Good afternoon
this is Celia Lacayo with La Social
Science associate director of community
engagement
and a professor in the chicano studies
central american studies
and the african-american studies
department today we
are continuing our book series to
promote
our worldly scholars and the amazing
research they're doing
so with us today we have uh Soraya de
Chadarevian and she's a professor in the
history department as well as the
institute
for society and genetics and her brand
new book
which is just amazing um is entitled
Heredity Under the Microscope
chromosomes and the study of the human
genome
with the university of chicago press um
hello soraya how are you today?
well it's wonderful to have you so we're
gonna
really get into why this is an important
book and
one that really everyone um in and
outside of academia should pick up
um so can you tell us you know a little
bit about the genesis here
and um how did you come to decide to
study
uh the history of chromosomes
um
so I wanted to work on something new I
think yeah
so i studied the history of the life
sciences this is my main field
and i had worked a lot on the history of
the molecular technologies that have
come to dominate
um the life sciences in the 20th century
but with this project i was going to
study the people who were
actually studying biology looking down
the microscope so the title it may be a
sound like a pun but it's actually the
people who really look to the microscope
and also i had never worked on questions
of human reality
and on human genetics before and this is
a much more
messy and much more complicated subject
as
the history of molecular biology which you
know they worked for a long time in
viruses
phages and bacteria to figure out some
fundamental processes
um but i now think it's much more
interesting
for that.
thank you so we're going to
start broad
and then kind of get in more details uh
so just kind of tell us walk us through
what is the main argument of the book?
yeah so the main arb.. argument is
really that
um this effort to study um heredity by
looking and counting chromosomes so the
microscope was not just
um a kind of old-fashioned biology
but it really in decisive ways shaped
how we think about genetics
today and so equally important as the
molecular tradition
that has taken so much of the limelight
in the public perception
of genetics especially currently
and what are some of these key findings
that you're only
really able to obtain by specifically
researching chromosomes?
you know i i mean i i think i i take
this question to mean so what did i find
out
studying the history yeah okay yeah
you know i'm not just um this is sort of
a history book
right so i think one of the findings i
just mentioned
and that is that um
that this kind of studying uh was
important to shape how we think about
heredity but there are other findings as
well
and so i should say maybe give some of
the background here after so after world
war two
two human genetics had gotten into
uh disrepute because of its implication
with eugenics and with the racial
policies and extermination politics of
nazi germany so the question then is
how can we explain the postwar
resurgence of human genetics
and the answer i offer in the book is
that the new concerns
um about the effects of atomic radiation
on the humans in the aftermath of
hiroshima and nagasaki
nagasaki bombings and the embrace of
atomic energy for military and civilian
uses
by those mostly western government at
this point offered new incentives
to study human genetics
and to some extent this argument had
been made before but what i
show is that chromosomal analysis really
emerged as
the right tool for the job as the
effects of radiation
were directly visible on the chromosomes
and so this is a form of chromosome
operations like breakages and fusions
and ring formation
and so these could be quantified and
used as
dosimetric tests for instance but
chromosome research also promised
to provide insight into how radiation
produced
uh cancer especially leukemia that was
that
also um the pestilence of the atomic age
because of its prevalence in atomic
bomb survivors and so in the a in the
eyes of its promoters
this new technology was really um
it provided a new and objective way to
study human heredity
and put the whole subject on a solid
basis because what's there
more objective than looking through a
microscope counting and measuring
chromosomes
and so and so after the missteps of the
past
and so also this role of visual evidence
in making knowledge claims is another
important
topic in the book and yeah
and i think this is a great segue
because often when we think about
science we think of it as
extraordinarily very objective
and yet you also engage with the
eugenics
conversations which are uh often
socially and culturally based
and engage with a lot of problematic
racial assumptions
what is your work in this specific book
say about um
more of that social um uh conversations
around
um studying uh the genome?
yeah so the
social context is
very much present but most specifically
now on this eugenic questions
now the eugenic question is really
intricately
and some would say inextricably linked
to the questions of human heredity
but my aim and so that's what i claim in
introduction is actually to disentangle
the two
to a bit uh to open up new questions of
inquiry so i think this one question has
dominated so much of the histography
and so i think the other questions we
should look at as well
and so i do hope i have managed to do
this so the whole question about atomic
energy and genetics is one such
question but i also discussed for
instance that is the introduction of
chromosome analysis for gender testing
in the competitive sports context
that then led to the discovery that
chromosomes could
not always predict gender or in the
courts
following the observation later
dismissed
that um that
a man with a specific chromosome set
we're more aggressive
this is a highly notorious case in the
history of the field
so there were many so these are fields i
think you know the use of technology in
the courts
that have not much to do with eugenics
at the same time it is
also true that the connections to the
eugenic past always resurface
and one way in which this that does show
up
as you suggest actually is in the
continued search for racial differences
in the human genome
and so for chromosome researchers this
remains elusive
they never quite managed to pin them
down but they
kept thinking that there must be
something and you know and
then eventually um you know with the
genomic with new
technologies they also managed to see
more of these differences
another area where eugenie comes back
through the back door
you know this is as troy dustin has
mentioned is in the field of course
and not even so much of the backdoor in
prenatal diagnosis
and the decisions associated with it
which became one of the most important
applications of chromosome analysis i
mean this is one technique that
came in in the 1960s late 60s
together with other technologies like
amnesty thesis and
and the abortion laws but around these
new chromosome technologies
and that's of course also one of these
places where these decisions are made
right what's worth my life and so
we can connect this to see strong
continuities
to the eugenic to the eugenic movement
even if it comes along in other formats
right
supposedly as choice.
yes and and
and i i think one of the things in
reading the book which was very
empowering
uh to think about how women's choice um
is as you were speaking political when
we start speaking about
prenatal and abortion uh but that that
science
you know that again is thought of as
objective also takes on these
uh relevant cultural and social norms
um so i also wanted to ask you um
again you you looked you looked at this
through a historical perspective
so thinking about how how does
understanding that history of
chromosomes
and molecular biology help us understand
contemporary debates uh we you know
often people are now doing a lot of
research on
dna and uh genetics um
so help us understand how your work um
engages with that contemporary work
yeah so i i i i think i'd like to take
this as a more general question right
what can we
learn by looking at history and i really
think strongly you know that this um
that it does help us a lot to understand
the present so that we
do history very much also to understand
the present
and um and i think um
it shows us that the question we post
you know the questions the tools the
infrastructures the institutions they
all have the history
and they are intimately also woven
together
and so really shape the knowledge that
is made right so this cultural
understanding of how science works and
then also
it um helps us i think maybe to be a bit
more modest with our claims that what
what is
um uh you know new and progress and so
on because
it's most likely that looking 50 years
on
what we think now you know is is at the
frontier
um uh will be revised and this is i
think important to thinking
especially in the context of science
history of science
and finally i think um the history can
also show us
maybe avenues of research that were
discussed but then forgotten and put
aside for a variety of reasons
but that which actually may point us to
new questions
and new perspectives on current problems
and now in the case of genomics it's
actually very striking
that many of the questions discussed now
in the context of
genomics for instance how meaningful are
all the changes we find right
so there's big discussions that we
should all at birth now getting
get a full readout of our genome and
there's a lot of stuff so we can't even
understand it right
so how much of this should be should be
shared
um and um
what is the meaning of it and what is
ethical
you know what uh what makes us human
and these are all questions that were
very much debated by the cytogeneticist
50 years ago and so we may also
from this experience at least to avoid
falling into some of the things
so i think on many levels uh doing
history
it provides a historical lens to
current to current events right which i
think is very helpful
connecting it to the past and to the
future.
so you've already uh spoken about this a
little bit but this is a little bit
probably for more um
scholars out there or graduate students
but also to help
the public understand that part of the
reason
uh scholars like yourself at ucla are so
cutting edge
is because you take on an
interdisciplinary
approach methodology you're not solely
looking at science solely looking at
history solely looking at this
sociological outcomes it's truly that
interdisciplinary lens that allows you
to have a more comprehensive view
so can you tell us a little bit about um
you know the how the specific
contributions of the book
um and your findings are in part because
of that interdisciplinary approach?
yeah so um you know i think this is
actually a
i like to answer this question so my
field is really the history of science
right
and but i'm in the history department at
least half of me
and so i'd like really to point out that
the book even if it has the word
chromosomes in the title right it's not
really it's
it's not a science book it is a history
book right and it's also not very
technical so having
some biological background let's say
high school biology
is helpful but um it's really not a
prerequisite
i think to get something out of the book
right
so um and yeah because i
often get this comment right oh this
sounds very interesting but
you know i don't understand it so i
don't think one should
take um i think everyone living today
you know
is confronted with so much about
genetics and what it
means and what it defines in so many
fields
you know from the medical to i don't
know to to
to law to so many fields where it plays
a role that
um we have also become a little literate
and i think that it's not a science book
you know it
lets this into into the cultural context
and perhaps that's precisely why
you know it is important for uh more
folk to be able to understand this that
you're able to
have a book that's accessible and people
really uh be able to understand
the multiplicity of all this um so the
last question i have for you soraya
is uh tell us why this is a great
choice for professors to assign this
book in their class?
good so i think um i hope it's readable
um um i think it provides
an introduction and a new perspective on
the development of human genetics
for the past night uh post 1945 period
with connection to the eugenic past and
the current genomics
with all the implications we have
already touched upon
and so i think it should be of interest
uh to anyone who
seeks to answer how in the 20th century
um um to answer the question how in the
20th century genetics explanation
have become so important in defining who
we are
and but then also the problems with this
and so if one is curious about that
question then i think
the book will provide some answers or at least be thought provoking
absolutely and i think a lot of people
in and outside of academia are
definitely
excited about these uh topics um so
again
i want to say thank you to soraya this
is Celia Lacayo
please make sure to subscribe to LA
Social Science and we will continue to
bring you the most cutting edge and best
scholarship out there
um thank you again Soraya
thank you.
and we'll catch you all soon
again thank you
