map, sequence,
and understand eukaryotic genomes, including significant start-to-finish involvement in
the human genome project. So, please join me in welcoming Eric Green, and then soon
after, Susan Wolf and Robert Green.