On Thursday February 2, the Bioethics Institute welcomed visiting scholar Dr. Kris Dierickx from KU Leuven in Belgium. Dr. Dierickx is a Full Professor of Medical Ethics, specializing in the ethics of emerging technologies such as organoid and embryoid use, genetics, and the integrity of scientific research. Dr. Dierickx is member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicien, the Flemish Screening Commission, the Deontological Commission of the Superior Health Council, and he serves as an ethicist in several ethics committees. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles on a variety of topics.

 

      During his stay at Loyola Marymount, Dr. Dierickx was gracious enough to give two lectures to graduate students in the class Bioethics at the Beginning of Life, speaking on topics such as non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) and the ethics of genomic editing. He also touched on some of his own research in the lectures, discussing the lack of proper informed consent in these prenatal tests in Belgium and the ethical discussion surrounding the CRISPR Cas9 technology.