A one-off Debating Matters special project, in partnership with the East London Science School, to get the school’s Year 7 and Year 8 pupils discussing ethical and social issues around some key bio-medical themes.

Bio-medical debates have always been a core part of the competition’s content. In this one-day event, which took place on Monday 18 May, we worked with East London Science School teachers, invited guest speakers and competition alumni to get the young debaters thinking about bio-medical debates that pervade everyday life, but which they hadn’t necessarily have considered before. With a series of expert lectures in the morning, the issues at hand were then tackled in a school-wide set of competitive debates, challenging the pupils to get to grips quickly with the core issues, think on their feet, and present their ideas and arguments to their peers!

Programme

The questions they considered were:

Is a person’s intelligence is determined by their genes?
Should fat people be allowed operations?
Is animal experimentation unnecessary
Should we radically extend the human lifespan?

Photos from the day can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/debatingmatters/photos/?tab=album&album_id=904388702938210

Topic Guides

This house believes that animal testing is unnecessary	This house believes that attempts to radically extend the human lifespan should be welcomed not feared
This house believes that fat people should be allowed operations	This house believes that how intelligent we are is due to our genes

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