GeneEthics

GeneEthics turns one class period into a structured ethical debate. Students join with a four-digit code, with no accounts, read a real case and its sources, and are each dealt a stakeholder role: a genome editing scientist, a parent with sickle cell disease, a public health director. Each role has its own priorities.

In role, students make timed decisions, choosing an action and then the reason that weighs most. They lock in a stance, put their phones down and argue face to face, answer the core question as a stakeholder who disagrees with them, and respond to a challenge built from their own answers. The session ends with a Pattern Map showing which values their reasons leaned on. It describes how a student reasoned in that session, not who they are.

The platform keeps the measurement fixed and the content flexible. A case is a data file, not new code, and the library now holds three: CRISPR and the Germline, Lithium Under the Salt Flat, and The Model Past the Threshold, a frontier-AI governance case. Each has eight stakeholder roles and cited real-world sources, and the third was added without changing the engine. Teachers get a live dashboard, a projector view, CSV export, and a teacher guide.

GeneEthics started at the Harvard Innovating Civil Discourse Hackathon in May 2026 and is built by a team of four: Raia Karmali, Shreya Goel, Abeeha Tahir, and Luis Gaitan, who leads product, software, and game design.