Questions APR 24

Presentations conclude: Sawyer, Vuk, Aidan, [anyone else?]

No new questions. Audio review...

 'Biological reality': What genetics has taught us about race

Adam Rutherford

As US President Donald Trump takes aim at the Smithsonian Institution for "anti-American ideology", Adam Rutherford examines what the science of genetics has taught us about race.

When scientists unveiled the first draft of the Human Genome Project 25 years ago, it seemed to deliver the final word on some antiquated myths about race. It provided definitive evidence that racial groupings have no biological basis. In fact, there is more genetic variation within racial groups than between them. Race, it showed, is a social construct.

But despite that fundamental finding, which has only been reinforced as work on human genomes has continued, race and ethnicity are still often deployed to categorise human populations as distinct biological groups. These are views that can be found circulating in the pseudoscience on social media, but they also still creep into scientific research and  healthcare systems.

Comment & Analysis

Adam Rutherford is a lecturer in genetics at Univeristy College London in the UK, BBC Presenter and author of How to Argue with a Racist, which examines the history and science of notions of race. You can read more from him about how to debunk racist myths with science and facts here.

It is even more troubling when this thinking finds its way into the halls of government.

President Donald Trump and his administration have made no secret of his rejection of many aspects of the scientific worldview. Since returning to the White House, he has made sweeping cuts to science funding for biomedical and climate research, but in a recent Executive Order, Trump took aim at what most scientists now regard as biological reality.

Continues here:  https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250417-biological-reality-what-genetics-has-taught-us-about-race

 'Why I want an IVF baby to screen out gene that made me go blind'

Beth Rose

BBC Access All

As well as an influencer, author, broadcaster and RNIB ambassador, Lucy Edwards is hoping to become a mum

Blind content creator and TikTok star Lucy Edwards says she's "so excited" to be on a health kick to undergo IVF, but reveals the dilemma she faced in deciding to screen out the very gene that made her blind.

"I'm so broody," the 29-year-old tells the BBC Access All podcast.

Lucy and her husband Ollie married at Kew Gardens two years ago and are now ready to start a family - but there are complications to consider.

Lucy has the rare genetic condition Incontinentia Pigmenti (IP) and lost her sight due to this aged 17, just months after meeting Ollie.

The condition runs through the female line - Lucy's mum has IP although isn't blind, her Grandma did too and her great-aunt was blind in one eye.

Lucy is totally blind, but, if she had been a boy, she may not have survived.

The abnormal IP gene is located on the X chromosome. Women have two X chromosomes, while males have X and Y, meaning the appearance of the gene can be more catastrophic in male pregnancies.

"My grandma actually had nine miscarriages," Lucy says.

This is one of the facts that played into the complicated decision Lucy and Ollie made to opt for pre-implantation genetic testing, a special type of IVF where embryos are created outside of the body and screened for the genetic condition. Only those embryos which are not affected by the condition are placed back into the womb.

Without medical intervention, Lucy says there would be four potential outcomes to any pregnancy she carried: A healthy and unaffected boy or girl, an affected boy she would likely miscarry or who would be born with severe brain damage or an affected girl.

Continues here:  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y4v7vj039o

What's next for AI at Google DeepMind

Curing disease, learning morality… "we'll need great philosophers"…

https://www.cbs.com/shows/video/txhkg8Mc7ecg0iefhQD2_I__qQdlS2Rp/

Exam 2 audio review

 Here it is...

Exam next Tuesday, April 29.

Questions APR 22

Presentations: Madison, Devin

Presentations conclude Thursday (but if any of you are ready and time permits, you can present on Tuesday: Sawyer, Vuk, Aidan, [anyone else?]

Exam 2: Apr 29, a week from today, covering Beyond Bioethics ch16-17 to conclusion; Codebreaker Part Two to conclusion; and What We Owe the Future, drawn from the even-numbered daily questions (2, 4, 6, etc.)

Beyond 51-52 (53-54 below*)

1. Why are we distinctively human rather than largely bovine, given the fact that we share 80% of our DNA with cows?

2. Critics of the standard Mendelian gene-centric view want to depose genes as what?

3. Who "gathered all the threads of the modern synthesis... into a single shimmering magic carpet"?

4. What's P.Z. Myers's apt analogy for epistasis?

5.  What's the neat 3-step of the selfish gene model that makes it so appealing?

6. What's the mainstream scientific perspective on race?

7. Why do genetic ancestry tests fall outside the FDA's regulatory authority?

8. Why does Obasogie think government has a moral and ethical responsibility to support race impact assessments of new biotechnologies?

DQ

• COMMENT: "You are 80% cow." Is that in any way a misleading statement, or one that is likely to be misunderstood?
• If genes are collaborators and not architects in the expression of traits, are they democratic or autocratic collaborators? 
• Are genes like quarterbacks who call the plays themselves, or who receive them from the sidelines? (And who or what is the sideline analogue, in this analogy?)
• "Nobody thinks just the quarterback wins the game," but teams with bad quarterbacks rarely win. Are genes like good quarterbacks, for those who've won the genetics game?
• Is altruism really altruistic, if it can be precisely quantified mathematically? 450
• Are you annoyed that Franklin is not mentioned along with Watson and Crick on 450, when West-Eberhard's gender is flagged as unduly slighted just a few pages later? 457
• "Genes do not exist for us, we exist for them." Agree?
• Has Richard Dawkins's crusading atheism detracted from his scientific credibility?
• Have you read The Selfish Gene? Was "selfish" the right word for what Dawkins meant to communicate? Would The Persistent/Inexorable/Immortal Gene have caught the public imagination to the same extent?
• How might an "extended modern synthesis" incorporate the insights of epigenetics?
• How do we balance a deep respect for "our common humanity" with the research imperative to discover the genetic variation responsible for the incidence of disease among specific racial/ethnic populations?

Future 

1. What is the implicit Aymara philosophy? 224
2. What does MacA think an impartial concern for the future says about the decision whether to have children? 234
3. Does MacA think one person can make a difference? 245
4. What organizations does MacA recommend we support? 251-2

And one final question (for now), as our semester winds down:

Health news... weekly health news quiz
==
*Beyond 53-54

1. Advocates for a moratorium on germline engineering advocate what actions?

2. "Our universities need to devote more resources" to what?

3. Name a current practice applying emergent biotechnologies that challenges core progressive and liberal values.

4. Why did some progressives who support stem cell research oppose the 2004 California stem cell initiative?

5. Paul Wolpe says presidential bioethics commissions should stay away from what?

6. What do "some feminists and social liberals and progressives... [and] free market liberals and economic conservatives" say about commercial reproductive surrogacy?

7. What did Gregory Stock say was the goal of the 1998 UCLA conference where James Watson said we should maximize the common good?

DQ

• Will greater understanding of the technological details of CRISPR clarify our ethical responsibilities with regard to its use?
• COMMENT: "Knowing science does not teach us how to live well with its power."
• "When and how should children conceived with high-tech assistance learn that they have two or three biological mothers?"
• "Should researchers transfer human genes or brain cells into non-human animals?"
• "Should researchers attempt to use cloning techniques to resurrect a Neanderthal?" (or a mammoth, or... ?)
• "How can we prevent harmful uses of human biotechnologies while preserving our commitment to science as a reliable method for producing shared knowledge?"
• Are you uneasy about chimeras?
• Should presidential bioethics commissions issue ethical recommendations?
• Should marketplace values govern pregnancy and childbearing?
• COMMENT: "If scientists don't play god, who will?" 485
• Is our fate in our genes?

Signs of life?

Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet

"…Now a team of researchers is offering what it contends is the strongest indication yet of extraterrestrial life, not in our solar system but on a massive planet, known as K2-18b, that orbits a star 120 light-years from Earth. A repeated analysis of the exoplanet's atmosphere suggests an abundance of a molecule that on Earth has only one known source: living organisms such as marine algae.

"It is in no one's interest to claim prematurely that we have detected life," said Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and an author of the new study, at a news conference on Tuesday. Still, he said, the best explanation for his group's observations is that K2-18b is covered with a warm ocean, brimming with life.

"This is a revolutionary moment," Dr. Madhusudhan said. "It's the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/science/astronomy-exoplanets-habitable-k218b.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

NYTimes: What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.

For the record, David Brooks identifies as Republican. Or used to.

"…What is happening now is not normal politics. We're seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

Know someone who would want to read this? Share the column.

It's time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It's time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he's going to be stopped is if he's confronted by some movement that possesses rival power…

David Brooks https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/opinion/trump-harvard-law-firms.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

 Destroying endangered species' habitat wouldn't count as 'harm' under proposed Trump rule

April 17, 2025 Heard on Morning Edition By  Jonathan Lambert

The Trump administration is proposing to significantly limit the Endangered Species Act's power to preserve crucial habitats by changing the definition of one word: harm.

On Wednesday, the administration proposed a rule change that would essentially prohibit only actions that directly hurt or kill actual animals, not the habitats they rely on. If finalized, the change could make it easier to log, mine and build on lands that endangered species need to thrive.

"Habitat loss is the biggest single cause of extinction and endangered species — it makes sense to address it," said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. He called efforts to deny that cause "callous and reckless."

"Any conservation gains species were making will be reversed — we're going to see losses again," he said.

Continues Here:  https://www.npr.org/2025/04/17/nx-s1-5366814/endangered-species-act-change-harm-trump-rule?mc_cid=4ecccc965d&mc_eid=6dee51bcfe

Muted

Y'all will love this:

My voice is strained, after a slight relapse of illness. So I'm going to do my best not to speak in class any more than necessary today. My Master of Liberal Arts (MALA) class meets tonight at 6, I need to preserve a bit of voice for them. If anything is said by any of you today that I feel obliged to comment on, I'll post my thoughts here later.

We'll skip the usual preliminaries. We'll have our scheduled presentations and then we'll adjourn.

That's the plan, anyway. 

The enduring promise of academic freedom

…Harvard's president Alan Garber has made a stand on what he calls "the promise of higher education."

"Freedom of thought and inquiry, along with the government's longstanding commitment to respect and protect it, has enabled universities to contribute in vital ways to a free society and to healthier, more prosperous lives for people everywhere," he wrote. "All of us share a stake in safeguarding that freedom. We proceed now, as always, with the conviction that the fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth liberates humanity—and with faith in the enduring promise that America's colleges and universities hold for our country and our world."

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/april-15-2025?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Questions APR 17

Presentation: Devin

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?

Future

1. What was MacA's mentor Parfit's primary moral concern? What new area of moral philosophy did it inspire? What'ss Parfit's (and MacA's)  central claim? 168-9
2. What is the intuition of neutrality? What observation does MacA say contradicts it? 171-2
3. What do sci-fi time travel scenarios like Back to the Future often suppose, and what do they rarely consider? What's an example of how we radically change the course of history? 174-5
4. What is the Repugnant Conclusion?  The Dominance Addition? 180-1 The Sadistic Conclusion? 185
5. Why does MacA consider anti-natalism a mistake? 187f. What does he think we should hope about future civilization? 189
6. COMMENT?: Schopenhauer's and Benatar's statements? 192
7. Do you (would you) consider hypothetical supra-humans our descendants? 193
8. How much of their day do survey respondents say they would prefer to skip? How many said their lives contain more happiness than suffering? 198-9  How about you?
9. What US demographic has gotten less happy over time? 205  Why do you think that is?
10. Would you take the deathbed option? 212, 216
11. COMMENT?: "Although they are rare in the population as a whole, malevolent, sadistic, or psychopathic actors may be disproportionately likely to gain political power..." 219

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.

==
*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
• 
  

Finding Your Roots

The nuclear mistakes that nearly caused World War Three

…All told, there have been at least 22 alarmingly narrow misses since nuclear weapons were discovered. So far, we've been pushed to the brink of nuclear war by such innocuous events as a group of flying swans, the Moon, minor computer problemsand unusual space weather. In 1958, a plane accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb in a family's back garden; miraculously, no one was killed, though their free-range chickens were vaporised. Mishaps have occurred as recently as 2010, when the United States Air Force temporarily lost the ability to communicate with 50 nuclear missiles, meaning there would have been no way to detect and stop an automatic launch...

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200807-the-nuclear-mistakes-that-could-have-ended-civilisation

==

Madam Secretary (the tv series) dramatized a near-miss:

Questions APR 15

Presentations: Tara, Danny

1. Prenatal testing and embryo selection, as currently practiced, cannot coexist with what?

2. What are the two new alternatives to the "medical model" of disability?

3. What kinds of opportunities do most Americans say are indispensable to a good life?

4. Brief acquaintance with disabled people should demonstrate what?

5. Adrienne Asch cannot ___.

6. The ADA of 1990 has not markedly altered what?

7. Many genetic counselors do not practice in a way that what?

8. What analogy does Asch see between flying the Confederate flag and enumerating testable genetic diseases?

9. How do we become a welcoming society for all, including the disabled?

Future

1. Who conceived Spaceguard? Who imitated it? How effective is it? 106-7
2. How uncommon are pathogen escapes? 109 Are they a serious concern? 112-3
3. How is the Planet of the Apes scenario related to the Fermi Paradox? 117-19
4. What question is more pertinent than why Rome fell? What good came out of that? 123-4
5. What are some 20th century examples of human resilience? 126-7
6. Is MacAskill pessimistic about the worst-case nuclear scenario? 129-131  How about climate change? 134-6
7. In light of the election, do you share MacA's "best guess"? 141
8. Why does progress become harder to achieve? 151 How might civilization avoid "stagnation"? How might it last a long time? 156-8  Under what conditions might stagnation trigger extinction? 162

DQ

• Should "the parental experience" be parents' guiding concern, when contemplating and planning a family?
• In general: is it better not to have a disability?
• How much of the difficulty posed by disability is socially constructed? 
• Does the status of social construction undermine itself? Can social constructions be defended as an improvement on "nature"?
• Do you agree that an absence of capacity is not necessarily a negative or a "dis-value"? 368
• "Should society make a list of 'serious' and 'trivial' characteristics" for prenatal assessment?
• 
  

She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed Her

A barracks-style detention center in Louisiana is jammed with around 90 immigrant women, mostly undocumented workers from central and South America, sharing five toilets and following orders shouted by guards.

There is also, among them, a Russian scientist...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/science/russian-scientist-ice-detained-harvard.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

How to Be a Happy 85-Year-Old (Like Me)

10 tips from Roger Rosenblatt. The best one:

4. Get a dog.

Just do it. Dogs are rarely trouble. They take more naps than you do, and they listen to you intently. That's because they think you might have food, to satisfy their bottomless appetites. Care not about their motives. No creature on Earth will ever find you more fascinating than your dog does. I'm excluding yourself, of course.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/opinion/aging-tips-getting-older.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

There’s a Lesson to Learn From Daniel Kahneman’s Death

… Professor Kahneman signaled concern that if he did not end his life when he was clearly mentally competent, he could lose control over the remainder of it and live and die with needless "miseries and indignities." One lesson to learn from his death is that if we are to live well to the end, we need to be able to freely discuss when a life is complete, without shame or taboo. Such a discussion may help people to know what they really want. We may regret their decisions, but we should respect their choices and allow them to end their lives with dignity.

Peter Singer, 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/opinion/daniel-kahneman-death-suicide.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Animals That Feel the Slice of the Knife

… Animal welfare may seem an odd thing to write about when our country is at a historic juncture and facing enormous risks. But current political challenges shouldn't let us lose sight of every other issue, including the systematic brutality that we tolerate in our food industry — or its scale, with some 300 chickens, cattle, pigs or sheep slaughtered in the United States each second on average.

Someday, I suspect, we will wonder how we could have allowed so many animals to endure such profound suffering. As a onetime farm boy who raised sheep, cattle, geese, chickens and other animals, I understand that these aren't just industrial cogs but animals with personalities not so different from our dogs and cats...

Nick Kristof

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/12/opinion/animal-slaughterhouse-meat.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Are Embryos Property or People? Even the Courts Are Confused.

…In December 2020 a hospital patient wandered into an unsecured room where the couples' embryos sat in cryogenic storage, picked up the frozen embryos and, stung by the cold, dropped them on the floor. In February 2024 the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that these lost embryos were "extrauterine children…"

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/08/opinion/embryos-court-custody-property.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

FINAL REPORT PRESENTATIONS

Time to SIGN UP for final report presentations, beginning Apr 1 (no foolin'). We'll do one or two presentations per class. Indicate your preferences in the comments space below.

Presentation to be complemented with a final report blog post,* discussing and elaborating the main points of your presentation, due May 2. Everyone will need to sign up as an AUTHOR on this site. Post an early draft for constructive feedback or to use in your presentation.

* 1,000 words minimum, plus bloggish content: embedded links, relevant images/video etc.

APR

1 Beyond 28-31; Codebreaker Parts Seven, Eight-The Moral Questions, Dispatches from the Front.

3 Beyond 32-34; Codebreaker Part Nine-Coronavirus.

8 Beyond 35-36; Future Part I-The Long View. Presentation: Jaxon

10 Beyond 37-39; Future Part II-Trajectory Changes. Presentation: David

15 Beyond 40-42; Future Part III-Safeguarding Civilisation. Presentations: Tara, Danny (be sure to coordinate, to avoid redundancy)

17 Beyond 43-50 Future Part IV-Assessing the End of the World. Presentation: Devin

22 Beyond 51-54; Future Part V-Taking Action. Presentation: Madison, Michael Martha

24 Final report presentations conclude (or we'll have a study/review day) Sawyer, Vuk, Aidan [Anyone else?]

29  Last class. Exam 2 (NOTE: Exam 2  is not a "final exam," it is the exam covering material since Exam 1.)

MAY

2 Final blogposts due (post early draft for constructive feedback)