All in Adelphi Genetics Forum

Living with the Eugenic Past: Michele Goodwin

Living with the Eugenic Past: Michele Goodwin

Kat Arney
Adelphi Genetics Forum, Ethics, History of genetics

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.

The last lecture of the day was given by Michele Goodwin - Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California Irvine, and also a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School. Her talk focused on how the long shadow of eugenics and white supremacy persists into the present day and remain embedded in contemporary political frameworks, and why this pernicious ideology is taking so long to die. So, how does she start thinking about such a complex and challenging topic?

Living with the Eugenic Past: Joe Cain

Living with the Eugenic Past: Joe Cain

Kat Arney
Adelphi Genetics Forum, Ethics, History of genetics

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.

Much of Francis Galton’s academic life is associated with University College London, or UCL, and he bequeathed not only his archive but also an endowment for the UK’s first professorial chair in Eugenics. The University’s Galton Laboratory was finally folded into a larger department of genetics, evolution and environment in 2013, and the Galton Lecture theatre was only renamed in 2020. So why did Galton’s name persist for so long? And, looking back, why was he even supported by the University in the first place? These are exactly the kinds of questions that Joe Cain, Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology at UCL, has been trying to answer.

Living with the Eugenic Past: Anneke Lucassen

Living with the Eugenic Past: Anneke Lucassen

Kat Arney
Adelphi Genetics Forum, Ethics, History of genetics

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.

Anneke Lucassen is Professor of Genomic Medicine & Director of the Centre for Personalised Medicine at the University of Oxford and Professor of Clinical Genetics at the University of Southampton. Her talk, titled “Genomic Medicine, Diverse Data and the Language of Race, Ancestry and Ethnicity” explored the issues caused by a lack of diversity in genomic databases, and the challenges of addressing this in a way that doesn’t cause additional injustice and harm. I started by asking why it’s so necessary to do this work.

Living with the Eugenic Past: Brian Donovan

Living with the Eugenic Past: Brian Donovan

Kat Arney
Adelphi Genetics Forum, Ethics, History of genetics

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.

Dr Brian Donovan is a senior research scientist at BSCS Science learning – the oldest science education non-profit organisation in the United States. They have a long history in teaching biology, having been developing biology curricula for over 50 years, and were responsible for reintroducing evolution into American high school biology textbooks. His talk explored how better understanding of genetics and genomics in schools can help to dismantle white supremacist culture. I started by asking Brian how his interest in biology education intersects with the topic of eugenics.

Living with the Eugenic Past: Adam Rutherford

Living with the Eugenic Past: Adam Rutherford

Kat Arney
Adelphi Genetics Forum, Ethics, History of genetics

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.

Dr Adam Rutherford is a writer and broadcaster, and is an honorary senior research associate at University College London, where he first trained as a geneticist in what was then known as the Galton laboratory. He’s the author of the recent book Control, which explores the dark past and troubling present of eugenics, and gave this year’s Adelphi Lecture on ‘Eugenics and the misuse of Mendel’. To begin our conversation, I asked him where Galton’s ideas originally came from.

Living with the Eugenic Past: Elaine Riddick

Living with the Eugenic Past: Elaine Riddick

Kat Arney
Adelphi Genetics Forum, Ethics, History of genetics

CN: rape, sexual assault

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.

Elaine Riddick – a Black woman who grew up in North Carolina - was kidnapped and raped and became pregnant at the age of just 13. Nine months later, in 1968, she was forcibly sterilised by the state without her knowledge during the process of having her son Tony, now a successful businessman. She was not the only one. Tens of thousands of people were sterilised in the US as a result of eugenic policies in the decades following the second world war. Today, Elaine is a steadfast campaigner for women’s rights, and is the Executive Director of the Rebecca Project for Justice, dedicated to protecting life, dignity and freedom for people in the US and Africa. I asked her to share her story.

Living with the Eugenic Past: Turi King

Living with the Eugenic Past: Turi King

Kat Arney
Adelphi Genetics Forum, Ethics, History of genetics

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.

In this first episode, I spoke to Turi King, the President of the Adelphi Genetics Forum and Professor of Public Engagement and Genetics in the Department of Genetics and Genome Biology at the University of Leicester, to discover the story of the society and why it was finally time to change its name.