Archive for July, 2009
Health Care and Eugenics
Jul 16th
Health care is the burning topic these days. Accusations are flying against government initiatives including terms like sterilization, Nazi, and eugenics.
Are these fair characterizations? Decide for yourself by exploring several topic areas in the Eugenics Archive that may sound as if they were discussed at the latest town hall meeting: Birth and Population Control, German/Nazi Eugenics, and Sterilization Laws. Once in the Archive, choose to browse by topic to read the topic essays and view the associated images.
Depression Genetics Suffer Major Setback
Jul 6th
A 2003, a paper by Caspi and colleagues offered tantalizing clues about the genetics of depression, in what was widely-acclaimed as a breakthrough paper for psychiatric genetics as a whole. Now, new research by Katleeen Merikangas at the National Institute of Mental Health queries the results taking us, according to Science magazine, back to the drawing board.
What was so important about Caspi et al.? The original Caspi paper of 2003 looked at a sample of 847 New Zealanders, and examined whether gene-environment interactions might lead to depression. The research team were particularly interested in genes involved in serotonin transportation and reception - serotonin has More >
