Month: May 2019

On The Gist, the gift to the Morehouse graduates is great, but should it be celebrated or just the standard?

In the interview, Linda Taylor committed many crimes, but only one of them—welfare fraud—really mattered to politicians, the press, and the public. Anecdotes about kidnapping and possible murder would only get in the way of the portrait Ronald Reagan presented to American voters in 1976, of a woman whose defrauding of taxpayer money was typical among those dependent on social programs. Slate national editor Josh Levin wrote Slate’s most read story ever, and has expanded it into a book—The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth—and a Slate podcast: The Queen, available now wherever you get your podcasts. 

In the Spiel, Anand Giridharadas fact checking Jared Diamond.

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Dr Joshua Mezrich is a leading transplant surgeon. He tells Andrew Marr how death and life are intimately connected in his field of expertise. And he explains the extraordinary breakthroughs that have emerged in transplant surgery, along with the ethical questions that arise when choosing who will be given the chance of a new beginning. Scientific research needs to be evidence-based. But it can too easily be based on underlying assumptions and biases. The science writer Angela Saini reports on the history - and recent revival - of race science, a field of study that sees race as a biological fact.

Caroline Criado Perez exposes the gender biases in medical and scientific research. She argues that women have often been excluded from the data which has had a huge impact on the efficacy of the pills prescribed, and the treatment offered.

The latest promise of better healthcare is personalised medicine, which aims to get the right dose to the right patient at the right time. But Richard Ashcroft, Professor of Biomedical Ethics, cautions that grouping patients by their genetic constitution may well create new forms of inequality.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Dr Joshua Mezrich is a leading transplant surgeon. He tells Andrew Marr how death and life are intimately connected in his field of expertise. And he explains the extraordinary breakthroughs that have emerged in transplant surgery, along with the ethical questions that arise when choosing who will be given the chance of a new beginning. Scientific research needs to be evidence-based. But it can too easily be based on underlying assumptions and biases. The science writer Angela Saini reports on the history - and recent revival - of race science, a field of study that sees race as a biological fact.

Caroline Criado Perez exposes the gender biases in medical and scientific research. She argues that women have often been excluded from the data which has had a huge impact on the efficacy of the pills prescribed, and the treatment offered.

The latest promise of better healthcare is personalised medicine, which aims to get the right dose to the right patient at the right time. But Richard Ashcroft, Professor of Biomedical Ethics, cautions that grouping patients by their genetic constitution may well create new forms of inequality.

Producer: Katy Hickman