The Games will force young people to think about their views on the risks that come with biotechnological advances, including both personal and political dilemmas. New advances in human genetics have meant invaluable new treatments for hereditary diseases, but they have also given rise to other, more startling possibilities.
Scientists can now isolate, read and even manipulate certain characteristics of human genes.
There are no easy answers. On November 24, the European Debate Games will lead young people into the mine field of the scientifically possible and the ethically correct. Students in Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Belgium will be linked by a high-tech communications network with young Danes at the Danish Science Centre, Experimentarium, in Copenhagen. The Games will provide them with various data and will ask them to make difficult decisions. They will exchange questions and answers, which will become part of a data bank.