Secret Jews and Telltale Genes in New Mexico

Lecture and booksigning by Jeff Wheelwright

Jan 29, 2012

In 1999, breast cancer killed Shonnie Medina in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Medina was a vivacious Hispanic woman, a Catholic who had become a Jehovah’s Witness. But a genetic test revealed that her cancer was caused by a mutation that has followed Jewish people for 2,500 years across continents, oceans and cultures.

At 2 pm on Sunday, Jan. 29, science writer Jeff Wheelwright traces that gene through a story that begins in Babylonian captivity, travels to medieval Spain and then to Mexico and North America, where it combines Native beliefs, fundamentalist Protestantism, and shifting debates about the meaning of race and the ethics of genetic research. His lecture, “Secret Jews and Telltale Genes in New Mexico,” is free with admission; Sundays are free to NM residents.

Wheelwright will also be signing his new book The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess: Race, Religion, and DNA (W.W. Norton & Co., 2012).

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