One of biotech’s biggest conferences grapples with how to talk about race and identity
If you’re trying to explain systemic racism to a group of scientists and biotech professionals, do it in terms they understand.
Racially unjust systems are like “a mutation … in the social DNA,” said Cerevel CEO Tony Coles, speaking on a panel about race and inequality at a now-virtual conference held by the Biotech Innovation Organization, an industry trade group.
“We thought that we had targeted therapies to treat this mutation in our social DNA,” Coles said — citing laws like the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act as those “targeted therapies.”
“What we really needed to do was CRISPR that mutation right out of our social DNA,” he said, referring to the gene editing tool.
Coles was one of three speakers on the panel, which was set up as a last-minute addition to the conference schedule, and intended by new BIO CEO and moderator Michelle McMurry-Heath to be “a frank conversation” about race and inequality. Global Blood Therapeutics CEO Ted Love and BIO chair Jeremy Levin also spoke.
The discussion took place against the backdrop of a global pandemic that has disproportionately affected people of color and weeks of nationwide protests against police brutality and racial inequality.
Thursday’s hourlong panel covered a broad range of topics, including what it meant to Coles and Love to be a Black CEO and how they responded to George Floyd’s death as a person and as an executive. It also explored the current and historical policies that contributed to the health disparities that have led to dramatically poorer outcomes for Black people and other people of color infected by the novel coronavirus.
The panelists acknowledged that the conversations around systemic racism and George Floyd’s death would likely be uncomfortable.
“I hate to admit it, but sometimes it seems harder to speak truth to friends and colleagues than to speak truth to power,” McMurry-Heath wrote during the live chat, which ran alongside the recorded video presentation of the executives’ moderated discussion.
Coles and Love had different perspectives on what it meant to be a Black man and a CEO; Coles said he would have preferred to be known simply as a CEO, while Love said he had “actually revelled in being an African-American CEO.”
Each also said they addressed Floyd’s death with their companies — Coles in a letter and a statement, Love in an all-hands meeting. And each said the response was “overwhelming.”
The panelists acknowledged that the conversations around systemic racism and George Floyd’s death would likely be uncomfortable.
“I hate to admit it, but sometimes it seems harder to speak truth to friends and colleagues than to speak truth to power,” McMurry-Heath wrote during the live chat, which ran alongside the recorded video presentation of the executives’ moderated discussion.
Coles and Love had different perspectives on what it meant to be a Black man and a CEO; Coles said he would have preferred to be known simply as a CEO, while Love said he had “actually revelled in being an African-American CEO.”
Each also said they addressed Floyd’s death with their companies — Coles in a letter and a statement, Love in an all-hands meeting. And each said the response was “overwhelming.”
Love replied that he “probably would take up the issue of [Black Lives Matter] in the company, but I think you have to work it through for you personally.”
“This is such a terrible and 400-year-old problem that I have come to the conclusion that we are either part of the solution, or you are part of the problem. Your company needs to decide where it wants to be because the middle is not an option,” he added.
“It was helpful to have a space to talk about this,” the woman replied. “It has been on my mind these past weeks.”
“It helps to know I am not alone in these feelings,” she added.
“You definitely aren’t alone,” a BIO employee told her.