Disabled Bodies and Enabling The Creation of The Medical Genetics Profession
By Robert Resta,
The DNA Exchange
| 07. 22. 2024
Medical geneticists and genetic counselors have an often complicated and at times tense relationship with people with disabilities, their families, advocates, and scholars. Geneticists are strong advocates and supporters for all of their patients, regardless of their abilities and disabilities. Although people with disabilities should not be viewed as a homogenous group with no variation in attitudes and beliefs, a visit to a genetics clinic can make patients feel very “other” when they are analyzed, catalogued, measured, and examined to determine just how different they are, to find out what’s “wrong” with them. Many patients and advocates – though by no means all – view prenatal testing as an existential threat. To better understand this situation, a look at the historical origins of medical genetics can shed some light on this dynamic.
The medical genetics specialty began to cohere and develop in the decades between the 1940s and 1970s. Its roots go back before 1940, mostly in the form of eugenics. The term “medical genetics” was introduced in the early 1930s*, likely independently, by the eugenics-minded Madge Macklin, then at...
Related Articles
By Zusha Elinson, The Wall Street Journal | 08.12.2025
BERKELEY, Calif.—Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a mathematician, spent seven years researching how to keep an advanced form of artificial intelligence from destroying humanity before he concluded that stopping it wasn’t possible—at least anytime soon.
Now, he’s turned his considerable brainpower to promoting...
By Rob Stein, NPR [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 08.06.2025
A Chinese scientist horrified the world in 2018 when he revealed he had secretly engineered the birth of the world's first gene-edited babies.
His work was reviled as reckless and unethical because, among other reasons, gene-editing was so new...
By Susanna Smith, Genetic Frontiers | 07.28.2025
Key Topics
How does the American far right view genetics and genetic technologies?
What is the history of the American cultural pursuit of trying to choose smarter children? What has science shown us about the relationship of heredity and intelligence...
By Arthur Caplan and James Tabery, Scientific American | 07.28.2025
An understandable ethics outcry greeted the June announcement of a software platform that offers aspiring parents “genetic optimization” of their embryos. Touted by Nucleus Genomics’ CEO Kian Sadeghi, the $5,999 service, dubbed “Nucleus Embryo,” promised optimization of...