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The concept 'super-female' initially appeared in genetic studies of the common fruit fly, Drosophila, during the 1920s, and in early medical cytogenetic research in 1959. In this paper I present a genealogy of this gendered term and analyse the influence of the genetic concepts formulated by drosophilists on the construction of what would come to be known as medical - human - cytogenetics. While retrieving the participation of woman geneticists, the historical trajectory of this word and its meaning will be traced through the early cytogenetics of sex determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of the nineteenth centuno the Italian physician and anthropologist Cesare Lombroso established the foundations of criminological sciences by introducing a biological theory> of delinquency, which was later discredited and replaced by the sociological approach. The theory of the "born criminal" was poor in methods and analysis, and turned out to be controversial in its formulations, assumptions, and mostly in its predictions. However, recent research in behavioral genetics and neuroscience has brought back some version of the Lombrosian idea by providing evidence for the genetic and biological correlates of criminality. This research has been impacting legal proceedings worldwide. In this paper, I compare the Lombrosian and the contemporary scientific meanings of "heredity" and "predisposition" to aggressive and violent behavior, by highlighting theoretical similarities and differences in the two approaches. On the one hand, the paper is arguing against the idea that contemporary theories are radically deterministic, while on the other hand it aims at rehabilitating the intellectual image of Lombroso by showing that the denigration of his brilliant work by his successors was unjustified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at examining the way in which Aristotle deals with the problem of genetic malformations, developed, in particular, in The Generation of Animals (Book IV), within the theory of the genetic inheritance. According to this doctrine a malformation represents a deviation from the teleological development of the reproductive process, whose first step is represented by a female birth. Even though necessary for the continuation of the species, this event is described within the same theoretical frame of the genetic anomalies by Aristotle, who is committed to provide some prescriptions about mating and reproduction, in order to prevent this departure. In general, the issue of malformations highlights the presence of the material and mechanical aspect of the nature which, at times, can support or obstruct its teleological design, but which constitutes one of the fundamental assumptions of the physis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the conceptual innovations introduced by recent developments in genetics and genomics in diagnosis, both in its cognitive and clinical aspect. Genetic diagnosis started as the recognition of statistically significant occurrence of symptoms within families, and later became the simple test to diagnose a molecular disease, by highlighting the presence of a single pathological gene (or of a few of them). The advent of cheap genomic technologies all owed for genome-wide data collection, so that even complex traits, physiological as well as pathological, may be diagnosed. However, genome analysis has revealed that most phenotypic traits are the result of the interaction of multiple genes and of the environment. Diagnosis in the genomic age is no longer the act of connecting symptoms and the recognition of a pattern, but it crucially involves statistical concepts such as "risk" and "contribution", leaving a wide space of uncertainty for therapeutic action. The lifestyle of the patient is back again at the center of the stage: in order to stave off disease, an individual regimen may be the best available option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]