The Beagle Has Landed Podcast managingEditor

 
Beverly Gage, Yale professor of American History and author, is more likely to be found on podcasts discussing her new (and wildly acclaimed) biography, “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century". But in 2019 her life took an unexpected turn, as a chance encounter with a plant kickstarted what turned out to be a rare disease that had – inexplicably – lain dormant for 40 years.  
She’s not just a zebra, as Beverly explains in her recent New Yorker article, she’s a zebra with polka dots.

Deven McGraw, lead for Data Stewardship and Data Sharing at Invitae, joins Laura to discuss how government and industry can best secure your right to access your own health data while keeping it secure from unwanted exposures. Deven's broad range of experience makes her the person to answer those burning questions about how to keep our data safe - and accessible.

Today’s podcast features Adam Rutherford, a geneticist trained at University College London who has spent much of his career as a science communicator: as an editor at Nature, as a radio and television commentator for the BBC, and as the author of such books with delightful titles, including "Creation: the Origin of Life/The Future of Life and A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived" and "How to Argue With a Racist".

In a field full of amazing people, no one --- no one -- is more remarkable than Sharon Terry. And this is despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that she is not, technically, in the field at all: Sharon Terry is, as her bio describes her, “just a mom with a master’s degree in theology.” Sharon’s personal story of a journey from the worst form of heartbreak and disempowerment – the discovery that both of her young children had a rare genetic disease with a bad prognosis – to become a role model for parent activists everywhere.

Noura Abul-Husn got her MD and PhD from Mt Sinai in NYC, where she later served as the first clinical director of the Institute for Genomic Health and Chief of Genomic Medicine. Today, she is Vice President for Genomic Health at 23andMe. She joins us here on the Beagle today to discuss the state of translational efforts in genomic medicine and look at some of the barriers to the integration of genetics into routine clinical care.

Pharmacogenetics testing: where are we today? Kristine Ashcraft, CEO, and founder of YouScript, a translational PGX start-up that Invitae recently acquired, joins us on the Beagle to discuss why it has been so hard to get the ball rolling on PGX testing. Kristine, who was called one of the 25 leading voices in precision medicine by BIS Medicine in 2019, lays out a roadmap to the integration of PGX testing into routine clinical care.