Recollections from 60 ASHG Meetings

Facing Our History-Building an Equitable Future

This report is the product of a major year-long initiative to acknowledge and reckon with past injustice, as well as progress toward justice, within the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) and the broader field of human genetics. Approved by the ASHG Board of Directors and launched in 2021, the initiative was sparked by the social and racial reckonings in 2020. The ASHG Bboard of Directors asked ASHG to acknowledge and provide examples of how human genetics theories and knowledge "have been used to feed and justify racism, eugenics, and other systemic forms of injustice, and to focus specifically on examples of ASHG's role in fostering or failing to rebuke harms and on steps the Society could take to address findings." The initiative was undertaken with support and input from an expert panel of human geneticists, historians, clinician-scientists, equity scholars, and social scientists and included a research and environmental scan, four expert panel meetings, and a community dialogue as its main activities.

Reflections on the history of genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University

Two members of the faculty-who witnessed the birth of Genetic Medicine and remained to see it evolve-present their reflections about the history of genetic medicine at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. They tell how the genetic units in Pediatrics and Medicine that were initiated by Barton Childs and Victor McKusick, respectively, became the McKusick Nathans Department of Genetic Medicine in 2020.