Journal ArticleDOI
Dementia Entanglements in a Postgenomic Era
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TLDR
Using Alzheimer’s disease as an illustrative example, it is shown how population databases of AD cases on which individual risk estimates are based are faulty due to confusion about the AD phenotype.Abstract:
As genetic tests become cheaper and more readily available, pressure is increasing to routinely test individuals for susceptibility genes for complex common disorders. Using Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as an illustrative example, it is shown how population databases of AD cases on which individual risk estimates are based are faulty due to confusion about the AD phenotype. Furthermore, the APOEe4 genotype associated with increased risk of AD is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause AD. The article concludes with ethnographic findings that result from interviews with individuals who have been tested for their APOE status.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Century of the Gene. Evelyn Fox Keller. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 2000. pp. 186. Price £15.95, hardback. ISBN 0 674 00372 1.
TL;DR: Genetics Laboratory Investigations is a compilation of practical exercises that form a strong foundation in both classical genetics and more recent molecular genetic techniques for students at degree level and is accompanied by an Instructors Manual that includes hints, sources of materials, and answers to the many questions posed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mapping the New Molecular Landscape: Social Dimensions of Epigenetics
TL;DR: Some of the ways in which epigenetics is being constructed as an area of biomedical novelty are considered and the content and logics underlying the ambivalent promises being made by scientists working in this area are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Dementia and the Limits to Life: Anthropological Sensibilities, STS Interferences, and Possibilities for Action in Care
TL;DR: This article argued that the science centrism of STS contributes to the dominance of science and biomedicine by granting these analytical privileges and that alternative modes of acting, for instance in care, are disarticulated and made absent.
Journal ArticleDOI
Postgenomics, uncertain futures, and the familiarization of susceptibility genes.
TL;DR: It is argued that in connection with common adult onset disorders in which susceptibility genes with low predictive power are implicated it is unlikely that family relationships will be radically altered as a result of learning about either individual or family genotypes, but pre-existing family dynamics and ideas about family susceptibilities for disease may be reinforced.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Evolving Classification of Dementia: Placing the DSM-V in a Meaningful Historical and Cultural Context and Pondering the Future of “Alzheimer’s”
TL;DR: A constructivist approach is used to review the early history of the terms “Alzheimer’s disease” and related concepts such as dementia, as well as the more recent nosological changes that have occurred in the four major editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual since 1952.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Gene dose of apolipoprotein E type 4 allele and the risk of Alzheimer's disease in late onset families
Elizabeth H. Corder,Ann M. Saunders,Warren J. Strittmatter,Donald E. Schmechel,P. C. Gaskell,Gary W. Small,A. D. Roses,Jonathan L. Haines,Margaret A. Pericak-Vance +8 more
TL;DR: The APOE-epsilon 4 allele is associated with the common late onset familial and sporadic forms of Alzheimer9s disease (AD) in 42 families with late onset AD.
Book
Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life
TL;DR: In Evolution in Four Dimensions, Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb argue that there is more to heredity than genes and offers a richer, more complex view of evolution than the gene-based, one-dimensional view held by many today.
Book
Testing women, testing the fetus
TL;DR: Testing Women, Testing the Fetus as discussed by the authors explores the "geneticization" of family life in all its complexity and diversity, and examines how women of diverse racial, ethnic, class and religious backgrounds perceive prenatal testing, the most prevalent and routinized of new reproducing technologies.
Book
The Century of the Gene
TL;DR: Evelyn Fox Keller shows that the very successes that have stirred their imagination have also radically undermined the primacy of the gene - word and object - as the core explanatory concept of heredity and development, and argues that the authors need a new vocabulary that includes concepts such as robustness, fidelity and evolvability.
Journal ArticleDOI
Age, neuropathology, and dementia.
George M. Savva,Stephen B. Wharton,P. G. Ince,Gillian Forster,Fiona E. Matthews,Carol Brayne,Ageing Study +6 more
TL;DR: The association between the pathological features of Alzheimer's disease and dementia is stronger in younger old persons than in older old persons, and age must be taken into account when assessing the likely effect of interventions against dementia on the population.