The Newborn Sequencing in Genomic Medicine and Public Health project has been working for five years to determine the impact of gene-sequencing in infants, including any ethical concerns. We discuss. We also conduct our weekly political round-up; interview evolutionary psychologist Nancy Segal on her new book; and more.
Week in politics: What to make of Mike Pompeo’s confirmation troubles, the evolution of President Trump’s legal team, North Korea talks and more
AirTalk’s weekly politics roundtable wraps up the big headlines you missed this weekend and looks ahead to the week in D.C. and California.
Mike Pompeo's confirmation troubles
Washington Post reports Sessions warned WH not to fire Rosenstein
DNC lawsuit against Russia, Trump campaign, WikiLeaks (this might be more current)
Comey memos
Rudy Giuliani joining Trump’s legal team
Cohen and Trump’s relationship moving forward
North Korea latest (Kim says they no longer need missile tests, Trump says he hasn’t made too many concessions)
Supreme Court to hear travel ban case Wednesday
Emmanuel Macron & Angela Merkel visit D.C. this week
Barbara Bush’s funeral (and possibly working in a mention of that Fresno State professor who tweeted some incendiary comments about the former First Lady)
Guests:
Lisa Garcia Bedolla, professor in the Graduate School of Education and director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley; she tweets
Jeremy Carl, research fellow at the Hoover Institution; served in an advisory capacity Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign; he tweets
Hearing arguments for and against CA bill that would ban paid gay ‘conversion therapy’ services for adults
Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) introduced a bill that would limit efforts to pay for gay “conversion therapy” in California.
The California Assembly voted Thursday to add gay “conversion therapy” to its list of deceptive business practices.
The practice is already banned in California for those under age 18. But Low, who authored AB 2943, wants to expand the ban beyond minors. Lawmakers in support of the bill insist those services have been discredited and called them “fraudulent.”
Meanwhile, some religious groups have said that such a ban would be a violation of their constitutional rights. The bill will now head to the Senate.
You can read the full text of the bill here.
Guests:
Evan Low (D-Campbell), California Assembly member who represents District 28, which is located in Silicon Valley and includes Campbell, Cupertino and areas of West San Jose; he is chairman of the California legislative LGBT Caucus, who authored AB2943; he tweets
Sam Garrett-Pate, spokesperson for Equality California, a non-profit civil rights organization that advocates for the rights of LGBT people in California who co-sponsored AB 2943; he tweets
Jonathan Keller, president and CEO of the California Family Council, a Christian-based non-profit educational organization
The impending ubiquity of DNA-sequencing for infants – and the bioethical challenges
The ability to study a person’s DNA brings tremendous medical promises, but also poses great ethical challenges.
A federally-funded project that has been studying the impact of gene-sequencing for babies is renewing the debate over these issues, and doing so on an arguably more emotional front.
The project, called Newborn Sequencing in Genomic Medicine and Public Health, is headed by four medical institutions in the country (including UC San Francisco) and has led to questions like whether DNA-sequencing should be mandatory for all infants in the country, and how the technology could lead to its inevitable commercialization and what they could mean for parents and the medical community.
Guests:
Cynthia Powell, M.D., Principal Investigator for one of the four federally-funded Newborn Sequencing in Genomic Medicine and Public Health (NSIGHT) projects; she is a pediatrician, clinical geneticist and genetic counselor and professor of pediatrics and genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine
Josephine Johnston, co-lead of the ethics group making ethics and policy recommendations for the federally-funded Newborn Sequencing in Genomic Medicine and Public Health projects; she is the director of research at the Hastings Center, bioethics research institute in New York
Aaron Kheriaty, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Medical Ethics Program at the School of Medicine at UC Irvine
Two sets of identical twins swapped at birth, reunited 25 years later
William and Wilber grew up in the rural village of La Paz, Colombia, believing to be fraternal twin brothers for much of their life, along with their family and friends.
But at age 25, William was mistaken by a young woman for another twin, Jorge. That chance mistake lead to the discovery that Jorge was actually William’s biological, identical twin brother living in Bogota, 150 miles away. And Jorge was living with Carlos, Wilber’s biological, identical twin brother.
In the only known account of two sets of identical twins swapped at birth, the world’s leading expert on twin studies Nancy L. Segal tells the unbelievable story of the reunions between William and Jorge, and Wilber and Carlos.
Segal joins host Larry Mantle to talk about her latest book, “Accidental Brothers: The Story of Twins Exchanged at Birth and the Power of Nature and Nurture.”
Guest:
Nancy L. Segal, professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, and director of the Twin Studies Center; author of her latest book, “Accidental Brothers: The Story of Twins Exchanged at Birth and the Power of Nature and Nurture” with Yesika S. Montoya (St. Martin’s Press, 2018)