
Josephine Johnston
Director of Research, Research Scholar at The Hastings Center
- About the Mudd Center
- People
-
Programs and Events
- 2024-2025: How We Live and Die: Stories, Values, and Communities
- 2023-2024: Ethics of Design
- 2022-2023: Beneficence: Practicing an Ethics of Care
- 2021-2022: Daily Ethics: How Individual Choices and Habits Express Our Values and Shape Our World
- 2020-2021: Global Ethics in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities
- 2019-2020: The Ethics of Technology
- 2018-2019: The Ethics of Identity
- 2017-2018: Equality and Difference
- 2016-2017: Markets and Morals
- 2015-2016: The Ethics of Citizenship
- 2014-2015: Race and Justice in America
- Leadership Lab
- Mudd Undergraduate Journal of Ethics
- Highlights
- Mudd Center Fellows Program
- Get Involved
Talk Title: The Good Parent in an Age of Gene Editing: How Novel Genetic Technologies Challenge Parental Responsibility
Thursday, September 26, 2019, 5:00 pm, Stackhouse Theater

Josephine Johnston
Ms. Johnston’s current projects address the ethical implications of new kinds of prenatal genetic tests, the relationship between gene editing technologies and understandings of human flourishing, and the potential use of genetic sequencing technology in newborns. She is a member of Columbia University Medical Center’s Center for Excellence in Ethical, Legal and Social Implications, examining psychiatric, neurologic and behavioral genetics. She writes that current discussion of gene-editing should strive for “a kind of moral reasoning that can help us discriminate between uses of gene-editing technologies that will and will not make our lives better - that will and will not help us to flourish - over and above making us healthier or more productive."
A New Zealand-trained lawyer with a master’s degree in bioethics and health law from the University of Otago, Ms. Johnston joined the staff of The Hastings Center as a research scholar in 2003 and became director of research in 2012. She previously worked as a bioethics researcher at Dalhousie University and the University of Minnesota, and she practiced law in New Zealand and Germany.
- About the Mudd Center
- People
-
Programs and Events
- 2024-2025: How We Live and Die: Stories, Values, and Communities
- 2023-2024: Ethics of Design
- 2022-2023: Beneficence: Practicing an Ethics of Care
- 2021-2022: Daily Ethics: How Individual Choices and Habits Express Our Values and Shape Our World
- 2020-2021: Global Ethics in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities
- 2019-2020: The Ethics of Technology
- 2018-2019: The Ethics of Identity
- 2017-2018: Equality and Difference
- 2016-2017: Markets and Morals
- 2015-2016: The Ethics of Citizenship
- 2014-2015: Race and Justice in America
- Leadership Lab
- Mudd Undergraduate Journal of Ethics
- Highlights
- Mudd Center Fellows Program
- Get Involved
The Mudd Center
-
Washington and Lee University
209 Mattingly House
Lexington, VA 24450