Michael Yudell, PhD, MPH

Bio Abstract

Prior to joining Drexel in 2004, Michael Yudell held the positions of researcher in the Molecular Laboratories at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, where his work focused on genome policy and ethics, and the position of Health Policy Analyst at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, where he worked closely with the Institutes ethicist and deputy director on human genome project policy. Dr. Yudell is the author with Rob DeSalle of Welcome to the Genome: A User's Guide to the Genetic Past, Present, and Future, published in September 2004 by John Wiley and Sons. Yudell and DeSalle also edited The Genomic Revolution: Unveiling The Unity Of Life, published in 2002 by the Joseph Henry Press of the National Academy of Science. His work has also been published in Nature Reviews Genetics, The Journal of the History of Biology,Genome Technology,Natural History,and American Scientist.  Dr. Yudell's work seeks to document historically stigmatized populations, the challenges they face in public health and medicine, and how this history impacts contemporary health challenges. He is currently completing the book Making Race: Biology and the Evolution of the Race Concept in 20th Century American Thought, a history that examines the way in which biologists and geneticists shaped the race concept during the 20th century from eugenics to the sequencing of the human genome. The book pays careful attention to the ways in which scientific conceptions of human difference impact both public health and medicine. Additionally, the work has important implications for bioethics and public health ethics given race’s role in patient care and in our understandings of the health of populations. He is also beginning work on a project that examines ethical issues associated with autism spectrum disorders, including risk communication and health disparities.