 Well, thank you very much Ruth and thanks to all of you for joining us here this evening for something I think is going to be very interesting and I think quite enjoyable. What I thought I would do to set the stage is to acknowledge the fact that we have I'm sure a heterogeneous audience and at the same time I think some of the concepts we're going to delve into when we start engaging our two debaters will get quite technical. So I thought I would just spend a few minutes just sort of giving a little bit of a background to get everybody sort of on the same page and in part because so much has happened in genomics in the last 25 years that to really appreciate the issues we're going to discuss it's important to understand the context. So just some simple introductory 101 material what we're talking about keep in mind that the human body consists of about 10 trillion cells and every one of those cells is operating off of the same blueprint information and that blueprint information is housed in the structure of the cell called the nucleus on structures called chromosomes which are sort of the suitcases that carry our genomic and genetic material from one generation to the next. Of course the key molecule we're going to be talking about in this debate is DNA, deoxy ribonucleic acid which of course is the information molecule for all living systems. And all of the material that makes up human DNA is called the genome. All the chromosomes and all the DNA that really represents the human genomic blueprint consists of about 3 billion bits of material or bases what it's called little chemical units which we abbreviate G, A, T and C because it's really just four different chemicals or letters if you will. Tools and technologies came available really about 30 years ago that allowed scientists to start to imagine going through and reading out, decoding our blueprint, figuring out the order of these 3 billion bases that make up our blueprint. This led to something that occurred that began in 1990 called the human genome project which really changed everything. This was a large international effort involving thousands of scientists and researchers around the world actually, the United States playing a very major role that basically aimed and in fact the institute I now direct was created by the U.S. Congress to lead the U.S.'s effort in the human genome project and its goal was quite straightforward, determine the order of the 3 billion letters that make up the human genomic blueprint. That project which I was involved in from beginning to end was wildly successful and 13 years after it started it ended about 11 years ago. In fact, last year we celebrated a tremendous amount of and tremendous number of ways recognizing that we had now had 10 years of having the complete sequence of the human genome in front of us and available for study. What's happened in those almost now 11 years since the end of the human genome project that really leads us to the issues that we're going to talk about tonight and what I can tell you is there has been spectacular progress in the field of genomics and we are learning a lot about what each of our genomes look like and what all people's genomes look like. Now let me give you some information and give you some ideas about what this is like. So shown here is a bit of the human genome but actually keep in mind that your human genome, a person's human genome is actually 6 billion letters. It's 3 billion you got from mom and 3 billion you got from dad. So in total each of us is basically consisting of 6 billion letters ordered that represents our collective genome. And by the way, if you look at the slide note that what's shown there is only one bit of the genome actually 6 million times larger would be needed to represent your entire genome. Now what's happened in the last 11 years? 11 years ago we had laid out all these letters and then it was time to start interpreting what they meant. Learning the grammar, learning the language, learning the syntax and we've learned quite a bit. And we now know and we can sort of almost annotate and recognize that within your 6 billion letters are operating about 20,000 genes. Genes are the bits of DNA information that make the building blocks of cells and tissues, things called proteins, 20,000 genes or so but it's actually far more complicated than that because it also turns out there's hundreds of thousands of other functional sequences that determine where and when genes get turned on and each of our cells actually operates that blueprint a little bit differently whether it's a muscle cell, whether it's a liver cell, whether it's a brain cell. There's incredible biological complexity in those hundreds of thousands of other functional sequences that are telling those 20,000 genes what to do and when to do them. The other thing we've learned besides understanding a lot about the functional landscape of the human genome is that we've also now done studies to start to figure out how all of our genomes are different from one another. And so across your genome, compared to the person sitting to your left or the person sitting to your right, there's about 3 to 5 million letters that are different. Shown here are just 3 places across the genome that there might be a difference compared to the person sitting next to you. You may have a G at that top position, the person sitting next to you might have an A, or the middle position there might be a C versus a T and so forth. So across your 6 billion letters, there's about 3 to 5 million places that is going to be a letter difference. And wouldn't it be really fascinating and incredibly motivating to figure out which of those letter differences that each and every one of us have might have a consequence for things like our health and disease? And we know that differences among our genomes really have a tremendous amount to do with what diseases we're susceptible to, how we respond to medications and various other traits that are important. Well, the third major development that's taken place besides understanding how the human genome works and understanding how human genomes are different among people is a significant surge in our ability to actually read out the letters of DNA. And here has been spectacular advances in particular over the last 6 or 7 years. And it really relates to the plummeting costs of being able to sequence a human genome. And I'll show you here as sort of an icon form of a graph, and in particular notice the line in green. When we sequence that first human genome as part of the human genome project, it cost about a billion dollars. And it was a brilliant investment because it was foundational information for a humankind that we will forever use. But it was by no means a medical test for a billion dollars. Today, it's just a few thousand dollars to do it. Within the next year or so, we think we'll have crossed a threshold of a thousand dollars. In fact, we refer to something called the thousand dollar genome. And notice in green how that curve has been coming down. And now in 2013, it's approaching that $1,000 threshold. Not quite there, but getting closer and closer every day. And it's been remarkable. And a thousand dollars, well, for a thousand dollars, that sounds like about the cost of an MRI or a lot of other clinical tests, which is why the idea of being able to sequence tens of thousands of people as part of research studies and also considering sequencing individual genomes of patients has come to the forefront. And let me just tell you these technologies, which I show here in the slide, are truly revolutionary, remarkable. And I'm showing actually the top two of those to actually hold in my hand little chips, little slides, little channels that now can sequence what used to take five and six years when the Human Genome Project did it to sequence that first human genome, can now sequence any one of your genomes in about a day or two. And what's also way cool is the image I show on the very bottom, because this is a new technology that's actually coming out this year. In fact, it's probably starting to hit some of the research labs this month, is a company that happens to have a very fancy new technology that literally plugs into the USB port of a laptop and will allegedly, and we'll see how good it is when it really comes out, allegedly will sequence a human genome in about a day. Truly remarkable, you could do that from a laptop such as the one I'm using here to show you these images. So this really sets the stage for what we now face, because we now have the technical capability to read out G's, A's, T's and C's from any person and for very inexpensively in the grand scheme of things in a matter of a day or two. And with that comes all sorts of ideas about how we might be able to use genomic information about patients as part of their medical care. That all sounds great, right? It all sounds pretty simple. Well, of course, it's not that simple. It's not that simple for a lot of reasons, because the fact of the matter is just because we can sequence somebody's genome and we could lay out in front of you the three to five million letter differences in this patient's genome. It doesn't mean we yet really understand what those differences mean, and there's a lot of other implications of not being certain exactly how to act on that information and who should get that information, et cetera, et cetera. It is a complicated circumstance, especially at present. And so this is why we're going to have this discussion tonight from two extremely talented and articulate scholars of the field. And all of this is being cast in a broader net, if you will, of what we think about and care a lot about, certainly at the National Institutes of Health and the Institute that I direct, but I think the whole field of genomics is the recognition that the science has marched forward in a spectacular way over the last 25 years. But similarly, I think we've been very responsible and also recognizing that this science and these opportunities fit within the context of society. And we very much have been engaged in studying the ethical, legal, and social implications of what we are doing as these genomic advances have marched forward. And I think you will hear from tonight two of the individuals who think deeply about some of these societal implications of these genomic advances. And we very much want to hear some of their thoughts and then we want to have you question some of the things that they have to say and things that are on your mind. I will tell you that tonight's debate, tonight's program, is part of a larger program of events that are taking place that very much represent an example of the way our institute is very interested in engaging the general public about issues around genomics and also our recognition that to really see this come to pass, we need to make sure that the general public understands genomics and really congrats what we think healthcare professionals are going to be talking to them about in the future. And this program is part of a series of sessions that we're having associated with a new partnership that our institute created recently with the Smithsonian Institution, in particular the National Museum of Natural History. And all this was built around a new exhibition called Genome Unlocking Life's Code, which opened last June and is right here across the ball on the second floor of the National Museum of Natural History in hall 23, immediately left of the Hope Diamond. So if you're ever next time you're there, go to the Hope Diamond and immediately turn left and you'll come into our exhibition. I just heard today that nearly 1.6 million people have visited this exhibition since it opened in June. It will be there until September. And then it leaves to go around North America for four to five years to travel and be viewed at other major museums. So that is the context of the science, it's the context of the debate and importantly all this fits in as a related program for this exhibition, which if you haven't seen, if you're motivated to come out here on a Thursday evening to hear about genetic and genomic information, I tend to think you're interested in this topic and I really hope if you haven't seen the exhibition, please come visit it. I think you'll be very pleased. And I think you will also very much appreciate that what's in the exhibit and what's talked about and issues that are raised are some of the same issues you're gonna hear from these two experts this evening. So with that as a background, I would like to introduce our first of the two speakers and the plan for tonight is as follows. We're gonna hear about a 20 minute presentation from each of our two scholars. Susan's gonna go first and Robert's gonna go second. And after which I'm gonna ask a series of questions to kick things off and then we're gonna take an intermission as you heard, you're gonna go out and you're gonna have a chance to write some questions on cards as well. And then we'll come back in after the little brief intermission and refreshment break and I will moderate the discussion using your questions as the material to sort of probe our speakers a bit more. So our first speaker is Professor Susan Wolfe. She earned her JD degree from Yale Law School and also did graduate work at Harvard University. She is now the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law, Medicine and Public Policy, Fragray Baker Daniels Professor of Law and Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. She's also a faculty member in the Center for Bioethics at that university. Professor Wolfe focuses her scholarly work on studying the legal and ethical issues in healthcare, biomedical research and emerging technologies, including genetics and genomics. And it was this interest that brought her to be the founding chair of the University's Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment and the Life Sciences. Professor Wolfe is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the Hastings Center in New York. In 2011, she was appointed by the Secretary of the Health and Human Services to the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity and her research has been funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, but also the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Greenwell Foundation and others. She is truly a scholar. She's authored, co-authored and edited over 150 publications in journals that include Science, Nature, Genetics, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association. So with that as an introduction, we're gonna now hear from Professor Susan Wolfe. Thank you, Eric.