[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Richards_Martin.jpg” caption=”Martin Richards”]Reproductive choice and new genetic reproductive technologies will be the topic of McMaster University's 2005 Enkin lecture to be given by Martin Richards, a professor of family research of the University of Cambridge, UK, on Wednesday, March 23.

Richards is a world-renowned researcher on genetic counseling and testing for inherited conditions, especially cancer and gene-based learning disorders.

His recent research has focused on the understanding of inheritance in both families with inherited disorders and the public at large. Richards says this work suggests that the current teaching of genetics, at least in the UK, requires radical reform to provide a useful working knowledge of processes of inheritance.

He is also working on a social history of reproductive and genetic technology. This ranges from the uses and abuses of technologies from the early nineteenth century and the selected breeding experiment at the Oneida Community in New York State to the development of the eugenic movement and the coming together of genetic and assisted reproductive technologies in the last decade. Richards says the historical analysis develops a new perspective from which contemporary developments may be viewed.

Richards is also the Director of the Center for Family Research and Director of the Centre for Medical Genetics and Policy at the University of Cambridge.

The Enkin Lectureship, to celebrate humanitarianism in research, was named for Murray Enkin, professor emeritus of McMaster University's Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics, and his wife Eleanor Enkin. They made important contributions to clinical research in pregnancy and childbirth, and have been strong advocates for family centered maternity care, for consumers' choices in obstetrics and for midwifery. More generally, they have been advocates of a wider view of science in the service of humanity.

The lecture will be held at 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the McMaster Health Sciences Centre, Room 1A1, at 1200 Main Street West, Hamilton.