Event 3: Just Genomes?

For this event, I was able to attend a presentation by guest speaker Jenny Reardon from the University of Santa Cruz.  Reardon had spent time researching the Human Genome and presented herself with many questions that she wanted to answer.  One of her biggest questions being how genetics has changed the entire idea of race.  Today, she continues to try and find answers to her questions despite the lack of funding received for the genome project and beliefs that things should just be left as they are now.

Information about guest speaker, Jenny Reardon

Throughout most of Reardon's speech, she discussed that there was a major conflict with most of the scientists she spent time with while working within the project.  She talked about how many people wanted to completely solve the genome and its code while other wanted to comprehend why the genome functioned certain ways rather than understand the coding behind its movements.  This constant issue lead to little progress being made and funding being so short with this project.  Without any large breakthroughs being made, it was difficult for the scientists to gain backing for further research (Reardon, The Postgenomic Condition).  

Me outside of the event that took place at
the Mildred E Mathias Botanical
Gardens

A similarity I notice fairly early within the presentation was the characteristic that our section about Med + Art shared with what Reardon spoke about.  Reardon talked about the difficulties of performing experiments and lack of funding which would also be experience in all different typed of medical advancement.  It is difficult to produce a new medic when it is hard to find a test subject and lack backing from a large funder.  Even with the creation of things like the MRI and X-Ray that make it so much easier for scientists to conduct experiments, their is still so much more to be understood (Lakoff, Philosophy in the Flesh).  Despite cheaper experimental costs, scientists still need support and a common goal to discover and produce new innovations.

Jenny Reardon beginning her presentation

I would definitely recommend listening to Reardon if the opportunity ever arrises again. It was ver interesting to understand what went on with the Genome project and why many of its researchers found it difficult to perform experiments due to a lack of funding.  I feel that this event will help me with my final project because it gave me more of an understanding of what it is like in the perspective of a scientists and what challenges they face when trying to make breakthroughs.  I hope that people will eventually become more aware of the time and effort put into mass project like these so that they will receive more funding and hopefully make major progress that will further help humanity in the near future.

Works Cited

Adams, Mark D., et al. "Complementary DNA sequencing: expressed sequence tags and human genome project." Science 252.5013 (1991): 1651-1656.

Jenny PhD. “Just Genomes?”. The Social Genome Knowledge and Politics in a Postgenomic Society, 18 April 2018, La Kretz Garden Pavilion, room 1101, Los Angeles, CA. Presentation. 

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh. Vol. 4. New york: Basic books, 1999.Reardon,

Reardon, Jenny. The Postgenomic Condition Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome. The University of Chicago Press, 2017.