We are weeks into widespread social distancing in many parts of the world, though it feels like months. Cases of COVID19 continue to mount, as expected, and we watch Italy and Spain for signs of when our society might be cast into crisis and chaos. Health care...
There’s a photo I often show my audience before starting my lectures on “reproductive tourism.” It’s from a marketing brochure of the Akanksha infertility clinic in Anand, India, and features its medical director, Nayna Patel, standing regally amongst a group of...
I am a scientist. I declare it so proudly. But I think many people have a distorted conception of what a scientist is, and, frankly, what science itself is. Science is not truth, not a body of knowledge, and not a set of technologies. Science is a philosophy and a...
These are interesting times to be a university professor in North America, with both anecdotal and objective data suggesting a steady decline in student motivation and skills. During the first session of every class, I’ve taken to relating to my students some of my...
Forty years ago, my father took a walk to Central Park. He was a day away from his 37th birthday, and had just moved his young family from an impoverished rice-farming village in rural Guyana to the bitter proletariat soup of 1960s New York City, in search of...
