Daphne Martschenko found inspiration for her career at summer camp. For five summers, beginning after her junior year in college at Stanford University, Martschenko worked at Camp Phoenix, which is for youth from low-income backgrounds in the San Francisco Bay Area, primarily Oakland and San Jose.
Camp Phoenix focuses on “joyful learning in an outdoor camp environment,” she says, and her experiences there ignited her passion for making education more equitable for students, regardless of their race or socioeconomic background.
She ultimately pursued a Ph.D. in education, but today her work goes beyond that field. Now a bioethicist at Stanford University, Martschenko is interested in how findings from social and behavioral genomics — the study of how genetic differences among individuals influence complex behaviors and social outcomes — affect society at large, including inequity and injustice and how we respond to them.
With abundant access to genetic information, researchers can now ask new questions about what influences human behavior. But such studies can be prone to bias and can be misinterpreted or co-opted to promote unscientific and even harmful ideas.
Today’s science tells us that race has no basis in genetics, but genetics has been invoked throughout history to justify slavery, racial discrimination, forced sterilization, xenophobic immigration policies and more. A white gunman who killed 10 Black people in a Buffalo supermarket in 2022 cited a genetic study to support his heinous act.
Martschenko’s work focuses on how genomics research can be conducted in a way that is social and ethical, can include community engagement and can be clearly communicated. She looks at the downstream effects of the research, especially social harms, and develops strategies to prevent those harms. She wants to stop “the unintended consequences of our research from playing out,” she says.
Bridging…
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