How Important Is Genetics?

While population and biomedical geneticists have been revealing a wealth of remarkable data regarding the origins of human populations, the nature of their historical successes and the role of genetics in health, in their preoccupations they have largely ignored old and new popular misconceptions regarding the significance of this information for everyday multicultural life here in the US and elsewhere. We will bring this powerful and sometimes unnerving new information to heel by carefully assessing the current state of affairs. Revelatory topics include how much individuals differ and how much groups differ genetically, human natural selection in action, a genetic history of the Jewish diaspora, how much does genetics determine human health and behavior, and finally we answer "Can genetics be the last word?"

Speaker: Dr. William Klitz, Visiting Scholar in the School of Public Health, UC Berkeley