DOE Human Genome Program Contractor-Grantee Workshop VIII
February 27-March 2, 2000  Santa Fe, NM

133. Seeking Truth, Finding Justice: A PBS Documentary Special

Noel Schwerin

Backbone Media, San Francisco, CA 94131

schwerin@backbonemedia.org

TRUTH & JUSTICE will be a documentary special for national broadcast on PBS. Produced by the nonprofit corporation Backbone Media in association with Oregon Public Broadcasting, TRUTH & JUSTICE will stimulate the public to think critically about the real strengths and important limits of science -- particularly genetic science -- in both framing and resolving social conflict. It will demonstrate how new technologies -- particularly genetic technologies -- create unexpected, unprecedented legal conflicts which challenge fundamental legal, ethical and social principles.

In the style of A Question of Genes, the PI's award-winning, DOE-funded PBS program, each hour will closely observe two or three pairs of people -- judges and scientists, lay people and lawyers -- as they grapple with science and technology in a handful of actual legal cases. Through the interactions of these central "characters," the program will explore the critical interplay of science and the courts in deciding conflicts raised by genetic, reproductive and life-creating technologies. By profiling people at the center of these conflicts, it will use compelling, accessible human drama as its vehicle.