The Beagle Has Landed Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Louise Bier Nov 13, 2019

Show notes

As we get underway with All of Us, the huge tax-payer funded project to assemble a database or genomic and medical information on 1 million Americans, there are people working hard to make sure it fulfills two founding principles. First, to treat participants like partners (and this means giving them access to the results). And second, to make sure this effort leaves no one out.

Rayna Rapp Nov 01, 2019

Show notes

Rayna Rapp is Professor of anthropology and an affiliate at the center for disability studies at NYU. Laura welcomes Rayna Rapp, feminist, medical anthropologist and all-around sage, who has worked for decades in the study of the social impact of prenatal genetic testing. Her 1999 book, "Testing Women; Testing the Fetus; the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America," is a classic that has influenced generations of genetic counselors.

Jordan Smoller Oct 17, 2019

Show notes

Families and individuals dealing with mental illness have lots of questions about genetic testing. Does it work? Can it help doctors choose the right course of treatment? Can it predict who is likely to get sick? Are the tests they are selling on line today the real deal?

Kif Augustine-Adams Jun 19, 2019

Show notes

Kif Augustine-Adams is the Ivan Meitus Chair and a professor the Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark School of Law whose work has focused on protecting immigrant women and children. A feminist and advocate with an interest in history, Kif was well aware of the threats that women face in the world, but she had no notion of the story of sexual violence and abuse that was hidden in her own DNA. Our 21st Century DNA databases did not create the harm, but merely revealed it and, Kif argues, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Kevin Mitchell Jun 04, 2019

Show notes

Kevin Mitchell (AKA “Wiring the Brain”) joins us on The Beagle to discuss the use of so-called polygenic risk scores to select for “the smartest embryos,” as a recent Guardian article put it. Can we, and should we, do any such thing? Kevin Mitchell is Associate Professor in the Smurfit Institute of Genetics in Trinity College Dublin and a member of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, and a philosopher-scientist who writes frequently on the mechanisms and deeper meaning of brain science.

Kiran Musunuru, Verve Therapeutics May 21, 2019

Show notes

Kiran Musunuru, Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, is back on The Beagle to talk about Verve Therapeutics, a company that announced its arrival earlier this month, with the modest goal of protecting the world from heart disease (honestly, “protect the world form heart disease" IS the Verve tagline).

Eric Topol May 07, 2019

Show notes

As the Gary and Mary West Professor of Innovative Medicine and Founder/Director of the Scripps Translational Institute, Eric Topol is in the visionary business, trying to imagine what medicine will look like in the future. His current book, Deep Medicine, explores how artificial intelligence will affect all aspects of healthcare – from the obvious stuff (reading x-rays) to the not-so-obvious (creating digital twins for research studies).

Elissa Levin Apr 11, 2019

Show notes

Elissa Levin was one of the first genetic counselors to work in the direct-to-consumer sector, starting at DNA Direct (remember that?); she’s been at Illumina-spinoff Helix for about 3 years. Helix runs a DTC marketplace, offering an the all-purpose DNA test (exome plus microarray) that can be queried by any of their testing partners. Now Helix has partnered with PerkinElmer to produce a new entry for its own marketplace -- the PerkinElmer GenePrism test.

Amy Sturm Mar 26, 2019

Show notes

Amy Sturm is the head of cardiovascular genomic counseling at the Genomic Medicine Institute at Geisinger, that surprisingly cutting edge in the middle of nowhere (I’ve been there; trust me). Amy, a cardiogen pioneer for almost 20 year (cue Amy, gasping) is also the current President of the National Society of Genetic Counselors.

Wendy Chung Feb 27, 2019

Show notes

Wendy Chung (MD, PhD) is the Kennedy Family Professor of Pediatrics in Medicine at Columbia University… and the Director of the Pediatric Neuromuscular Network Molecular Core, the New York Obesity Center Molecular Genetics Core, Columbia’s Clinical Cancer Program and DISCOVER program and…really it never ends. The busiest woman in genetics takes a few minutes out to talk to us about her early dreams (agricultural science; I kid you not) and the focus of some of her earliest human work: the all-too-human subject of genetics and obesity.