icon caret-left icon caret-right instagram pinterest linkedin facebook twitter goodreads question-circle facebook circle twitter circle linkedin circle instagram circle goodreads circle pinterest circle

Genetic Linkage

The Crime Gene Revisited

"Research shows genes influence criminal behavior," proclaims a January 25 news release, setting my genetic determinism detector on high alert.

I flashed back to the cover of the May 18, 1970 Newsweek, “Congenital Criminals?” which probed the work of Patricia Jacobs. Here’s what my human genetics textbook says on the study provoking the 1970 headline:  Read More 
Be the first to comment

A Textbook Author’s View of “5-Minute Publishing”

It takes a village to produce a textbook.
iBooks Author “will let anyone make their own interactive textbook, in like 5 minutes flat,” according to several reports on Apple’s January 19 announcement. Then why did my first college textbook, Life, take 10 years?

It’s simple: researching, writing, editing, and publishing  Read More 
2 Comments
Post a comment

Should Gene Doping Studies Be Published?

In late 2011, creation of a lab strain of of H5N1 influenza capable of spreading easily among ferrets, and presumably us, sparked heated debate about whether and when to publish scientific research that could do harm. The same could be said for gene doping.

 Read More 
2 Comments
Post a comment

Ricki’s Rant: Genome Sequence, NOT Genetic Code

Strawberries can use a gene from peanuts to withstand frost because the genetic code is universal.
Humans do not have their own genetic code, and certainly each of us does not have his or her own. The idea of our utter uniqueness might be attractive, but genetics just doesn’t work that way. And it’s a good thing.

The genetic code is the correspondence between a unit of DNA  Read More 
4 Comments
Post a comment

Non-PC Genetics Lingo

We are all people of color, except the Invisible Man and Woman.
I struggle to stay politically correct when updating my human genetics textbook. “Hemophiliac” became “person with hemophilia” and “victim” vanished several editions ago. In the current incarnation, “mentally retarded” became “intellectually disabled” after colleagues warned that  Read More 
Be the first to comment

Gene Therapy and the 10,000-Hour Rule

“Breakthroughs” in biomedicine are rarely that – they typically rest on a decade or more of experiments. Consider gene therapy.

I just unearthed an article from the December 1990 issue of Biology Digest, "Gene Therapy." I wrote it a mere two months after the very first gene therapy experiment, the much-publicized case of 4-year-old Ashi DeSilva,  Read More 
2 Comments
Post a comment