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Genetic Frontiers

Genetic Frontiers

De : Susanna Smith & Brandy Mello
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 A podcast about the promise, power, and perils of genetic information (geneticfrontiers.org)2024-2025 Hygiène et vie saine Maladie et pathologies physiques Science
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  • Sex Testing in Sports: Bias & the Science of Genetic Variation

    Sex Testing in Sports: Bias & the Science of Genetic Variation
    Apr 21 2026
    A conversation with Shoumita Dasgupta, PhD, a geneticist, anti-racism educator, and the author of Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA about transgender athletes in women's sports, the science of human genetic variation, and the relationship between our genetics and our sex, gender, race, and identity. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Susanna Smith Hi everyone. This is Genetic Frontiers. A podcast about the promise, power and perils of genetic information find us wherever podcasts are found and go to geneticfrontiers.org to join the conversation about how genetic discoveries are propelling new personalized medical treatments, but also posing ethical dilemmas and emotional quandaries. I'm your host, Susanna Smith. On today's episode, I will be talking with Dr. Shoumita Dasgupta, PhD, who is a Professor of Medicine and Assistant Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at Boston University. Professor Dasgupta is a geneticist by training, and she is an internationally recognized anti-racism educator and the author of a new book, Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA. In this book, Professor Dasgupta tackles a number of really big subjects, including the relationships we derive between our DNA and aspects of our identity, such as our race or ethnicity, our sex, gender, or sexual orientation and our understandings of genetic difference and disability. She digs into what is actually known about the inner workings of our bodies and our genetics versus the stories we, as humans, have created to make meaning of our DNA for ourselves. Many of the stories we tell ourselves are detached from the realities of what scientists have learned about human biology. Often these stories are laced with bias and grounded consciously or subconsciously in the idea that human beings can be categorized, organized, understood, and assigned value based on aspects of our biology. It's an overly simplistic idea, but it's foundational to how the United States was built, and how this country and many others continue to operate. What scientists have found over the last century is that human biology exists on a wide spectrum of diversity, plurality, and complexity that we are only now beginning to understand. Human beings aren't easily categorized or understood through their DNA. What Professor Dasgupta offers in Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins is a guide and a challenge to everyone who wants to dig into how our understanding—and misunderstandings—about human genetics shape how we see ourselves and other people. Thank you, Professor Dasgupta, for joining me today on Genetic Frontiers. Shoumita Dasgupta Thank you so much, Susanna. It's my pleasure to be here with you today. Susanna Smith So I want to start with a topic that is very much in the news and the political crossfire today, and has been a hot-button topic in the United States for a long time, which is transgender athletes in women's sports. In your book, you give a bit of history about how, before genetic testing, women athletes were made to parade themselves, their bodies were certain of their femaleness by viewing, and then only after were they allowed to compete in women's sports. Then in the early to mid-1980s, various forms of chromosomal analysis started to be used in athletics, and in some cases turned out unexpected results. And in the book, you write about a particular athlete, Maria José Martínez Patiño, who was the Spanish national champion in hurdles in the 1980s, and went on to compete internationally. Could you share a bit of Maria's story with our listeners? Shoumita Dasgupta Absolutely, I'd be delighted to. Maria José Martínez Patiño was a track and field athlete. And when she was competing, there were a variety of different sex-based tests that they did to determine eligibility of athletes. And so, in this testing, there was really a major conflation between sex and gender, so it's somewhat helpful to understand the difference between the two. Sex has to do with the biology of one's body. You know, what's in your DNA? What organs do you have? What sex hormones are circulating through your system? And it turns out that sex is typically assigned at birth, based entirely on external anatomy. So, this particular way of determining sex just really doesn't kind of capture the overall complexity of the spectrum of sex, and the fact that sex is not binary, it's not simply male or female, but there are many, many intersex people on the planet as well. Then there's gender. And gender has to do more with, you know, who you identify with in your heart and in your mind. Do you feel like a boy, a girl, a man, a woman, a mix, or none of the above? That has to do with what gender is. And sexual orientation is an entirely different category, which has to do with who you are attracted to and who you love. Now, in sport, there's a real fixation on binary categorization. The competitive categories tend to be men's sport ...
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    50 min
  • Episode 15: Making "Smarter" Babies: The Mythology of American Eugenics

    Episode 15: Making "Smarter" Babies: The Mythology of American Eugenics
    Feb 3 2026

    Emily Klancher Merchant, PhD, author of "Breeding for IQ" in the Los Angeles Review of Books, talks about how "intelligence—not race—has always been at the center of American eugenics." She cautions that "eugenics does not work by breeding smarter humans;" no technology has been shown to do this but the widespread, American belief that intelligence is primarily genetic is allowing governments to shirk responsibility for ameliorating social inequality and promote projects that favor those who are already priviliged.

    Full episode transcript at: https://www.geneticfrontiers.org/transcript-ep-15

    GUEST BIO

    Emily Klancher Merchant, PhD, is a historian of science, technology, and medicine, focusing on the human sciences in the United States since World War I. She is Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of California at Davis.

    RESOURCES

    • https://www.emilyklancher.com/

    • Emily Klancher Merchant. Building the Population Bomb. Oxford University Press. 2021.

    • Emily R. Klancher Merchant. "Breeding for IQ." Los Angeles Review of Books. August 22, 2024.

    • Elizabeth Catte. Pure America. Arcadia Publishing. 2021.

    • Molly Ladd-Taylor. Fixing the Poor. John Hopkins University Press. 2020.
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    43 min
  • Episode 14: Medical Genetics & Eugenics: Two Sides of the Same Coin

    Episode 14: Medical Genetics & Eugenics: Two Sides of the Same Coin
    Nov 20 2025

    Nathaniel Comfort, PhD, author of The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine and a forthcoming biography on James Watson, talks about medical genetics and eugenics as "two sides of the same coin," and cautions that there is no simple, bright line between the two pursuits.

    KEY TOPICS

    • Reading from The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine by Nathaniel Comfort, PhD
    • How should clinicians and prospective parents think about the argument that there is no bright line between genetic interventions to relieve suffering v. human engineering or population improvement?
    • What are the contingent problems created between distinguishing between genetic interventions for a fatal disease v. a non-fatal disease?
    • How did the end of World War II and the dropping of the atomic bombs rejuvenate Americans' interest in science and genetic disease?
    • How do we talk about genetics today in a way that embraces the actual complexity of the science?
    • In the current moment of sea change, what is the cultural authority of science in the United States?
    • Discussion of Dr. Comfort's new biography of James Watson, his enormous contributions to the field of human genetics and also his downfall.

    Check out this episode & all Genetic Frontiers episodes.

    Have a story about how genetic information has changed your life? We invite you to talk about it through The TellMe Project.
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    33 min
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