Julia Brown, PhD

Opinion | My Hope for Nick Reiner

Thank you for writing this, Andrew Solomon 🙌 www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

As beautiful as they were powerful: Jon Kudelka’s political cartoons were made with true conviction The award-winning cartoonist Jon Kudelka died in Hobart on Sunday, aged 53. Over 30 years, his work resisted the polarisation of the contemporary Australian media.

Trained in science, a leader in moral public engagement: "informed media types hobnobbing on a fossil fuel company’s dime makes people think well they must think this isn’t so bad so maybe it isn’t". Jon @kudelka.bsky.social was a treasured member of my family. theconversation.com/as-beautiful...

To Give Birth or Not to Give Birth Global fertility decline has made reproduction a site of reactionary family policies and moralized childlessness. But a healthy society would let people choose to have children or not without turning ...

“Care is treated as a logistical issue to be solved by institutions, markets, or private families. But care is relational, time-consuming, and emotionally demanding”
jacobin.com/2026/01/birt...

🆕 New Hastings Bioethics Forum essay by @daphmarts.bsky.social & @juliaehbrown.bsky.social : As #fertility fears rise, #pronatalism pushes for more children—and increasingly, “better” ones...Genetic tools like polygenic embryo selection, raise serious ethical concerns.

👉 https://bit.ly/3YF5UdM

More and “Better” Babies: The Dark Side of the Pronatalist Movement : The Hastings Center for Bioethics There is growing concern that falling fertility rates will lead to economic and demographic catastrophe. The social and political movement known as

The reproductive technologies that are being promoted by the tech-elite #pronatalists are new. The push to have as many babies as possible—and the best babies—is not. @daphmarts.bsky.social and @juliaehbrown.bsky.social explain in Hastings Bioethics Forum. www.thehastingscenter.org/more-and-bet...

More and “Better” Babies: The Dark Side of the Pronatalist Movement : The Hastings Center for Bioethics There is growing concern that falling fertility rates will lead to economic and demographic catastrophe. The social and political movement known as

www.thehastingscenter.org/more-and-bet...

New piece out with my dear friend @juliaehbrown.bsky.social

A person's genetics has a role in susceptibility to many diseases (Figure), but has little correlation with how the disease may progress or lead to a fatal outcome.
nature.com/articles/s4158

What to Know About Painkillers, Vaccines, Genes and Autism

What to Know About Painkillers, Vaccines, Genes and Autism: For decades, researchers have looked for links. Most believe the disorder springs from a complex interplay of genetics and environmental factors. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/h...

In a proposed update to its guidelines, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence retains its recommendation of three NHS-funded IVF cycles for those eligible under 40 and critiques unproven IVF add-ons. The draft is open for consultation until October 21.

Excellent piece by @alanlevinovitz.bsky.social @awaisaftab.bsky.social on the therapeutic effect of diagnosis +
the need for qual research. Reading Parson’s “sick role” theory in undergrad sociology was the moment I realized how much is missed by psych models. www.cambridge.org/core/service...

Opinion | What I Got Wrong About D.E.I.

“Metrics can be measured only by taking into account the starting point and ending point, as well as relevant features of the journey — the whole story.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/o...

People are having fewer babies: Is it really the end of the world? Steep population declines in most countries are expected to have negative impacts over the next several generations, but adaptation is possible.

“Declining fertility is only a disaster if you don’t adapt" (by valuing individual lives more through better access to education and healthcare) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Opinion | I’m a Proud Conservative. My Disabled Son Needs Medicaid to Live.

What a shame that Fox News couldn’t publish this instead. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/o...

Futurism MIND GAMES /ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis" “I don't know what's wrong with me, but something is very bad — I'm very scared, and I need to go to the hospital.” JUN 28, 9:00 AM EDT by MAGGIE HARRISON DUPRÉ

NEW: People are being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities — and even ending up arrested or jailed — after becoming fixated on ChatGPT and other chatbots and spiraling into psychosis.

futurism.com/commitment-j...

For many Duchenne families, halt to gene therapy is heartbreak upon heartbreak As gene therapy maker Sarepta Therapeutics tangles with FDA over its Duchenne treatment, patients and their families are caught in the middle.

“I feel like the balance that is being discussed right now, is actually very much out of kilter with what are acceptable risks for me as a parent, acceptable risks to me as physician and what I think should be acceptable risks to FDA and Sarepta” www.statnews.com/2025/07/24/d...

Not a good idea, uninformed
Front page @washingtonpost.com today www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

The tech billionaires and rogue scientists moving to commercialize CRISPR babies Since the “CRISPR babies” scandal in 2018, no additional genetically modified

www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical...

Opinion | ‘Motherhood Should Come With a Warning Label’

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/o...

Another tragic case of the risks of coming off clozapine altogether (and why psych meds are complicated). In Australia, clozapine takers also need blood monitoring each month, a crucial community-oriented check in that I believe helps as much as the medication itself.

“I had been the pregnant woman fetishizing the normal test result. Now that I was the mother of a child with a rare condition, I found an enemy in my past self”. Just finished Second Life by @amandahess.bsky.social. It is brilliant.

Opinion | There’s a Link Between Therapy Culture and Childlessness

It’s also true that therapy teaches how those that upset us reflect unresolved parts of ourselves. It allows for more intentional parenting, ideally with more compassion for grandparents, & the littlest versions of ourselves. Too many boomers & their kids missed out. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...

Empathy can take a toll – but 2 philosophers explain why we should see it as a strength Empathy affords us a more accurate understanding of others’ experiences and emotions. Just like pain, it can be hard to bear – but that’s also the source of its strength.

"when deciding complex policy questions ... resisting empathy impairs our decision-making. It keeps us from understanding what’s at stake ... it is vital to ask ourselves what policies we would favor if we were ... fully informed of the plight of others." theconversation.com/empathy-can-...

At a major genome-editing summit, spotlight turns to the value of human life Earlier gatherings focused on gaining public acceptance for what scientists want to do with CRISPR. This meeting flipped that on its head.

🧵 Speaking at the Global Observatory for Genome Editing summit at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in Cambridge this week, I highlighted a critical challenge: the deliberate fracturing of our knowledge ecosystems along ideological lines. www.statnews.com/2025/05/27/g...

Can doctors test embryos for autism? And should they? : It's Been a Minute A newly available kind of genetic testing, called polygenic embryo screening, promises to screen for conditions that can include cancer, obesity, autism, bipolar disorder, even celiac disease. These c...

Great discussion highlighting limitations to genetic determinism. More discussion still needed on parental pressures and variations of "autism", including insights from people with lived experience www.npr.org/2025/05/28/1...

CRISPR is used in landmark treatment to correct genetic misspelling of a single patient In a world first, scientists used CRISPR to fix a baby's unique genetic mutation. The report offers hope for personalized treatments of rare diseases.

For the first time, scientists say they have reached into the genome of a severely ill child and rewritten the unique misspelling in his DNA.

He Hears Voices in His Head. He Also Helped Win an Election.

A great piece about why social acceptance and feelings of competence is everything for those struggling with psychosis. (Many anthropological studies show as much). www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/n...

Great commentary by Dr. Ravitksy. "I would like young women to really have options," for society (and markets) to make it possible to start a family when pregnancy in less risky, where workplaces are more accommodating of mothers who work, where women don't have to gamble under economic coercion...

Excellent piece!

Opinion | What Kennedy Gets Right, And Wrong, About Antidepressants (Gift Article) Harm from these drugs is real. Let’s not cede the conversation to Kennedy.

My opinion piece in today’s @nytimes.com . I discuss how clinical neglect of medication-related harms has made RFK Jr’s stance on antidepressants appealing to so many and moving the public conversation in a productive direction requires us to remedy this neglect.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/o...

My Brain Finally Broke Much of what we see now is fake, and the reality we face is full of horrors. More and more of the world is slipping beyond my comprehension.

“ChatGPT will reify the problems that it purports to solve, and thus make itself essential: encouraging users to rely less and less on inner resources and personal capacity … with which we handle the task of being alive.” — 🙏🏼Jia Tolentino www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...