Dr Gabrielle Samuel

Dr Gabrielle Samuel was previously a Volunteer Writer at BioNews, and is a researcher working on a (second) PhD at Brunel University's Sociology and Communications Department. Her research, conducted under the auspices of a Society and Ethics Strategic Award from the Wellcome Trust, concerns the policy and legal implications of severe brain injuries. She was formerly Genetics Editor at BioNews and at the charity that publishes it, the Progress Educational Trust (PET). She originally studied Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham, and went on to obtain a PhD in Molecular Genetics at the University of Adelaide. She then worked at the University of Sydney's Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, initially under the auspices of a scholarship from the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry, then in research and postdoctoral posts awarded by the Australian Government's National Health and Medical Research Council. She has also been a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London's Centre for Biomedicine and Society.
BioNews Comment articles written by Dr Gabrielle Samuel:
Hype, hope and headlines |
30 September 2013 - by Dr Gabrielle Samuel |
This event was designed to promote debate about how and when fertility research should be reported in the media, and to ask the question 'where does the responsibility lie to ensure that such reporting is not hyped?' And that it did... [Read More] |
The perils of creating synthetic life |
24 May 2010 - by Dr Gabrielle Samuel |
As an ex-genetic researcher I was incredibly excited to hear in last week's news that researchers at the J Craig Venter Institute, US, have successfully constructed the first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell.... [Read More] |
BioNews Review articles written by Dr Gabrielle Samuel:
TV Review: Horizon: Horizon - The Truth about Fat |
26 March 2012 - by Dr Gabrielle Samuel |
Last week's Horizon on BBC2, 'The truth about fat', follows surgeon Gabriel Weston as she looks at the latest research exploring why so many people are clinically obese... [Read More] |
Film Review: Splice |
9 August 2010 - by Dr Gabrielle Samuel |
From watching the trailers for Splice, I thought the film centred on a genetic engineering experiment gone awry - mutants taking over the world and so on. Sadly not. At least if it had, it would be based on a storyline which - although tiresome - is proven to work. Not only that, but this horror of a horror film was far from scary... [Read More] |
Event Review: Francis Galton and Francis Crick - Cases of Mistaken Identity? |
6 April 2010 - by Dr Gabrielle Samuel |
This small session, convened in the Wellcome Trust's Library last Wednesday, was the tale of two Francis's. The discussion highlighted the lives of, and drew on the similarities between, Francis Galton - who coined the term eugenics - and Francis Crick - who determined the structure of DNA with James Watson... [Read More] |
Radio Review: Moral Maze |
22 March 2010 - by Dr Gabrielle Samuel |
'IVF doctors to raffle human egg' ran the Sunday Times headline on 14 March 2010. A seminar sponsored by an American clinic took place in London at which a human egg and a cycle of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment was awarded to one couple who attended... [Read More] |
Film Review: Extraordinary Measures |
15 March 2010 - by Dr Gabrielle Samuel |
Extraordinary Measures is the story of the desperation of a father to find a drug to prolong the lives of his sick children, Megan and Patrick, who both have an incurable genetic condition with a life expectancy of nine years of age.... [Read More] |
Exhibition Review: Identity - Eight Rooms, Nine Lives |
1 March 2010 - by Dr Gabrielle Samuel |
Can you identify yourself? How? By your name, sex, religion, by what you do, or the relationships you form? These are the types of unenviable and arguably unanswerable questions the Wellcome Trust asks in its current Exhibition 8 Rooms, 9 Lives. The exhibition does not set out to answer questions about identity (and with good reason). However, wandering through the myriad of rooms the exhibition displays, through a series of individual life stories, brings to life at least some of the |
BioNews News articles written by Dr Gabrielle Samuel: