Every two years, a letter from the Gastroenterology unit drops into Maria’s mailbox. It is a call to attend her regular surveillance colonoscopy to check for potential precancerous…
The narrative around eating disorders is shifting. Researchers and activists have advanced a more complex understanding of eating disorders by presenting cutting-edge scientific and clinical research …
In late November, He Jiankui, a scientist in China, announced that he had created the first “CRISPR babies,” meaning that he performed germ-line genome edits on human embryos, which…
Beyond Bioethics: Toward a New Biopolitics Osagie K. Obasogie and Marcy Darnovsky (editors) University of California Press, 2018. 518 pages “The science will let loose its cascading interactions wit…
Subprime Health: Debt and Race in US Medicine Nadine Ehlers and Leslie R. Hinkson (editors) University of Minnesota Press, 2017. 256 pages “The focus on race in medicine and the…
The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome Jenny Reardon University of Chicago Press, 2017, 304 pages. Genetics: A Situated View How enduring is the…
A Birthday Present Georgia, my middle daughter of three, is a combination of my DNA and identity release[1] donor #2817[2]. Unlike her sisters who both have the advantage…
Routine collection of blood samples from neonates – often using so-called Guthrie cards (pictured) – began in the 1960s when a number of North American and European countries…
This month saw breaking news web-wide on one aspect of medicine that has drawn critiques and support from both social scientists and biomedical experts: clinical trials. Drug trials…
In The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome, Alondra Nelson traces the multiple ways in which genetic testing and related technologies have become…
Epigenetics is a much-debated field of research in the contemporary biomedical sciences. Focusing on the processes of chemical regulation surrounding (hence: epi-) genetic material, epigenetic studies…
In spring semester of 2017 we (Pam Block and Michele Friedner) co-taught the graduate course “Conceptual Foundations of Disability Studies.” Though the readings were the same as in…
Exposed Science: Genes, the Environment, and the Politics of Population Health by Sara Shostak University of California Press, 2013, 312 pages “Genetics loads the gun, but the…
Political Biology: Science and Social Values in Human Heredity from Eugenics to Epigenetics Maurizio Meloni Palgrave MacMilllan, 2016, 284 pages In Political Biology, Maurizio Meloni, one of…
Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome Sarah Richardson University of Chicago Press, 2013, 320 pages In Sex Itself: The Search for…
A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersections of Culture, Brain, and Behavior FPR-UCLA 2016 Conference Summary Part 2 of the FPR-UCLA conference on sex/gender, which was chaired by…
A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersections of Culture, Brain, and Behavior FPR-UCLA 2016 Conference Summary Emerging theories in neuroscience – fueled by new technologies in brain im…
A crowd-sourced Indiegogo funding campaign that raised over $45,000 for do-it-yourself gene editing kits in December, asks: “If you had access to modern synthetic biology tools, what would…
These days, it is fun to “hack” almost everything. You can hack your life, you can hack your home, and you can even hack your period. So, as…