Tag: Genetics
Guest post by Warwick Anderson We invited Warwick Anderson, author of The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen, to comment on a study published last week in the journal Nature, covered in the Washington Post and elsewhere, about genetic resistance to the molecule that causes kuru and several other fatal brain diseases. The story…
Guest post by Warwick Anderson We invited Warwick Anderson, author of The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen, to comment on a study published last week in the journal Nature, covered in the Washington Post and elsewhere, about genetic resistance to the molecule that causes kuru and several other fatal brain diseases. The story…
Guest Post by Nicolas Rasmussen Historians widely share the attitude that it is not possible to write a proper historical account of fairly recent events. Fifty years is about the respectable time horizon before events become sufficiently past that they constitute legitimate subject matter for history. There are at least two good reasons for this attitude.…
Guest post by Amy Boesky As a professor of literature, I have long been interested in habits of “collecting.” What does it mean to gather together disparate works, either in a poetry miscellany (the early modern version of an anthology) or in a museum? What can be learned through such organization and arrangement? The process…
Guest post by Sue Friedman On April 15, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on whether Myriad Genetics’ patents on the BRCA genes, which are associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, should be upheld. This case culminates a four-year legal tug-of-war between Myriad Genetics & Laboratories and a long list of individual, advocacy,…
Guest post by Sue Friedman On April 15, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on whether Myriad Genetics’ patents on the BRCA genes, which are associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, should be upheld. This case culminates a four-year legal tug-of-war between Myriad Genetics & Laboratories and a long list of individual, advocacy,…
Guest post by Maxwell J. Mehlman In a November article for the New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard law professors Michelle Mello and Glenn Cohen argue that in upholding the Affordable Care Act's individual insurance mandate as a tax the Supreme Court "has highlighted an opportunity for passing creative new public health laws.” As a…
Guest post by Sue Friedman, DVM, Rebecca Sutphen, MD, and Kathy Steligo After soliciting input from health care experts and the public, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently reissued guidelines on ovarian cancer screening for women who are at average risk for the disease. According to the USPSTF, “No new evidence was found…
February was a banner month for the JHU Press. We were invited into Amish homes, celebrated International Polar Bears Day, and launched a video series that stars the “academic verve” of our journal editors (more on that below). Here’s some more of what we’ve been up to in Charm City lately. Let’s hope March is just …
Guest post by Sue Friedman, DVM Recommendations in preventive care and screenings have long been based on average risks for the general population. Heart disease, for example, is on average a later-onset disease, so most children and young adults are not screened for it. The same is true for cancer. One look around any crowded…