Rachel Adams, a participant in our Narrative Genetics seminar, will be giving a talk on disability and prenatal testing at Columbia on March 9. All are welcome.

Rescheduled: GENES AND PLAYS

April 19, 2010

6:10-8pm, Case Lounge, Columbia University School of Law


Genes and Plays: Using theatre to enhance understanding of the ethical, legal, and social implications of genetics. Scenes from the recent play "Distracted" will be used to enhance discussion on the implications of ADHD on the child, parents and society.

KAREN H. ROTHENBERG
Karen H. Rothenberg, J.D., M.P.A., is the Marjorie Cook Professor of Law, founding Director of the Law & Health Care Program, and she served as Dean of the University of Maryland School of Law from 1999-2009. Professor Rothenberg is a leading national expert on legal issues in health care. She is spending her current sabbatical doing research as a Scholar-in-Residence at Columbia Law School and at Columbia’s Center for the Study of Law and Culture, as well as at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University.

JEFF SELTZER
Jeff Seltzer, Ph.D., J.D., is a child psychologist and mental health coordinator for the Head Start and Pre-Kindergarten programs of the Montgomery County, Maryland public schools. He received his J.D. from Georgetown University and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He lectures widely on the delivery of mental health services and the legal rights of children with disabilities and he served as the Expert Mental Health Consultant at the University of Maryland, providing region-wide training and technical assistance to Head Start programs.

Readings for the seminar will be available on the public Narrative Genetics Google Site, http://sites.google.com/site/narrativegenetics/Home

The Narrative Genetics seminar at Columbia is sponsored by ISERP http://iserp.columbia.edu/workshops/genetics. The seminar is open to faculty, students, and others in the Columbia University community and in the New York metropolitan area. Presenters discuss work in progress and welcome participation in the discussion.

Autism Battlefield--Ageism, Clusters, Diagnosis

Autism, it seems, is a contemporary paradigmatic stadium in which genetics, parenting, social factors, environmental toxins compete for causal authority. This past month, autism—or autism spectrum disorder as the draft DSM-V proposes to redefine the condition--has received a great deal of attention. In 1998 The Lancet published a study based on research by Andrew Wakefield that linked autism in the UK to the MMR vaccine. As a result of the study’s publication, many parents in the UK refused to have their children vaccinated. In January of this year a British panel found that Wakefield had failed to disclose a conflict of interest—as a paid advisor to attorneys for parents suing the vaccine manufacturer--and that the study itself was conducted without adherence to proper ethical standards of consent. Following the panel’s report, The Lancet retracted the 1998 paper from publication. Meanwhile, a number of recent studies have focused on rates of autism in California. The online journal Autism Research examined yet again the question of whether and how parental age has contributed to the increase rates of autism. A 10 year study of births in California concluded that maternal and paternal age each contribute independently to higher rates of autism, accounting for 4.6% of the increase over the decade under study. Two other studies found clusters of autism in California cities. One, out of UC Davis found 10 clusters in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, and associated these higher rates with high rates of parental education. The other study of autism prevalence in California was done by Columbia University based researchers led by Peter Bearman, Jonathan Cole Professor of the Social Sciences and our May 6 Narrative Genetics seminar guest. This group found a primary cluster in the West Hollywood area and secondary clusters in other parts of LA. While they did not attempt to identify cause, they linked higher rates to local variables, such as environmental toxins or social influences. We look forward to discussing all this in May.

In Fashion and Style: Turner Syndrome

Alone on a Path Shared by Many

By ALLISON AMEND

Published: January 29, 2010. An article about love, infertility, text message break ups.

NY Times reviews Skloot's “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”

"A thorny and provocative book about cancer, racism, scientific ethics and crippling poverty, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” also floods over you like a narrative dam break, as if someone had managed to distill and purify the more addictive qualities of “Erin Brockovich,” “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and “The Andromeda Strain.” More than 10 years in the making, it feels like the book Ms. Skloot was born to write. It signals the arrival of a raw but quite real talent." - Dwight Garner

read full review here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/books/03book.html?scp=1&sq=skloot&st=cse

In the Health section, Denise Grady writes: "Fifty years after Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in the “colored” ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital, her daughter finally got a chance to see the legacy she had unknowingly left to science. A researcher in a lab at Hopkins swung open a freezer door and showed the daughter, Deborah Lacks-Pullum, thousands of vials, each holding millions of cells descended from a bit of tissue that doctors had snipped from her mother’s cervix."

read full story here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/health/02seco.html?scp=3&sq=skloot&st=cse

Karen H. Rothenberg, J.D., M.P.A.

Fordham Law Lincoln Center presents the

2010 Robert L. Levine Lecture

FROM EUGENICS TO THE "NEW" GENETICS: THE PLAY'S THE THING

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 | 5:00 p.m.

Karen H. Rothenberg, J.D., M.P.A. Marjorie Cook Professor of Law, University of Maryland School of Law Scholar-in-Residence and Senior Sabbatical Fellow, Center for the Study of Law and Culture, Columbia Law School Visiting Professor, Berman Institute of Bioethics, John Hopkins University.

What can plays tell us about the power of hereditary science and the power of the state? How does the work of playwrights, capturing the era of eugenics and the advent of the Human Genome Project, dramatize and enhance our understanding of the implications of genetics on race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability?

This lecture will examine how plays both reflect and try to influence public opinion and social policy over time. The Fordham Law Review will publish the contents of the lecture in the fall of 2010.

Fordham Law School, 140 West 62nd Street

New York, NY 10023

Registration encouraged: law.fordham.edu/levinelecture