What We’re Reading

Articles that Capture the NIH’s Role in History or Society

“The NIH-led research response to COVID-19”

• Science, February 2, 2023
• https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf5167

“Though the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed the lives of at least 6.5 million individuals worldwide, is not yet over, it is not too soon to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the research response and some of the lessons that can be learned.”

“World’s largest body of human geneticists apologizes for eugenics role”

• Washington Post, January 24, 2023
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/24/geneticists-eugenics-apology/

“The world’s largest and best-known group of human geneticists apologized Tuesday for the role some of its early leaders played in the American eugenics movement, as well as the harmful ways the field has been used to fuel racism and discrimination. The 8,000-member American Society of Human Genetics ‘seeks to reckon with, and sincerely apologizes for, its involvement in and silence on the misuse of human genetics research to justify and contribute to injustice in all forms,’ the 75-year-old organization’s board of directors said in a statement.”

“Nobody Has My Condition But Me”

• The New Yorker, January 30, 2023
• https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/30/nobody-has-my-condition-but-me

“In early 2021, Dr. Michael Ombrello, an investigator at the National Institutes of Health, received a message from doctors at Yale about a patient with a novel genetic mutation—the first of its kind ever seen…. Ombrello was concerned by what first-round genetic tests showed: a disabling mutation in a gene, known as PLCG2, that’s crucial for proper immune functioning. It was hard to discern how the patient, a forty-eight-year-old woman, had survived for so long without serious infections. Even more puzzling was the sudden onset of severe joint pain and swelling she was experiencing after years of excellent health. He decided to bring her to the N.I.H. campus, in Bethesda, Maryland, to study her case first hand. ‘That’s how I ended up as a patient in his clinic on a sweet, warming day in April 2021, just as the cherry blossoms in the Washington area were in full bloom.’” [wrote the patient, the author of The New Yorker article].