Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Narrative Genetics Seminar: Making Sense of the Increased Prevalence of Autism?


NEW DATE!! Monday, May 3 (changed from May 6)
Guest Presenter, PETER BEARMAN, Columbia University.

Director of the Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences, the Cole Professor of Social Science, and Co-Director of the Health & Society Scholars Program.

6-8pm, Room 801, International Affairs Building, Columbia U

Peter Bearman was the founding director of ISERP, serving from the Institute's launch in 2000 until 2008. A recipient of the NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2007, Bearman is currently investigating the social determinants of the autism epidemic. A specialist in network analysis, Bearman co-designed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and has used the data extensively for research on topics including adolescent sexual networks, networks of disease transmission, and genetic influences on same-sex preference. He has also conducted research in historical sociology, including Relations into Rhetorics: Local Elite Social Structure in Norfolk, England, 1540-1640 (Rutgers, 1993). He is the author of Doormen (University of Chicago Press, 2005).

This event is free and open to the public. For details on schedules, locations, speakers, and topics, visit our full calendar of events at www.iserp.columbia.edu.The Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) is the research arm of the social sciences at Columbia University. Its core mission is to catalyze and produce pioneering social science research and to shape public policy by integrating knowledge and methods across the social science disciplines.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Breast Cancer Gene Patents Invalidated

I just received a link to today's Our Bodies Ourselves blog post announcing a decision by a judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan that invalidates the patents held by Myriad Genetics for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. The US Judge said in the ruling that the "isolated DNA is not markedly different from native DNA as it exists in nature” and thus aren’t novel enough to qualify for patent protection. OBOS had joined the suit brought last summer by the ACLU against Myriad, the US Patent and Trademark Office and the University of Utah Research Foundation. Read the blog post for links to the decision and more information about the lawsuit.