Scribblings

Books

The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine. Yale University Press, 2012.

The Panda’s Black Box: Opening up the Intelligent Design Controversy.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

The Tangled Field: Barbara Mcclintock’s Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Articles

“Better Babies: The Long and Peculiar History of the Designer Human, from Plato’s Citizen Breeders to Nobel Sperm Banks and Beyond,” Aeon, Nov. 17, 2015.

“Genetics: Dawkins Redux,” Nature 525: 184-185, Sept. 10, 2015. [pdf]

“Can We Cure Genetic Diseases Without Slipping into Eugenics?”The Nation, Aug 3-10, 2015.

The Genetic Self,” The Point 9 (Winter 2015): 148–157. Part of symposium on privacy.

“We Are the 98%,” Nature 525: 615-616 (April 30 2015). (Review of 3 books on the genome). [pdf]

Under the Skin.” Nature 513 (18 September 2014): 306–07. Featured in Nature/Scientific American special issue on race and listed in the Top 10 of 2014 for Nature Books & Arts.

“Recombinant Gold.” Review of Nicolas Rasmussen, Gene Jockeys. Nature 508 (2014): 176-77.

“The Genetic Watchmaker.” Review of J. Craig Venter, Life at the Speed of Light. Nature 502 (2013): 436-37.

“The Eugenic Impulse.” Chronicle Review  (Nov. 12 2012).

“Could Genetics Help Us Understand Mass Killers?” Hartford Courant, Jan. 11, 2013.

“‘Novel Features of Considerable Interest’.” [Review of Watson, Witkowski, and Gann, The Annotated, Illustrated Double Helix], Science 339, no. 6120 (2013): 648-48.

“Review of James Schwartz, in Pursuit of the Gene.” Isis 102, no. 1 (2011): 192-93.

“When Your Sources Talk Back: Toward a Multimodal Approach to Scientific Biography.” Journal of the History of Biology 44 (2011): 651-59.

“Review of J. A. Witkowski and John Inglis, Eds., Davenport’s Dream: 21st Century Reflections on Heredity and Eugenics.” Isis 100, no. 1 (2009): 191-92.

“The Prisoner as Model Organism: Malaria Research at Stateville Penitentiary.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2009): 190-203.

“Rebellion and Iconoclasm in the Life and Science of Barbara Mcclintock.” In Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology, 137-53. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2008.

“Cultural Darwinism.” The European Legacy 13, no. 5 (2008): 623-37.

“‘Polyhybrid Heterogeneous Bastards’: Promoting Medical Genetics in America in the 1930s and 1940s.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 61, no. 4 (2006): 415-55.

“Zelig: Francis Galton’s Reputation in Biography.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80, no. 2 (2006): 348-63.

“Reptile: Galapagos Tortoise.” The Believer 2, no. 3 (2004): 42-43.

“The Stuff of Life [Review of Nicholas Wade, Life Script].” New York Times Book Review, no. 9 Sept. 2001 (2001).

“Proving Watson-Crickery, Napkin by Napkin [Review of Fl Holmes, ‘Meselson, Stahl, and the Replication of DNA: A History of ‘the Most Beautiful Experiment in the World’].” Science 294 (2001): 2483-4.

“‘The Real Point Is Control’: The Reception of Barbara Mcclintock’s Controlling Elements.” Journal of the History of Biology 32 (1999): 133-62.

Book chapters

“A Twisted Answer to Life and the Universe.” In Hidden Treasure: 175 Years of the National Library of Medicine. New York: Blast Books, 2012.

“Rebellion and Iconoclasm in the Life and Science of Barbara Mcclintock.” In Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology, 137-53. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2008.

“Introduction: The Panda’s Black Box.” In The Panda’s Black Box: Opening up the Intelligent Design Controversy, 1-17. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

“Barbara Mcclintock’s Controlling Elements: Premature Discovery or Stillborn Theory?”. In Prematurity in Scientific Discovery, 175-99. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002.

 

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