Genetic Frontiers

A conversation with Shoumita Dasgupta, PhD, a geneticist, anti-racism educator, and the author of Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA about transgender athletes in women's sports, the science of human genetic variation, and the relationship between our genetics and our sex, gender, race, and identity.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 

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Emily Klancher Merchant, PhD, author of "Breeding for IQ" in the Los Angeles Review of Books, talks about how "intelligence—not race—has always been at the center of American eugenics." She cautions that "eugenics does not work by breeding smarter humans;" no technology has been shown to do this but the widespread, American belief that intelligence is primarily genetic is allowing governments to shirk respo...

Nathaniel Comfort, PhD, author of The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine and a forthcoming biography on James Watson, talks about medical genetics and eugenics as "two sides of the same coin," and cautions that there is no simple, bright line between the two pursuits.

KEY TOPICS

• Reading from The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine by Nathaniel C...

In this open and vulnerable conversation, host Susanna Smith talks with Tiffany Graham Charkosky, author of Living Proof: How Love Defied Genetic Legacy, about their shared experiences of living with genetic risks, in Tiffany's case Lynch syndrome and in Susanna's case CADASIL. They chat about the unique psychological state of living for decades as a healthy person who is also at risk of a serious disease, their feelin...

Guest

Alexandra Minna Stern, PhD, author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate talks about  how the American far right views genetics, genetic technologies, eugenics, and science and the emerging political threat of 21st century eugenics ideology and policies.

Transcript

Susanna Smith

Hi everyone, I'm Susanna Smith. 

This is Genetic Frontiers, a podcast about the promi...

Part of Genetic Frontiers Season 2: Genetics in American Politics & Culture, Sue Currell, PhD, discusses the disturbing echoes of eugenic thinking in American politics today.  She calls eugenics "the backbone of political control and a progressive meritocracy," and argues that "grip of eugenic ideas on American politics today is a political failure to imagine a world where value is not profit."

Visit geneticfrontiers.org t...

Timnit Gebru, PhD, AI expert, advocate, and founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and Émile P. Torres, PhD, a philosopher, discuss how eugenic ideologies are influencing Silicon Valley and driving the push for artificial general intelligence. They talk about how eugenic thinking pervades American culture, including Big Tech and medicine, and is foundational to the worldviews of some of the powerful pe...

A conversation with an award-winning science journalist and author, Angela Saini, about the alluring but dangerous pursuit of "improving" the human species through genetics and how it's driving American politics and policy today.

TOPICS

• The ideology of eugenics is fundamentally driven by a pursuit that can seem deceptively desirable: the "improvement o...

In this episode, Chelsey Carter, PhD, and Brett Maricque, PhD, founders of the Black Genome Project (https://www.blackgenomeproject.org/) talk about their work to understand how Black communities value their genomes and genetic data, how genetic research is impacting Black communities in St. Louis, and whether genomic sequencing is valuable for everyone.

TOPICS

• In...

In this episode, Arielle Silverman, PhD, Director of Research for the American Foundation for the Blind, discusses genetic difference and disability, including her own congenital blindness and the need to move towards a more inclusivity-focused mindset. She shares insights from her book Just Human: The Quest for Disability Wisdom, Respect, and Inclusion as well as her research.

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Eugenics is at the core of the emergence of the genetic counseling profession. In this episode, Alexandra Minna Stern, PhD, the Humanities Dean at UCLA, a historian, and researcher, discusses how this entanglement casts a long shadow over the profession and offers important historical context for some  of the present day challenges facing the fields of genetics and genomics.

KEY TOPICS

"Informed consent" has long been held up as the gold standard of patient care in Western medicine. In this episode of Genetic Frontiers, Blair Stevens, MS, CGC, Director of Prenatal Genetic Counseling Services at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston talks about what informed consent means when it comes to making hundreds of choices about genetic testing around pregnancy. She also discusses the computer module a ...

Episode Summary

In this episode,  Lisa Schlager, the Vice President of Public Policy at FORCE, a national advocacy organization, discusses genetic testing, prevention, treatment, and legal protections for people at risk for hereditary cancer.

KEY TOPICS

• Introduction: concerns of people at risk of hereditary cancer; FORCE, a national advocacy organization; ...

Episode Summary

In this episode, Kendra Schaa, ScM, LGC, a prenatal genetic counselor at a major medical center talks about the importance of the therapeutic model in meeting patients where they are. She also discusses how prenatal genetic counseling is influenced by the profession's roots in biology over psychology, the skyrocketing number of genetic tests, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Full ...

In this episode of Genetic Frontiers, Katie Lee Hornberger, a certified genetic counselor with the Seattle Sperm Bank talks about how genetic testing has shaken up the sperm banking industry. DNA testing has changed everything, forcing the industry to move from a paradigm that prized anonymity towards one of greater transparency about biological relationships,  genetic risks, and family medical history.

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In this episode, Nerine Gregersen, MD, a former pediatrician,  clinical geneticist,  and logotherapist, discusses how learning genetic information about oneself can have  profound emotional and existential impacts.

She talks about how logotherapy, a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes finding meaning as people's primary motivation, can help support people navigating difficult diagnoses or pr...