Event Review: Heart Genetics - Predicting the Future?

I'd not been to a Cafe Scientifique event before and was a little unsure of what to expect. The Royal Brompton coffee shop setting did at first feel strange; I'm more used to discussions in lecture theatres where there is a clear distinction between audience and speaker... [Read More]

Book Review: Reproductive Technologies as Global Form - Ethnographies of Knowledge, Practices and Transnational Encounters

Reading 'Reproductive technologies as global form' provides insights into what ethnographers find out about 'national IVF-cultures' during their fieldwork, but it also invites us to engage with theoretical considerations of an academic discipline... [Read More]

Film Review: 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge

Visually gripping and engaging new methods are increasingly used to convey scientific principles and developments to the public. The journal Science and the National Science Foundation annually hold an international competition to recognise the best examples of projects that bring scientific information to life.... [Read More]

Report Review: Donor information sharing - Preservation of personal liberty or the indirect control over people's private lives?

In its latest contribution to practical bioethics and policymaking, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in its report on information sharing in donor conception recommends, among other things, that parents of donor-conceived children should not be mandated to inform them about their origins.... [Read More]

Podcast Review: Beautiful Otherness - Autism Genetics

For a self-described 'look inside your genes', this programme did what it set out to accomplish but ultimately obscured the real complexity of autism spectrum disorders... [Read More]

Book Review: A Matter of Life - The Story of IVF, A Medical Breakthrough

In the UK, around one in six couples has difficulty conceiving, and it is this desire to have children that drove two awe-inspiring men – Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe – to work together to perfect a technique known as IVF... [Read More]

Radio Review: DNA 60 Years On

DNA 60 Years On does an excellent job of highlighting the transformation of DNA from an obscure molecule to a symbol of our identity and individuality and the role it has come to play in our lives... [Read More]

TV Review: The Only Way is Essex

The Only Way is Essex, commonly known as TOWIE, has moved on from vajazzling (don't ask), love triangles, and weight loss to surrogacy. For those hoping that this subject is treated with respect and sensitivity, you'll be sorely disappointed.... [Read More]

Film Review: Side Effects

Lives are torn apart by the misuse of prescription drugs in Steven Soderbergh's 'Side Effects', a twist-filled indictment of the pharmaceutical industry and the US healthcare system... [Read More]

Book Review: Fertile Thinking - Your Practical and Emotional Aid Through the Trials of Infertility...and Beyond

Every page of this slim volume (nice and short if you are already on information overload), is packed full of sound tips and advice that cut to the chase, from one who knows, both from personal experience and as an experienced fertility coach... [Read More]

TV Review: Shrinking My 17 Stone Legs

The stump of Mandy's amputated left leg is one metre in circumference, the size of an old vinyl record. Mandy Sellars has a rare genetic condition that meant her legs continued to grow after the rest of her body stopped... [Read More]

Book Review: Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares

Perhaps fortuitously, I started to read Maxwell Mehlman's book at the same time as Roy Porter's 'A short history of madness'. It was then difficult not to muse on what Jonathan Swift might have made of 'transhumanising scientists'... [Read More]

Event Review: Personal Genetics - An Intersection Between Science, Society, and Policy

In the decade since the human genome was first sequenced, the cost of reading a human genome has dropped from around US $100,000,000 to around US $6,000. In the past year the target has shifted from the '$1000 genome' to the '$0 genome'... [Read More]

TV Review: Meet the Izzards

If asked to describe Eddie Izzard, your reply may include the words actor, comedian, transvestite and marathon runner. Well, now you can add 'part Neanderthal' to the list... [Read More]

TV Review: The New Normal

The New Normal is the latest American sitcom to come speeding across the Atlantic. Before you run for cover saying 'no more' and grasp tightly to your worn out box set of Friends, the New Normal (we are told) is different, fresh and let's be honest very camp... [Read More]

Book Review: Families - Beyond the Nuclear Ideal

'Families: Beyond the nuclear ideal' discusses various 'alternative' family forms in Western societies, examining the arguments behind the celebration and criticism of specific types of family that depart from the norm... [Read More]

Event Review: Futures in Reproduction

In 2010, Professor Sir Robert Edwards was awarded a long overdue Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for his the part he played in pioneering both the theory and practice of IVF. This conference focused on the kind of cutting-edge research that takes Professor Edwards' legacy forward... [Read More]

Radio Review: The Life Scientific - Professor Sir John Gurdon

Shortly after being awarded the 2012 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, Professor Sir John Gurdon was interviewed for the BBC Radio 4 programme 'The Life Scientific'... [Read More]

Book Review: Risky Genes - Genetics, Breast Cancer and Jewish Identity

Forty years ago I began to realise that the most interesting work in medicine lay at the interface of different specialties. Researchers who straddle such boundaries gain important insights but the experience can be daunting... [Read More]

TV Review: The Baby Makers

The BBC's hour-long documentary 'The Baby Makers: The Fertility Clinic' followed the ups and downs of both patients and staff at one of Britain's largest fertility centres - the Hewitt Fertility Centre in Liverpool... [Read More]