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 to hear more episodes on the promise, power, and perils of genetic information.

KEY TOPICS

• Reading of excerpts from “This May Be the Most Dangerous Thing Donald Trump Believes”: Eugenic Populism and the American Body Politic.

• How should we understand the administration’s agenda to “forge a society that is colorblind, merit-based, and only has two genders” in light of the eugenic history of the United States?

• How are you making sense of this focus on the gender binary, and whether it has a relationship to eugenic ideologies?

• From what you know about the history of efficiency in the United States, how are you thinking about the new Department of Government Efficiency?

• What is the story we're being fed by politicians? And what is the real story?

• How would you describe Trump's relationship to disability rights?

• Can you talk about the complicated histories of eugenics and abortion rights and how you think this is influencing America today?

• How do you think clinicians and scientists should be thinking about the role of science, in particular genetics, in America today?

Read full transcript of this episode here.

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 people in the United States today.

KEY TOPICS

• Introduction to main idea of TESCREAL paper: the cultural push to develop artificial general intelligence is undergirded by eugenic thinking

• Dr. Timnit Gebru discusses her intellectual journey of tackling bias and discrimination in technology and becoming a vocal critic of Big Tech

• Review of the core ideas of the philosophies in the TESCREAL bundle (Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism)

• Concrete examples of how TESCREALism is playing out in the United States today

• Why is it important to interrogate “the why” in our efforts to build artificial general intelligence?

• How does the TESCREAL framework serve as a jumping off point for taking a critical eye towards genetics and genomics research?

• Dr. Timnit Gebru & Dr. Émile P. Torres discuss their greatest fears about the future of eugenic thinking in American culture

• Thought experiment: how could knowing our likely date of death and cause of death from birth change our relationship to mortality?
  

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 of the human species.” What does it really mean to “improve” people?

• How does the pursuit of perfection drive eugenic thinking?

• How are you thinking about efforts today to scrub scientific research of engagement with gender and race?

• Across human history how have people thought about biological sex gender and social roles?

• What did DNA testing bring to the conversation about how patriarchy spread?

• What do you think medical and genetics professionals should really be paying attention to in terms of how science, in particular genetics, is being discussed today culturally and politically?

• How does taking a long view of human history inform how you're thinking about the political moment we're living through right now?

• Do you think the left / progressives have a cohesive story that people want to hear?

For episode show notes and resources go to: https://www.geneticfrontiers.org/episode9-angela-saini

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

• Introduction to the Chelsey Carter, PhD; Brett Marique, PhD, and the Black Genome Project

• Discussion of how the Black Genome Project is collaborating with the Black community in St. Louis, its local nature, and how the team is collecting data

• Discussion of how the Black Genome Project is using storytelling, focus groups, structured surveys and why they chose this approach

• What has been the most powerful part of what have you heard from the Black community in St. Louis?

• How do you approach people as an expert in their own lived experience within healthcare and genetics?

• How can the Black community exercise agency over their genetic information?

• Discussion about understandings about nature v. nature and genetic literacy

• How do you talk about ideas like rejecting race as biology, race as a social construct, racism underlying health disparities and the need to diversify genomic data sets?

• Where the Black Genome Project is headed in the future

• Introduction to genetic difference & disability, Dr. Arielle Silverman, Director of Research for the American Foundation for the Blind [00:00 - 4:15]

• Excerpt from Arielle Silverman’s book, Just Human: The Quest for Disability Wisdom, Respect, and Inclusion [4:15 - 8:33]

• Can you talk about your research on disability simulation exercises and emotional perspective taking? [8:34 - 13:30]

• Do you think true empathy building exercises are even possible for better understanding the experiences of people living with disability and difference? [13:30 - 15:07]

• What are the five stages of inclusion related to people with disabilities or difference that you write about in your book? [15:07 - 20:24]

• How do you think we can shift people's mindset around inclusion? [20:24 - 22:24]

• What do you wish people and clinicians understood better about your lived experience as a blind woman, advocate, and researcher? [22:24 - 25:14]

• Given that genetic screening and testing has become a standard of care in prenatal medicine, how do you think genetic counselors should approach prospective parents when talking about the wide variety of genetic differences and disabilities? [25:15 - 29:55]

• Could you describe the differences between how a blind person and a sighted person does complex math? [29:56 - 35:15]

• Do you consider being blind a form of neurodivergence since your brain is doing the same things, but just going about it differently? [35:16 - 36:43]

• Can you talk a little bit about that work and your views about how we can better support kids with disabilities? [36:44 - 39:37]

• Wrap up [39:37- 41:08]

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

• Introduction to the Professor Alexandra Minna Stern and background on the genetic counseling profession and the eugenics movement [0:00 - 04:05]

• Reading of excerpt from Telling Genes the Story of Genetic Counseling in America [04:05-11:01]

• Why did you choose to tell this history of genetic counseling? And how did you reconstruct it? [11:02-12:55]

• Can you describe what you call the eugenesis of the genetic counseling profession, and how you think it influences the practice of medicine and genetics today? [13:56 - 19:50]

• How prevalent were eugenics views among the genetics profession as a whole? How did eugenics affect research priorities or funding? [19:51 - 25.03]

• How would you describe overall the relationship of the genetic counseling profession to race historically and in current day practice, given that the genetic counseling profession today is overwhelmingly white? [25:03- 29:39]

• Can you talk a little bit about the work you do in the lab around forced sterilizations? And also your research into this topic? [29:39- 35:21]

• What types of people were targeted with forced sterilization? Where were they performed? [35:22 - 43:08]

• Historically, how have you seen genetic counselors or geneticists contribute to this reductionist thinking about people living with genetic difference? And on the flip side, how have some medical professionals worked to expand the profession's approach to genetic difference in disability? [43:08-54:12]

• Wrap up [54:15-56:40]

“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 team at UTHealth Houston created to support prenatal genetic decision-making and the genetic counseling process.

KEY TOPICS

• Introduction to the history of informed consent [0:00-3:03]

• Background on prenatal genetic testing [3:03-5:45]

• Introduction to Blair Stevens, CGC and her work at UTHealth Houston [5:45-6:59]

• Why did the UTHealth Houston team build a computer module to support genetic counseling? And how does it work? [07:00 - 9:18]

• What percentage of patients are using the computer module? And which ones? [9:18- 10:51]

• What does meaningful, informed consent really means in the setting of prenatal genetic counseling? [10:52 - 13:07]

• With the menu of prenatal genetic testing options ever expanding, how does that change decision making? [13:08-15:57]

• How has offering patients a menu of options in prenatal genetic testing affected the experience? [15:57 - 18:08 ]

• What are some of the different ways people deal with genetic information when they're trying to expand their families? [18:09 - 19:55]

• Do we need to make a larger cultural shift around ideas of genetic difference and disability? [19:55 - 22:23]

• Discussion of genetic underpinnings of many common or chronic illness and what those mean for prenatal care [22:24 -:24:12]

• What do you see as the future in terms of full genome sequencing and prenatal genetic decision-making? [24:12 - 26:24]

• What would it mean for their lives going forward if we start sequencing all people or many people when they are newborns? [26:24 - 30:44]

• Discussion of how knowing your genetic health risks could affect your insurability & wrap-up. [30:44 - 33:08]

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.

• Introduction: concerns of people at risk of hereditary cancer; FORCE, a national advocacy organization; and Lisa Schlager, VP of Public Policy at FORCE [00:00 - 3:15]

• Tell us about your personal journey with hereditary cancer, and how you got involved in advocacy work? [3:15 - 11:23]

• What is GINA, the Federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, and what protections does it offer–and fail to offer—for people living at risk of genetic disease? [11:23-14:01]

• How FORCE is advocating with state legislatures to expand anti-discrimination protections beyond those offered by federal law? [14:01 - 16:50]

• What are some specific examples of issues you're working on at FORCE to help make sure that people living at risk of hereditary cancer get the healthcare they need? [16:50 - 20:01]

• What does Medicare cover when it comes to genetic testing for hereditary cancer? [20:02 - 22:06]

• Why is it so important for healthcare providers and people to understand if they have a risk of developing hereditary cancer? [22:07 - 24:50]

• What are some resources for people who are concerned that cancer in their family could be hereditary? [24:50 - 26:33]

• What can healthcare providers do to help people understand and respond to the potential inherited risks of cancer? [26:34 - 30:53]

• Wrap-up [30:54 - 32:18]