Sarah S. Richardson

Society: Don't blame the mothers

Careless discussion of epigenetic research on how early life affects health across generations could harm women, warn Sarah S. Richardson and colleagues.

Maternal Bodies in the Postgenomic Order: Gender and the Explanatory Landscape of Epigenetics

The neurologist and ge ne ticist Michael Meaney argues that a stressed pregnant woman may produce o! spring prone to anxiety, depression, schizophre nia, and suicide.1 The psychiatrist Ray Blanchard warns that a mother with a large number of sons could damage subsequent sons in the womb owing to the accumulation of immune antibodies to male fetuses— causing laterborn sons to become homosexual.2 The recent pop u lar science book Origins: How the Nine Months before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives (2010) reviews new research suggesting that a mother’s stress level and dietary habits during gestation can “program” the fetus for a future of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.3 Epige ne tics, the study of how experiences, environments, and exposures alter gene expression, is a vibrant new area of postgenomic life sciences research. This chapter examines how maternal bodies are situated and valenced within this scientifi c fi eld. Using texts and images from the scientifi c literature, as well as its public intellectual and pop u lar reception, I document how epige ne tics research situates the maternal body as a central site of epige ne tic programming and transmission and as a signifi cant locus of medical and public health intervention in the postgenomic age. The science of maternalfetal epige ne tic programming converges with several major trends in twentiethand twentyfi rstcentury science, gender, and culture: from conceiving of motherhood as instinctual, selfl ess, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Postgenomics : perspectives on biology after the genome

Foreward. Biologys Love Affair with the Genome / Russ Altman vii 1. Beyond the Genome / Hallam Stevens and Sarah S. Richardson 1 2. The Postgenomic Genome / Evelyn Fox Keller 9 3. What Toll Pursuit: Affective Assemblages in Genomics and Postgenomics / Mike Fortun 32 4. The Polygenomic Organism / John Dupre 56 5. Machine Learning and Genomic Dimensionality: From Features to Landscapes / Adrian Mackenzie 73 6. Networks: Representations and Tools in Postgenomics / Hallam Stevens 103 7. Valuing Data in Postgenomic Biology: How Data Donation and Curation Practices Challenge the Scientific Publication System / Rachel A. Ankeny and Sabina Leonelli 126 8. From Behavior Genetics to Postgenomics / Aaron Panofsky 150 9. Defining Health Justice in the Postgenomic Era / Catherine Bliss 174 10. The Missing Piece of the Puzzle? Measuring the Environment in the Postgenomic Moment / Sara Shostak and Margot Moinester 192 11. Maternal Bodies in the Postgenomic Order: Gender and the Explanatory Landscape of Epigenetics / Sarah S. Richardson 210 12. Approaching Postgenomics / Hallam Stevens and Sarah S. Richardson 232 Bibliography 243 Contributors 281 Index 287

Is poverty in our genes? A critique of Ashraf and Galor, "The 'out of Africa' hypothesis, human genetic diversity, and comparative economic development," American Economic Review (Forthcoming)

We present a critique of a paper written by two economists, Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor, which is forthcoming in the American Economic Review and which was uncritically highlighted in Science magazine. Their paper claims there is a causal effect of genetic diversity on economic success, positing that too much or too little genetic diversity constrains development. In particular, they argue that “the high degree of diversity among African populations and the low degree of diversity among Native American populations have been a detrimental force in the development of these regions.” We demonstrate that their argument is seriously flawed on both factual and methodological grounds. As economists and other social scientists begin exploring newly available genetic data, it is crucial to remember that nonexperts broadcasting bold claims on the basis of weak data and methods can have profoundly detrimental social and political effects.

Opinion: Focus on preclinical sex differences will not address women’s and men’s health disparities

Last spring, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a new policy calling for the use of both male and female materials—animals, tissues, cells, and cell lines—in preclinical research (1). Canada and the European Union have recently instituted similar policies. Advocates argue that requiring analysis of sex in preclinical research will advance scientific understanding of sex differences in human health outcomes, such as higher rates of adverse drug events (ADE) in women compared with men (2). We disagree.

Feminist philosophy of science: history, contributions, and challenges

Feminist philosophy of science has led to improvements in the practices and products of scientific knowledge-making, and in this way it exemplifies socially relevant philosophy of science. It has also yielded important insights and original research questions for philosophy. Feminist scholarship on science thus presents a worthy thought-model for considering how we might build a more socially relevant philosophy of science—the question posed by the editors of this special issue. In this analysis of the history, contributions, and challenges faced by feminist philosophy of science, I argue that engaged case study work and interdisciplinarity have been central to the success of feminist philosophy of science in producing socially relevant scholarship, and that its future lies in the continued development of robust and dynamic philosophical frameworks for modeling social values in science. Feminist philosophers of science, however, have often encountered marginalization and persistent misunderstandings, challenges that must be addressed within the institutional and intellectual culture of American philosophy.

Sex in Context: Limitations of Animal Studies for Addressing Human Sex/Gender Neurobehavioral Health Disparities

Many brain and behavioral disorders differentially affect men and women. The new National Institutes of Health requirement to include both male and female animals in preclinical studies aims to address such health disparities, but we argue that the mandate is not the best solution to this problem. Sex differences are highly species-specific, tied to the mating system and social ecology of a given species or even strain of animal. In many cases, animals poorly replicate male-female differences in brain-related human diseases. Sex/gender disparities in human health have a strong sociocultural component that is intimately entangled with biological sex and challenging to model in animals. We support research that investigates sex-related variables in hypothesis-driven studies of animal brains and behavior. However, institutional policies that require sex analysis and give it special salience over other sources of biological variance can distort research. We caution that the costly imposition of sex analysis on nearly all animal research entrenches the presumption that human brain and behavioral differences are largely biological in origin and overlooks the potentially more powerful social, psychological, and cultural contributors to male-female neurobehavioral health gaps.

Sexing the X: How the X Became the “Female Chromosome”

This essay examines how the X became the “female chromosome” and how the association of the X with femaleness influences research questions, models, and descriptive language in human sex chromosome research. I trace how the X is gendered female in scientific and popular discourse; document the contingent technical, material, and ideological factors that led to the feminization of the X during the first decades of sex chromosome research; and track the introduction of the “female chromosome” into human genetics at midcentury. In the second part of the essay, I document the continuing influence of the feminization of the X on genetic research, exemplified by “X chromosome mosaicism” theories of female biology and behavior.

Plasticity and Programming: Feminism and the Epigenetic Imaginary

The new science of epigenetics has raised hopes for an embrace of greater plasticity and variation within the biology of sex, gender, and sexuality than previously appreciated. This essay describes and analyzes the integration of epigenetics research into the scientific study of core biological pathways related to sex, gender, and sexuality in the brain in the post–Human Genome Project era. Through a close reading of the primary scientific literature, it demonstrates that epigenetic approaches in this subfield remain continuous with historically entrenched models of hardwired sexual dimorphism in the brain. Considering the opportunities and dilemmas of feminist engagements with the fast-moving and still-nascent field of epigenetics, it argues that for epigenetics to become a resource for studies of the development and plasticity of gendered-sexed bodies and identities, feminists must contest the ontological and epistemological commitments of mainstream research in this field. Feminist attraction to the possibility that epigenetic research will enable material investigation of gender embodiment and sexual variation follows from a long tradition of feminist theoretical interest in plasticity-affirming biologies. Careful consideration of the case of epigenetics suggests a need for revised and more nuanced feminist appraisals of both plasticity-affirming and programming-centric models of biology, body, and sociality.

Evolutionary biology: Darwin and the women

Sarah S. Richardson relishes a study of how nineteenth-century US feminists used the biologists ideas.