race and genetics

If you are a clinician, researcher, or editor working in genetics, you are probably aware of the toxic history of our field with regard to race. And (JAMA editors aside, apparently) you are probably aware that this is not just a historical problem, but something affecting medical practice today. How do we move forward in a fashion that is not racist – or, better yet, anti-racist?

How do we start to dismantle the pervasive legacy of racism? A recent article in GIM by Kyle Brothers, Robin Bennett, and Mildred Cho took on this challenge, laying out an 8-principle guide for how (and how not!) to talk about race in designing and reporting on genetic research. Today on the Beagle, University of Louisville Professor Kyle Brothers and Stanford University Professor Mildred Cho join me to talk about their proposal.

Today’s podcast features Adam Rutherford, a geneticist trained at University College London who has spent much of his career as a science communicator: as an editor at Nature, as a radio and television commentator for the BBC, and as the author such books with delightful titles, including "Creation: the Origin of Life/The Future of Life" and "A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived." Adam joins us to discuss his timely and excellent new book, "How to Argue With a Racist."