Jul 9, 2019
In this episode, I dive into the complexities of healthcare screening of newborns. Then I take a winding path into the world of insect egg evolution. The connecting factor is … how our viewpoint affects what we focus on and what we see. I reference a few articles, which you might want to look up:
- The Promises and Pitfalls of Gene Sequencing for Newborns
- Insect Egg Size and Shape Evolve with Ecology but Not Developmental Rate
- The Biologist Using Insect Eggs to Overturn Evolutionary Doctrine
- An Interview with Cassandra Extavour
Highlights include:
6:05 – “In our society, we are really uncomfortable with not knowing and, more specifically, not controlling where things are going.”
6:26 – “Screenings are a way to comfort ourselves … we feel if we can screen, we can reduce that (risk).”
7:58 – “I think our culture has gotten so risk-averse that I honestly think people have gotten lost in a swirl of fear without looking at it.”
8:44 – Agatha Christie’s airplane ride.
9:36 – “We have to think about what are we comfortable with as a community and how do we also allow for individuals to have different levels of personal comfort.”
14:57 – “(Cassandra Extavour) is not your typical
traditional professor at Harvard. And I think there is an
association there between an entirely different worldview that she
has … and the fact that she could
topple that preconceived idea (about insect egg
evolution).”
15:20 – “We need all the different viewpoints. If we only have the same viewpoint, we are literally only looking at the same thing. We’re never going to see anything new.”
16:20 – “(Cassandra Extavour) is a person who has many worlds in her life and many different viewpoints. And I just think, what it took to bring in that different viewpoint. What if she hadn’t been raised as an outsider looking in? Would she have had the same viewpoint? And I think … no. I think because she was raised as an outsider to that traditional community, she had a different perspective that was essential to moving the science forward.”
16:55 – How much are we losing when we restrict the voices we listen to, to just the ones we’ve already heard. How much are we not going to be seeing by looking at only what we’ve always looked at?”
17:30 – Cassandra Extavour says in the article, “I didn’t even know that research was a profession. My parents didn’t go to college – this is a very esoteric profession practised by such a tiny fraction of the population, and unless you know someone in an academic workplace, it wouldn’t even occur to you that this kind of thing was happening.”
18:03 – “When we don’t reach out to include people, circumstances and structures block them.”
19:10 – “How are we limiting what we see by having preconceived notions of who will be a scientist and who won’t be?”
Leading with Health is hosted by Jennifer Michelle. Jennifer has a Master’s in Public Health and Epidemiology and is a certified EMT. As President of Michelle Marketing Strategies, Jennifer specializes in healthcare marketing.