Front and Back Covers, Volume 26, Number 6. December 2010

Abstract

Front and back cover caption, volume 26 issue 6Front cover PUBLIC ANXIETY AND PERSONAL GENOMICS When the University of California at Berkeley sent letters to incoming freshmen in the summer of 2010, inviting them to submit their DNA for genetic testing, the plan quickly attracted national media attention and generated heated debate. The New York Times covered the issue and the Center for Genetics and Society and Council for Responsible Genetics called for a halt to the project. After having their DNA analysed, students would be given information about three genetic codes relating to their tolerance for alcohol and lactose, and their propsensity for folic acid deficiency.Why did this apparently harmless educational and health project become so controversial? Nancy Scheper‐Hughes examines the issues that led to a legislative hearing in Sacramento and a California State Department of Public Health order to stop the results being communicated to Berkeley students.What does this entail for the future of medical genomics? For academic staff in the biological and medical genomics sciences at Berkeley it was a severe disappointment. In the eyes of anthropologists and other science, technology, law and bioethics faculty, however, the project raised ethical issues and public anxieties around the uses and disclosure of personal genomics data that urgently need to be addressed.Front cover design by Chris Girard /http://www.chrisgirard.com.Back cover ‘DISCOVERING’ IDENTITY The images on the back cover feature baby David, one of the youngest of the Bene Ephraim (Children of Ephraim), and Jacob Yacobi, a young man born around the time when his community announced its Jewish origin. While for their parents’ generation Jewish identity was in many respects an issue of choice, for them and other Bene Ephraim of their age groups Judaism is the tradition they were born into and raised with.In this issue, Yulia Egorova and Shahid Perwez report on the community of Bene Ephraim of Andhra Pradesh (India). Twenty years ago this group of former Madiga untouchables claimed descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, building a synagogue and embracing Jewish practice.Historians may debate ‘documentary evidence’ demonstrating a genealogical connection between Judaizing groups and other Jewish communities around the world. Geneticists – among whom reconstructing Jewish history has proved a very popular topic – might be interested in testing whether communities like Bene Ephraim have any connections to the Middle East on the molecular level. However, irrespective of their findings, for the children and young people who grew up as Bene Ephraim being Jewish is as much of a given as it is for children and young people from ‘conventionally’ Jewish households in the West.Their parents ‘discovered’ their identities by rethinking their history in light of the Jewish tradition. For their children these identities may turn into an ascribed status they will have to face, just as the participants in the ‘fortune cookie genomics’ project discussed in this issue by Nancy Scheper‐Hughes will have to live with the results of their tests.