Tag Archives: personal genomics

Privacy is a societal issue, not a personal one

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

The recent SCOTUS decision in the Maryland v. King case has produced a lot of interesting follow-up commentaries. A sampling of a few of them are linked below: Panopticon, keep your eyes on the word (Ronald Collins, SCOTUSBlog) DNA Fingerprinting … Continue reading →

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Maryland v. King: Another step towards a DNA age

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

I am not a legal expert. What follows is in no way intended to be a legal exegesis of the arguments at stake in the recently decided Maryland v King supreme court case. However, I do know something about genomics … Continue reading →

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Breaking: Supreme court rules against DNA privacy

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

With June here, the Supreme Court is beginning to release their opinions on this term’s cases. One of the first announced this morning is the case of Maryland v. King (I wrote about the case earlier). At stake is whether … Continue reading →

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Genomics: Knowledge is a constraint on knowledge

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

On Monday, the Supreme Court spent approximately an hour hearing oral arguments in the Association of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. case. This is a case with potentially landmark potential. At stake is the question of whether genes are … Continue reading →

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Ten fingers, ten toes

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

One of the reasons I love teaching anthropology is that it is so easy to draw a direct connection between what we are studying the the real life experiences of my students. The actions of evolution are ubiquitous in the … Continue reading →

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Spring Syllabi

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

Today marks the beginning of the Spring semester at Wellesley. I am teaching two courses this semester, Introduction to Physical Anthropology (Anth 204), which I teach every Spring, and Human Biology and Society (Anth 314), a new upper level seminar … Continue reading →

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Crowd-sourcing my reading list

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

I am finalizing a new course for this upcoming semester that is focused on personal genomics. The class aims to simultaneously address two questions: What can personal genomic data tell us? What do we do with that information? The course … Continue reading →

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Fear of genomics strikes

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

And he just walked along alone With his guilt so well concealed And muttered underneath his breath “Nothing is revealed”. – Bob Dylan, The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest This Spring I am teaching an upper-level seminar, “Human … Continue reading →

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Fear of genomics

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

NPR (at least my local NPR affiliates) has been running a series on low-cost genomic sequencing and its potentials–good and bad–for several days now. The series has focused on a variety of issues, but has regularly come back to the … Continue reading →

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What personal genomics does and does not mean, part 1

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

There have been a whole series of interesting blog posts, news stories, and research articles associated with personal genomics lately that I have been meaning to write about but simply have not had the chance. So instead I am going … Continue reading →

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