Les chromosomes et la recherche de la maladie

Anatomising the Genome: Chromosomes and the Search for Disease


Speaker: Professor Andrew J. Hogan (Creighton University, USA)


Thursday 29 May 2014, 6.00pm
Location: The Treehouse, Berrick Saul Building, University of York

This talk examines the growing role of genetic testing, during the 1980s, in identifying, understanding, and treating clinical disorders. Beginning around 1980, influential clinicians and geneticists increasingly defined the human genome as being a visible and tangible component of the human anatomy. As part of this, doing a ‘morbid anatomy’ of the human genome, at the microscopically visible level of chromosomes, was framed as an extension of traditional clinical practice. 

Andrew is a historian of science, technology, and medicine, exploring the visual cultures of postwar genetics and biomedicine. Andrew won the 2013 William Bynum Prize in the History of Medicine with his article “The ‘Morbid Anatomy’ of the Human Genome: Tracing observational approaches in postwar genetics and biomedicine, 1970-1989.” This article will be published in the July issue of Medical History. In August 2014 Andrew will join the Faculty of Creighton University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of History. Information is now available for 2014's competition: the Prize is generously supported by Cambridge University Press, publishers of Medical History, and is coordinated by Medical History's editorial office which resides within the Centre for Global Health Histories, Department of History, University of York.

Admission: Free and open to all