May 21, 2019
Books
May 3, 2019
‘Hacking Darwin’ Explores Genetic Engineering–And What It Means to Be Human
(NPR) – We all know that the world is changing. Fast. But do we know where it is going? Not exactly. That being the case, how can we control where it is going? And who is the “we” in control? … Read More
April 26, 2019
How to Prepare for a Future of Gene-Edited Babies–Because It’s Coming
(Smithsonian) – It really feels to me like the world of science fiction and science fact are, in many ways, converging,” says Jamie Metzl. The polymath would know—he’s an expert on Asian foreign relations who served in the State Department, … Read More
March 18, 2019
3 Ways AI Is Already Changing Medicine
(Vox) – All in all, Topol discovered that most of the companies currently marketing personalized diets can’t actually deliver. It’s just one of the great insights in his new book about artificial intelligence, Deep Medicine. AI for diet is one … Read More
March 11, 2019
Does the Rhetoric of Consumer Genetics Aim to Eliminate Disability Without Mentioning It?
(Science) – In 2011, poet and writer George Estreich wrote about the impact of biotechnology on family life in his first book, The Shape of the Eye. The memoir centers on how his family’s life was changed, and enriched, by … Read More
January 18, 2019
A Surgeon Reflects on Death, Life and the ‘Incredible Gift’ of Organ Transplant
(NPR) – Each organ responds to transplant in a different way. “The liver will start pouring bile. The lungs start essentially breathing,” Mezrich says. “Maybe the most dramatic organ, of course, is the heart, because you put it in and … Read More
December 4, 2018
The Changing Norms Around Donor-Sibling Networks
(The Atlantic) – Of course, as sperm donation has grown more popular, the practices surrounding it have changed, too, trending ever more toward transparency: Today, parents of donor-conceived kids are far more likely to openly share their children’s origins with … Read More
September 28, 2018
When Conventional Wisdom Is Put on Trial
(Undark) – Leigh, a former economist at Australian National University, fills his account with tantalizing examples that reinforce the Scared Straight lesson: When we go with our gut, we’re often wrong. Making teenage girls care for a demanding baby doll … Read More
September 17, 2018
Will Smart Robots Fight Our Wars and Take Our Jobs? Maybe.
(National Geographic) – Yuval Noah Harari’s last book, Sapiens, was a global bestseller. In his new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, one of the world’s most exciting young thinkers turns from the past to the present—and the future. … Read More
June 5, 2018
Genetics in the Madhouse
(Science) – Decades before Gregor Mendel studied pea plants or Thomas Hunt Morgan cultivated fruitflies, an isolated but vital international community gathered enormous bodies of data on hereditary traits. As Theodore Porter describes in his fascinating and original Genetics in … Read More
June 4, 2018
In an Age of Gene Editing and Surrogacy, What Does Heredity Mean?
(The New York Times) – Parents will relate to this. We invest as much care in our young ones as we possibly can, but many of us also pass along to them the black box of our genomes. We usually … Read More
May 14, 2018
‘Human Frailty’ Is a Byproduct of Mass Incarceration
(The Atlantic) – Harvard University researcher Bruce Western’s new book, Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison, could add significantly to that understanding, illuminating the role prisons play for the poor and highlighting the contours of infirmity that mark the … Read More
May 7, 2018
No Death and an Enhanced Life: Is the Future Posthuman?
(The Guardian) – The aims of the transhumanist movement are summed up by Mark O’Connell in his book To Be a Machine, which last week won the Wellcome Book prize. “It is their belief that we can and should eradicate … Read More
April 30, 2018
Chasing Captain America: Why Superhumans May Not BE That Far Away
(Vox) – E. Paul Zehr is a neuroscientist and author of Chasing Captain America, a new book about how advances in biotechnology may lead to the creation of “superhumans,” of the sort depicted in the film Avengers: Infinity War or … Read More
April 12, 2018
‘Therabros’ and ‘Disappeared’ Staffers: The 8 Juiciest Things We Learned from John Carreyrou’s New Theranos Book
(STAT News) – As with much of the flood of bad news for Theranos, word of the layoffs came from John Carreyrou, the investigative reporter at the Wall Street Journal who was the first to break the story of the company’s … Read More
April 10, 2018
Your Body Is a Teeming Battleground
(The Atlantic) – In her new book, Barbara Ehrenreich ventures into the fast-growing literature on aging, disease, and death, tracing her own disaffection with a medical and social culture unable to face mortality. She argues that what “makes death such … Read More
March 28, 2018
How ‘Bad Medicine’ Dismisses and Misdiagnoses Women’s Symptoms
(NPR) – As she began to research her own condition, Dusenbery realized how lucky she was to have been diagnosed relatively easily. Other women with similar symptoms, she says, “experienced very long diagnostic delays and felt … that their symptoms … Read More
February 26, 2018
Athens, Jerusalem, Gettysburg: Leon Kass on Politics as Moral Endeavor
(National Review) – Our present age has been marked by various forms of collectivism. People follow trends. They rarely think or ask questions. The idea of examining one’s life has become foreign, even old-fashioned, and yet the question of what … Read More
January 10, 2018
Lessons for Scientists Fill a Newly Annotated Frankenstein
(Science) – The tale of Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation has become a universal touchstone that encapsulates our visceral fears regarding the promises, perils, and pitfalls of countless diverse areas of science and technology. This annotated volume of Mary … Read More
October 3, 2017
What American Taught the Nazis
(The Atlantic) – Every day brings fresh reminders that liberal and illiberal democracy can entwine uncomfortably, a timely context for James Q. Whitman’s Hitler’s American Model, which examines how the Third Reich found sustenance for its race-based initiatives in American … Read More
August 23, 2017
A Pioneering Neuroscientist Reports from ‘the Border of Life and Death’
(New York Times) – In Owen’s chronicle of these cases, “Into the Gray Zone: A Neuroscientist Explores the Border Between Life and Death,” he describes what happened next. In an initial examination Jeff indeed seemed dead to the world, failing … Read More
June 27, 2017
Making Babies, No Sex Necessary
(The Atlantic) – When Greely tells people about his theory—which is the subject of his 2016 book, The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction—they tend to say, “‘This is Gattica,’ or ‘this is Brave New World,’” he … Read More
June 26, 2017
‘Interlaced Fingers’ Traces Roots of Racial Disparity in Kidney Transplants
(NPR) – Their relationship brought Grubbs face to face with the dilemmas of kidney transplantation — and the racial biases she found to be embedded in the way donated kidneys are allocated. Robert Phillips, who eventually became her husband, had … Read More
June 9, 2017
The DIY Cyborgs Hacking Their Bodies for Fun
(Wired) – Life hacks make tedious tasks like slicing avocados or opening jars a bit easier. Such tricks are for amateurs. Hardcore hackers slice open their arms, or hands, or ears to install magnets, RFID tags, and other nifty devices … Read More
May 31, 2017
Genome Editing: That’s the Way the CRISPR Crumbles
(Nature) – The prospect of a memoir from Jennifer Doudna, a key player in the CRISPR story, quickens the pulse. And A Crack in Creation does indeed deliver a welcome perspective on the revolutionary genome-editing technique that puts the power … Read More
