Advertise on podcast: The Beagle Has Landed Podcast

  Beverly Gage, Yale professor of American History and author, is more likely to be found on podcasts discussing her new (and wildly acclaimed) biography, “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century". But in 2019 her life took an unexpected turn, as a chance encounter with a plant kickstarted what turned out to be a rare disease that had – inexplicably – lain dormant for 40 years.   She’s not just a zebra, as Beverly explains in her recent New Yorker article, she’s a zebra with polka dots.

Deven McGraw, lead for Data Stewardship and Data Sharing at Invitae, joins Laura to discuss how government and industry can best secure your right to access your own health data while keeping it secure from unwanted exposures. Deven's broad range of experience makes her the person to answer those burning questions about how to keep our data safe - and accessible.

Today’s podcast features Adam Rutherford, a geneticist trained at University College London who has spent much of his career as a science communicator: as an editor at Nature, as a radio and television commentator for the BBC, and as the author of such books with delightful titles, including "Creation: the Origin of Life/The Future of Life and A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived" and "How to Argue With a Racist".

In a field full of amazing people, no one --- no one -- is more remarkable than Sharon Terry. And this is despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that she is not, technically, in the field at all: Sharon Terry is, as her bio describes her, “just a mom with a master’s degree in theology.” Sharon’s personal story of a journey from the worst form of heartbreak and disempowerment – the discovery that both of her young children had a rare genetic disease with a bad prognosis – to become a role model for parent activists everywhere.

Noura Abul-Husn got her MD and PhD from Mt Sinai in NYC, where she later served as the first clinical director of the Institute for Genomic Health and Chief of Genomic Medicine. Today, she is Vice President for Genomic Health at 23andMe. She joins us here on the Beagle today to discuss the state of translational efforts in genomic medicine and look at some of the barriers to the integration of genetics into routine clinical care.

Pharmacogenetics testing: where are we today? Kristine Ashcraft, CEO, and founder of YouScript, a translational PGX start-up that Invitae recently acquired, joins us on the Beagle to discuss why it has been so hard to get the ball rolling on PGX testing. Kristine, who was called one of the 25 leading voices in precision medicine by BIS Medicine in 2019, lays out a roadmap to the integration of PGX testing into routine clinical care.

The dismantling of the right to abortion established under Roe v Wade has left many clinicians angry, uncertain, and in dire need of legal advice. If that describes you – speak to a lawyer! Don’t get your legal advice from a podcast, you silly goose. But first: you might want to listen to this conversation with Stanford’s Michelle Mello, a law and health policy professor.

A conversation with Dan Navon, associate professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of Mobilizing Mutations: Human Genetics in the Age of Patient Advocacy. Dan’s book encourages us to pay attention to the subtle way in which defining conditions according to their underlying genetics affects the patient experience, from shaping identity to creating a sense of solidarity within disease communities. Plus (spoiler) Dan will explain why he calls genetic counselors the ‘secret heroes’ of his research.

Allison Kurian is Director of the Stanford Women’s Clinical Cancer Genetics Program, with a practice that centers on women at high risk of breast and gynecologic cancers. Trained in internal medicine, oncology, and epidemiology, Allison has embraced genetics (a fourth specialty!) as a tool for early detection and risk stratification. Ten years after ACLU v Myriad changed the landscape of genetic testing overnight, how far have we come, and where are we headed next?

What if, someday, your doctor could order a single test able to screen for over 50 types of cancer? What if, someday, you had an effective screening option to offer patients identified with cancer susceptibility syndromes? What if, someday, we had a way to catch killers like lung, pancreatic and ovarian cancer early, when treatment was still an option? What if that day were today?

Ten years ago, prenatal testing was revolutionized by the introduction of non-invasive testing, which improved the positive predictive value of testing while reanimating concerns that have dogged reproductive genetics from the get-go: what should we test for and who should decide? Now, start-up Luna Genetics has announced its arrival, bringing to market the first non-invasive test that will look at intact cells from the fetus (well, the fetal placenta). Will Luna upend the prenatal testing market once again? NIPT took a hit with a critical front-page article in the NY Times last week.

Today on The Beagle, one of the rock stars of the genetic counseling field, Jehannine Austin, Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia. Jehannine has pioneered the field of psychiatric genetic counseling and, more broadly, they have worked energetically for decades to make psychiatric genetic counseling – and all genetic counseling -- an evidence-based discipline.