The Beagle Has Landed Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Ellen Matloff Feb 20, 2019

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Ellen Matloff has one of the most unique stories in genetic counseling today. She worked at Yale to found the cancer counseling program in the early days of that discipline and was an early and highly visible voice in the battle against gene patenting. Eventually, her experience with the expanding presence of cancer susceptibility testing led her to found a business that attempts to provide a low-cost, scalable option to fill in the informational gaps for individuals who’ve had genetic testing.

Penny Wolfson and Ansel Lurio Feb 05, 2019

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Penny Wolfson’s book, Moonrise, grew out of her experiences after the diagnosis of her oldest son Ansel Lurio with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Today Ansel is 34 and his biography far exceeds the limited expectations of the neurologists who counseled his parents when he was a toddler. Penny credits incremental improvements in care for the successes they’ve had to date. Her message to clinicians? Never assume you know for sure what the future will bring.

Kiran Musunuru Dec 07, 2018

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“Genome editing had to happen sometime,” says our guest Kiran Musunuru, MD, PhD, MPH, internationally recognized Crispr expert and Laura's colleague on the American Society of Human Genetics’ task force on human germline genome editing. Kiran was one of the first to see He Jiankui’s paper on the birth of twin girls after the in vitro editing of their CCR5 gene, courtesy of the Associated Press. We discuss what comes next, as the dust settles on one of the most important science news stories of 2018.

MaryAnn Campion Nov 26, 2018

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Everyone says we need more genetic counselors, but few people have put as much time and effort into creating them as MaryAnn Campion, current co-director of the Master’s Program in Human Genetics and Genetic Counseling at Stanford University. MaryAnn has a doctorate of Educational Leadership and Policy from Boston University, where she was also the founding director of the BU genetic counseling program. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that MaryAnn does not think we need to be so aggressive about growing the field.

Rachel Adams Nov 06, 2018

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Rachel Adam’s life took an unexpected turn 11 years ago, when her son was diagnosed with Down syndrome shortly after birth. Her memoir, Raising Henry, is a deeply thoughtful and eloquent look at her own experience as a mother and her introduction into the Down syndrome community. She shares some of that eloquence with us, and talks about the challenge of being both a staunch believer in the right to choose, and an advocate for not only her son, but the whole concept of Down syndrome as an example of “healthy disability.”

Sek Kathiresan Oct 29, 2018

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Polygenic risk scores have burst onto the scene in 2018, not because they are new (they are not) but because after years of discouraging and anemic results, it seemed that perhaps this sort of amorphous “risk in your genes” -- the risk that remains after Mendelian variants are ruled out – was not something we would ever be able to quantify. And now, some new work is challenging that assumption. Can we make predictions based on tiny effect sizes in thousands of genes?

Brianne Kirkpatrick Williams Oct 23, 2018

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If you survey genetic counselors about direct-to-consumer genetic testing (and we did!) you will find that most of them think that DTC customers should receive genetic counseling. At the same time, most of them say that they wouldn’t feel comfortable doing the counseling… In 2016, Brianne Kirkpatrick Williams set up Watershed DNA for just this purpose. In this interview, Brianne discusses the challenges and satisfactions of entrepreneurship and being a pioneer in the DTC genetic testing era.

Erica Ramos Oct 09, 2018

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Ever since she was a small child, Erica Ramos dreamed of being president of NSGC … Okay no. Erica talks about her path to the presidency, her least favorite thing about the job, and why she has trouble staying on message (ps she seems pretty on message to me). Plus, breaking news on the Beagle! Erica describes NSGC’s new diversity initiative, and what diversity means in the context of an organization of genetic professionals… spoiler alert: it’s about being inclusive of thought, experience and culture, and NOT about your genes. But is it about Y chromosomes?

Matt Fender Sep 25, 2018

Show notes

In December 2017, Matt Fender ran his 23andMe raw data through Promethease, a third party DNA search engine that provides an inexpensive personalized list of annotated SNP’s. At the top of Matt’s report was a box banded in red that said “pathogenic” and “PSEN1” and “early onset Alzheimer’s disease.” At 32, Matt believed that dementia was only a few years off – on bad days, he thought perhaps it has already begun. He agonized over how to tell his family. And he discovered that when it came to DTC genetic testing, the instructions “consult your doctor” might be easier said than done.

Carl Zimmer Sep 10, 2018

Show notes

Carl Zimmer is a master at describing the sort of shiny objects that obsess the sci-curious: children that leave neurons behind in their mother’s brain, mice that pass memories down in their sperm, his own Neanderthal DNA. But the heft and depth of his new book, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh (and it is a hefty tome!) is that the shiny objects are merely the way in to big, complicated stories told in straightforward, engaging prose. So the tale about the giant’s bones turns into a discussion of the thorny topic of calculating heritability. And that crazy mouse experiment?

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