Reproduction & Society

Bledsoe, Caroline | Kuzawa, Chris | McDade, T.W. | Wang, Xiaobin | Zoloth, Laurie

Caroline Bledsoe, Ph.D. Department of Anthropology Ph.D., Stanford University

Bledsoe is Professor of Anthropology and the Melville J. Herskovits Professor of African Studies at Northwestern University. Her projects in West Africa have centered on reproduction, whether social or biological: kinship and marriage; social stratification; demography and public health; ancestral traditions; fertility; child fosterage; and the cultural reworkings of literacy, knowledge, medicine, and contraceptives.

Her most formative project began a decade ago with some puzzling demographic findings on the use of Western contraceptives in rural Gambia. It revealed that while most women in the West use contraceptives in order to avoid having children, many women in sub-Saharan Africa use contraceptives for the opposite reason - to have as many children as possible. This seemingly counterintuitive fact can be explained by juxtaposing two very different cultural understandings of the life course. One is a Western model that equates aging and the ability to reproduce with the passage of linear time; the other an African model that views aging as contingent on the cumulative physical, social, and spiritual hardships of personal history, especially obstetric trauma. Inspired by the Gambian findings, Bledsoe turned an Africanist's cultural eye to the history of Western medical science, specifically the work of a Northwestern/Univ. of Chicago obstetrician in late 19th - early 20th century Chicago. Close inspections of his writings on technical medicine and on hospital architecture in Chicago, as well as his pioneering medical film-making, reveal some surprising support for the testimonies of contemporary rural African women about how the body works.

Bledsoe has produced six books and a number of articles. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Population Council; the Rockefeller, Ford, Mellon, Wenner Gren, and John Simon Guggenheim Foundations; and the National Academy of Sciences.

Recent Publications:

Caroline Bledsoe with contributions by Fatoumatta Banja. Contingent Lives: Fertility, Time and Aging in West Africa. 2002 University of Chicago Press, Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture Series.

Caroline Bledsoe, Susana Lerne, and Jane Guyer, eds Fertility and the Male Cycle in the Era of Fertility Decline. 2000 Clarendon: Oxford University Press.

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Chris Kuzawa, Ph.D., MsPH Department of Anthropology Ph.D., Emory University

As a biological anthropologist with training in public health and epidemiology, my research evaluates the long-term impact of early life developmental processes, with a primary focus on the role that the intrauterine and early postnatal environments have on adult health. The premise of this research, supported by studies in both human populations and animal models, is that what a mother eats during pregnancy, her access to adequate prenatal care, or her level of stress, may permanently alter offspring biology in a fashion that influences risk for the most common causes of adult suffering and mortality, including hypertension, diabetes, and heart attacks. This perspective may have particular relevance for understanding health patterns in populations experiencing rapid nutritional and lifestyle change, as individuals undernourished early in life who grow up to experience relative nutritional abundance as adults may be at greatest risk. I and my colleagues are investigating these questions in the Philippines, a population currently experiencing changes in culture, lifestyle and health. Our research shows that poor maternal/fetal nutrition and growth predict elevated blood pressure, a more atherogenic lipid profile, and an attenuated capacity to mount an immune response in adolescence and early adulthood. A second theme in my work focuses on the use of evolutionary principles to understand the pattern of human growth and development, the characteristics of the human life cycle, and the determinants of health and disease.

Recent Publications:

Kuzawa CW, The fetal origins of developmental plasticity. Are maternal cues reliable predictors of future nutritional environments? Amer J Hum Biol (in press)

Kuzawa CW and IL Pike, The fetal origins of developmental plasticity. Introduction to the special issue. Amer J Hum Biol (in press)

Kuzawa CW and LS Adair (2004), A supply-demand model of fetal energy sufficiency predicts lipid profiles in male but not female adolescent Filipinos. Eur J Clin Nutr, 58(3) 438-48.

McDade, TW, Kuzawa, CW, Adair, LS, and M Beck (2004), Prenatal and early postnatal environments are significant predictors of total immunoglobulin E concentration in Filipino adolescents. Clin Exp Allergy, 34 (1) p.44-50.

Kuzawa CW (2004), Modeling fetal adaptation to nutrient restriction: testing the fetal origins hypothesis with a supply-demand model. J Nutrition, 134: 194-200.

Leonard WR, Robertson ML, Snodgrass JJ, Kuzawa CW (2003), Metabolic correlates of hominid brain evolution. Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol. 136(1):5-15.

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Thomas W. McDade, Ph.D. Department of Anthropology Ph.D. Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

The Laboratory for Human Biology Research is located within the Anthropology Department, and supports a range of projects investigating issues related to human health, growth and development, stress, reproductive ecology, energetics, and body composition. Current projects involve research in Samoa, Kenya, Bolivia, Siberia, and the Philippines. A primary mission of the laboratory is the development of minimally invasive, "field-friendly" methods for assessing biomarkers of health and development that can be used to facilitate population-level research in remote field settings. In recent research, whole blood samples have been collected from finger sticks and dried on filter paper in the field, and then brought back to the laboratory for analysis using modified ELISA protocols. Analysis of saliva and urine samples is also supported. The laboratory is committed to using these methods to facilitate collaborative, population-based research into the relationships between humans and their environments around the world.

Recent Publications:

McDade, T.W. (in press). Parent-offspring conflict and the cultural ecology of breastfeeding. Human Nature.

McDade, T.W., Stallings, J.F., Angold, A., Costello, E.J., Burleson, M., Cacioppo, J.T., Glaser, R. and C.M. Worthman (2000). Epstein-Barr virus antibodies in whole blood spots: A minimally-invasive method for assessing cell-mediated immunity. Psychosomatic Medicine 62: 560-568.

McDade, T.W., Stallings, J.F. and C.M. Worthman (2000). Culture change and stress in Western Samoan youth: Methodological issues in the cross-cultural study of stress and immune function. American Journal of Human Biology 12: 792-802.

McDade TW, Burhop J, Dohnal J. High-sensitivity enzyme immunoassay for C-reactive protein in dried blood spots. Clin Chem. 2004 Mar;50(3):652-4.

McDade TW, Kuzawa CW, Adair LS, Beck MA. Prenatal and early postnatal environments are significant predictors of total immunoglobulin E concentration in Filipino adolescents. Clin Exp Allergy. 2004 Jan;34(1):44-50.

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Xiaobin Wang, M.D., M.P.H., Sc.D. Department of Pediatrics M.D., Beijing Medical University, Beijing, China

Dr. Wang is a molecular epidemiologist whose work unites molecular biology, genetics, clinical medicine, and epidemiology and brings together laboratory science and child health professionals from multiple disciplines. Her research has covered a broad scope of child health issues ranging from adverse reproductive outcomes, child growth and development, respiratory health, and childhood precursors of adult diseases.

At present, Dr. Wang is the principal investigator of four molecular epidemiological studies on preterm birth, low birth weight, and fetal growth restriction, particularly the interaction between genes and the environment. Her work is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the March of Dimes Birth Defect Foundation.

Recent Publications:

Wang L, Wang X, Wang W, Chen C, Ronnennberg AG, Guang W, Huang A, Fang Z, Zang T, Wang L, Xu X. Stress and dysmenorrhoea: a population based prospective study. Occup Environ Med. 2004 Dec;61(12):1021-6.

Ronnenberg AG, Wood RJ, Wang X, Xing H, Chen C, Chen D, Guang W, Huang A, Wang L, Xu X. Preconception hemoglobin and ferritin concentrations are associated with pregnancy outcome in a prospective cohort of Chinese women. J Nutr. 2004 Oct;134(10):2586-91.

Wang X, Mensinga TT, Schouten JP, Rijcken B, Weiss ST. Determinants of maximally attained level of pulmonary function. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2004 Apr 15;169(8):941-9.

Li J, Wang X, Huo Y, Niu T, Chen C, Zhu G, Huang Y, Chen D, Xu X. PON1 polymorphism, diabetes mellitus, obesity, and risk of myocardial infarction: Modifying effect of diabetes mellitus and obesity on the association between PON1 polymorphism and myocardial infarction. Genet Med. 2005 Jan;7(1):58-63.

Hao K, Xu X, Laird N, Wang X, Xu X (2004). Power estimation of multiple SNP association test of case-control study and application. Genetic Epidemiology. 26: 22-30.

Hao K, Wang X, Niu T, Xu X, Li A, Chang W, Wang L, Li G, Xu X (2004). A candidate gene study of preterm delivery: Application of high-throughput genotyping technology and advanced statistical methods. Human Molecular Genetics. 13: 683-691.

Venners SA, Wang X, Chen C, Wang L, Chen D, Guang W, Huang A, Ryan L, OÕConnor J, Lasley B, Overstreet J, Wilcox A, Xu X (2004). Paternal smoking and early pregnancy loss: A prospective study using biomarker. American Journal of Epidemiology. 159(10): 993-1001.

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Laurie Zoloth, PhD Director of the Center for Bioethics Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics Professor of Religion

Laurie Zoloth is Director the Center for Bioethics at Northwestern University, a Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics, and Professor of Religion, at Northwestern. From 1995-2003, she was Professor of Ethics and Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University. In 2001, she was the President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and in 2002 was Vice President of the Society for Jewish Ethics. She is a member of the both the NASA National Advisory Council, NASA’s Planetary Protection Advisory Committee, the Boards of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and the Society of Women’s Health Research. She is the Chair of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Bioethics Advisory Board., as well as being on the founding boards of 4 national academic societies. She has published extensively in the areas of ethics, family, feminist theory, religion and science, Jewish Studies, and social policy. Her books are Health Care and The Ethics of Encounter, Notes From a Narrow Ridge: Religion and Bioethics, Margin of Error: The Ethics of Mistakes in the Practice of Medicine and The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate: Ethics, Religion and Public Policy, and her 29 book chapters include work on the emerging issues in basic research and in the problems of social justice in health care. She has testified about science and ethics for the US Senate, the states of Illinois, Texas, and California, and the European Union Commission on Bioethics and Humanities.

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