Q&A: How ‘blast zone’ of gender politics is hurting research on women’s health

David Page’s bio reads like a history of science in the age of genomics. In 1979 he was the first student to work on what we now know as the Human Genome Project. He then became a fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research before joining its faculty (and MIT’s), and later served as Whitehead’s president for 16 years. He’s mapped, cloned, and published the complete genomic sequence of the Y chromosome.

Now back in his lab post-presidency, he studies how male and female cells, tissues, and organs are and aren’t essentially the same. That sheds light on heart failure, systemic lupus, autism spectrum disorder, and many cancers, among other diseases.

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That also puts him in the line of fire.

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