Friday, April 15, 2022

Questions Apr 19

Beyond 43-46... (47-50 below*)

1. The American obsession with abortion distracts US policy from what?

2. Why does assisted reproduction in America get less oversight than many other areas?

3. What ingredients have made the US a destination for hypercontrolling parents?

4. Preselecting _____ traits is no longer the stuff of sci-fi.

5. What's an example of "negative enhancement"?

6. What did Richard Lewontin say about race and genetics?

7. What is the "appeal" of linking race to medical and scientific progress?

8. Racial narratives are always about what?

9. What's the most obvious potential problem raised by the Genographic Project?

10. Docs who use race as a diagnostic "shortcut" are blind to what, and have their attention diverted from what?

DQ
  • Do you agree that the polarized abortion debate in the US distracts policymakers from addressing other serious concerns? How can that be rectified?
  • COMMENT: "The girls can be erased. And the boys remain." 390
  • Is "consumer eugenics" ethically different from eugenics in any other form?
  • Is Lee Silver's Gattaca forecast plausible? 391
  • Is abortion a "red herring"? 
  • Is there any effective way to discourage people from using PGD to "enact their biases"?
  • If we must forever renounce technologies whose use magnifies people's biases, can we continue as a technological species?
  • Dr Steinberg defends PGD as a "service," seeming to imply that its ethical status is not his concern. How should we think about this concept of "service" in medicine, from an ethical perspective?
  • Can discussions of race ever get beyond politicization and "correctness"?
  • Should we challenge "the power of biology as a naturalizing discourse"? 
  • Can or should the social science "consensus" view of race as a social concept be culturally self-fulfilling? Would it be in any sense better for us to affirm this view, whatever the biological science says?
  • COMMENT: "We must abandon any use of race that fails to capturethe true complexity of human genetic variation."408
  • How do you respond to questionnaires that inquire as to your racial identity?

Health news... weekly health news quiz

Carl Zimmer's She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity has interesting things to say about race, and genetics generally.




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*Beyond 47-50

1. Is BiDil a pharmacogenomic drug?

2. What trendy unfounded argument may segregate medicine, fatten drugmakers' profits, and fail to address the underlying causes of premature African-American mortality?

3. Why did BiDil's developers test it in only one ethnic group?

4. Under what conditions should the FDA grant race-specific approvals?

5. Why should we approach genetic ancestry testing with caution?

6. What do many consumers not realize about DNA tests? Why?

7. Why should doctors be cautious when considering the results of ancestry tests?

8. What makes it difficult for two analysts to come to the same conclusion about fingerprints?

9. Blacks make up what percentage of federal DNA database profiles?

10. How did Lukis Anderson's DNA end up on Raveesh Kumra's body?

DQ

  • Will Pharmacogenomics eventually transform medicine? 
  • What's wrong with "data dredging"? 417
  • How can medical science be appropriately insulated from inappropriate commercial pressures (for instance, to extend the patent life of a particular drug by targeting an arbitrary ethnic group)?
  • If DNA tests examine less than 1% your DNA and shed light on only one ancestor per generation, why are so many of us so enthralled with them? 423
  • Why do so many of us desire proof of native American ancestry, especially given the prevalence of false markers? 425
  • Does "the popular understanding that race is rooted in one's DNA" account for the fascination some have with genetic testing? 
  • Mixed-race people frequently choose a social/racial identity for primarily social/cultural reasons. How does this square with their tendency to seek genetic confirmation of that identity?
  • How can we puncture the "myth of DNA infallibility"? 437



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