More Than Genes

What science can tell us.

Dan Agin is Emeritus Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago. See full bio

November 16, 2009

More Than Genes IV: Culture, Poverty, and Fetal Destruction

On July 10, 2007, President George W. Bush, in a speech in a hotel in Cleveland, said: "I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."
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November 9, 2009

More Than Genes III: The Fetus, Toxic Chemicals, and Autism

The human calamity we call autism has been underplayed by the media. The usual portrayal of autistic behavior in films and books is useful to increase public awareness, but such portrayals are almost always of relatively mild cases. Here are some elements of an actual case diagnosed as severe autism in a Nigerian boy 13 years of age:
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November 2, 2009

More Than Genes II: Why Is the Fetus So Vulnerable to the Environment?

Here's a young woman named Kate at a party with her husband on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. She's twenty-five years old, a teacher happily married to an attorney, and she wants children. It's someone's birthday party, a happy occasion, and Kate has been sipping vodka tonics one after the other and enjoying herself.
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October 26, 2009

More Than Genes I: So What Is Fetal Programming?

For the developing embryo, ethyl alcohol (ethanol, the alcohol we drink), usually passes through the placenta intact. Ethanol is an environmental toxic chemical--with embryo damage caused not by air pollution, water pollution, or food pollution, but by a woman aware or not yet aware that she's pregnant, for example, a woman drinking too much at an innocent birthday party. Read More

Neuroscience Basics

The human brain has been called the most complex object in the known universe, and in many ways it's the final frontier of science. A hundred billion neurons, close to a quadrillion connections between them, and we don't even fully understand a single cell.

Go to the Neuroscience Basics page for more on Neuroscience including:

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