Whose Body, What Choice: Egg Provision, Gestational Surrogacy, and Extending Parenthood (Mar. 10, New School)

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Whose Body, What Choice:

Egg Provision, Gestational Surrogacy, and Extending Parenthood

March 10th, 2016
6:00-8:00 p.m.

Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
Arnhold Hall
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
New York, NY10011

As the scope of reproductive technologies expands, individuals with specific reproductive desires are capitalizing on new ways to create families, policymakers are scrambling to regulate practices locally and internationally, and researchers are making use of the “leftover” bioresources to support biomedical research.  The Interdisciplinary Science and Gender Studies Programs invite you to join a panel of scholars to discuss the societal and legal dimensions of reproductive and stem cell technologies that involve and invoke bodies, labor, and care.  The panel will be preceded by a brief presentation by Katayoun Chamany, Associate Professor of Biology at Eugene Lang College, and Lisa Rubin, Associate Professor of Psychology at The New School will moderate.  Refreshments will be provided.

 Panelists Include:

Daisy Deomampo, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University, alumna of The New School, and author of Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India (2016).

Laura Mamo, Professor of Health Education and Associate Director of the Health Equity Institute for Research, Practice and Policy at San Francisco State University, author of Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in an Age of Technoscience (2010).

Lisa Ikemoto, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at U.C. Davis School of Law and Bioethics Associate of the U.C. Davis Health System Bioethics Program, author of several articles focused on labor connected to egg, surrogacy, and stem cell markets.

Co-sponsored by The Department of Natural Sciences and Math at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts; Gender Studies at The New School; and Student Health Services, Wellness, and Health Promotion.

This event is part of the Gender Studies Labors of Love series and the Health Challenges for the 21st Century: The Global and National Landscape .

Call for Papers: International Journal of Mental Health

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SPECIAL ISSUE: Biosocial Approaches to Understanding Mental Health and Behavior  

http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/beh/mimh-biosocial-cfp

This special issue will feature original research, conceptual essays and reviews that bridge social science and life science in theory and method. It asks how interdisciplinary approaches lead us to reconceptualize the interaction of social with biological processes. Relevant topics include but are not limited to epigenetics, neuroplasticity, and the microbiome, as well as the dynamics of gender, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status in shaping mental health and behavioral outcomes through the interaction of social and biological systems.

Kavli Conversations on Science Communication (New York University)

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A live, interactive webcast from New York. Join us!

What happens when leading journalists who cover science and eminent scientists who reach mass audiences get together to exchange ideas? What do their differing perspectives tell us about how science communication is changing and how we can do it better?

Please join in our next interactive, live webcast by visiting this page at 6:30 p.m. EST on Feb. 24 and by tweeting your questions with the #KavliConvo hashtag.

Sponsored by the Kavli Foundation and the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at NYU. Moderated by Robert Lee Hotz, science writer at the Wall Street Journal.

Full information available here.

April 11, NYC: The Search for Genetic Origins of Human Behavior; Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications

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The Search for Genetic Origins of Human Behavior: Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications

April 11, 2016 - 1:00 pm

Columbia University Medical Center

Please join us for our Annual Conference on Monday, April 11, 2016.

The Search for Genetic Origins of Human Behavior: Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications

The search for genes that influence human behavior raises important ethical, legal, and social issues.  How will our attitudes change if we learn that people’s behavior is due, at least in part, to genes?  Should genetic tests that predict tendencies to behave in certain ways be developed, and if so, how should they be used?   If genetic contributions to gender identity are found, will that alter how we view sexuality and gender?  What impact will identification of genes that contribute to criminal behavior, including violence, have on our views about personal responsibility?  Should the legal system alter its approach to culpability for criminal actions and punishment? At this conference, ethical, legal, and social issues related to behavior genetics will be discussed in the context of two particularly timely topics: gender identity and violent behavior.

Full schedule available here.

CFP: Persistent and Emerging Issues in Population Health Science (due 15 March 2016)

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Hosted at Penn State 19-21 September 2016, Persistent and Emerging Issues in Population Health Science will bring together a wide array of population health experts to discuss several important issues in the field. 

Call for Papers now open! 

The conference will feature a mix of keynote panels currently in development as well as panels, posters, and other innovative sessions that we invite you to submit for juried review. The call for proposals and conference abstract submission website can be found here. Conference submissions will be accepted until March 15, 2016. You are invited to the second annual meeting aimed at connecting population health scientists from diverse disciplines. Improving population health in the U.S. will require innovative partnerships between researchers and stakeholders in different institutional settings from multiple disciplinary backgrounds. Connecting researchers from disparate disciplines to better understand the complex and multiple determinants of health and health disparities can generate new knowledge to advance population health. 

Michael Yudell and Dorothy Roberts publish "Taking Race out of Human Genetics" in Science

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Summary

In the wake of the sequencing of the human genome in the early 2000s, genome pioneers and social scientists alike called for an end to the use of race as a variable in genetic research (1, 2). Unfortunately, by some measures, the use of race as a biological category has increased in the postgenomic age (3). Although inconsistent definition and use has been a chief problem with the race concept, it has historically been used as a taxonomic categorization based on common hereditary traits (such as skin color) to elucidate the relationship between our ancestry and our genes. We believe the use of biological concepts of race in human genetic research—so disputed and so mired in confusion—is problematic at best and harmful at worst. It is time for biologists to find a better way.

Full paper available here.

BioSocieties paper by Julie Netherland and Helena Hansen examines the maintenance of white race through opioid policy, regulation and marketing

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ABSTRACT:

The US ‘War on Drugs’ has had a profound role in reinforcing racial hierarchies. Although Black Americans are no more likely than Whites to use illicit drugs, they are 6–10 times more likely to be incarcerated for drug offenses. Meanwhile, a very different system for responding to the drug use of Whites has emerged. This article uses the recent history of White opioids – the synthetic opiates such as OxyContin® that gained notoriety starting in the 1990s in connection with epidemic prescription medication abuse among White, suburban and rural Americans and Suboxone® that came on the market as an addiction treatment in the 2000s – to show how American drug policy is racialized, using the lesser known lens of decriminalized White drugs. Examining four ‘technologies of whiteness’ (neuroscience, pharmaceutical technology, legislative innovation and marketing), we trace a separate system for categorizing and disciplining drug use among Whites. This less examined ‘White drug war’ has carved out a less punitive, clinical realm for Whites where their drug use is decriminalized, treated primarily as a biomedical disease, and where their whiteness is preserved, leaving intact more punitive systems that govern the drug use of people of color.

Full paper available here.

UPenn Anthropology Spring 2016 Lecture Series: "Extinction"

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The Spring Anthropology colloquium series will explore the concept of extinction as it is being understood, witnessed, and debated in the early 21st century. What kind of deliberations and actions are made on the basis of something—a way of life, a language, or a body of evidence—that is said to be disappearing?  Answers to the question of extinction often exceed theoretical frames, making extinction, near-extinction, and the ‘hour’ of extinction, for that matter, not at all transparent phenomena. An anthropological ‘four-field’ approach will help navigate this boundary object and the complex empirical realities it entails.

Full schedule available here.

Publication of Yudell et al., "Taking Race Out of Human Genetics"

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In the 5 February 2016 issue of Science, Yudell, Roberts, DeSalle, and Tishkoff call for "Taking Race Out of Human Genetics." Yudell et al. argue:

In the wake of the sequencing of the human genome in the early 2000s, genome pioneers and social scientists alike called for an end to the use of race as a variable in genetic research. Unfortunately, by some measures, the use of race as a biological category has increased in the postgenomic age. Although inconsistent definition and use has been a chief problem with the race concept, it has historically been used as a taxonomic categorization based on common hereditary traits (such as skin color) to elucidate the relationship between our ancestry and our genes. We believe the use of biological concepts of race in human genetic research—so disputed and so mired in confusion—is problematic at best and harmful at worst. It is time for biologists to find a better way.

The full article is available by clicking here.

 

FINAL AGENDA: Symbioses retreat (29 Jan.)

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Symbioses: A BioSocial Network
Rutgers Institute for Health, Friday, January 29, 9:30AM-4:30PM
  1st Fl Conf Rm, 112 Paterson St. New Brunswick (1 block from NJ Transit/Amtrak New Brunswick Station)
Directions: http://www.ihhcpar.rutgers.edu/directions.asp

9:00AM Coffee and bagels

9:30 Welcome
Catherine Lee (Sociology, Rutgers), Helena Hansen (Anthropology and Psychiatry, NYU) 
9:35 Introductions

10AM Biosocial innovations in curriculum, publishing and training*
Round table chair: Susan Lindee (History and Sociology of Science, UPenn)

Katayoun Chamany (Biology, The New School)
Catherine Panter-Brick (Anthropology, Yale, and Senior Editor, Social Science & Medicine)
Christine Bachrach (National Director, RWJ Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program)

11:15 Gender and development over the life course*
Round table chair: Emily Martin (Anthropology, NYU)

Dolores Malaspina (Psychiatry, NYU)
Kristen Springer (Sociology, Rutgers)
Rebecca Jordan-Young (Women and Gender Studies, Barnard)

12:30PM Lunch

1:15 The biosociality of climate change* 
Round table chair: Amber Benezra (Anthropology, NYU)

Adriana Petryna (Anthropology, UPenn)
Jeffrey Shaman (Environmental Health, Columbia)
David Bond (Center for Advancement of Public Action, Bennington College)

2:30 Coffee break

2:45 Race as Biomarker*
Round table chair: Catherine Lee (Sociology, Rutgers)

Rachel Watkins (Biological Anthropology, American University)
Michael Ralph (Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU)
Dorothy Roberts (Law and Sociology, UPenn)

4:00 Next Steps
Discussion chair: Rayna Rapp (Anthropology, NYU)

4:30 Close

4:45 Optional cash bar/meal at Harvest Moon, a casual brewery/eatery within walking distance from the meeting
Directions: http://www.harvestmoonbrewery.com/directions/


* Roundtables consist of 15 minutes of research highlights and biosocial collaboration lessons learned by each speaker, followed by group discussion

International Journal of Mental Health call for papers - Special Issue: "Biosocial approaches to understanding mental health and behavior.

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This special issue will feature original research, conceptual essays and reviews that bridge social science and life science in theory and method. It asks how interdisciplinary approaches lead us to reconceptualize the interaction of social with biological processes. Relevant topics include but are not limited to epigenetics, neuroplasticity, and the microbiome, as well as the dynamics of gender, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status in shaping mental health and behavioral outcomes through the interaction of social and biological systems.

For Author guidelines see http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/beh/mimh-cfp

Deadline for submission: April 1, 2016