When doctors couldn’t stop her daughter’s seizures, this mom earned a PhD and found a treatment herself.

When doctors couldn’t stop her daughter’s seizures, this mom earned a PhD and found a treatment herself.

Savannah Salazar (left) and her mother, Tracy Dixon-Salazaar, who earned a PhD in neurobiology in the quest for a treatment of her daughter's seizure disorder.

LGS Foundation

Twenty-eight years ago, Tracy Dixon-Salazaar woke to the sound of her daughter, two-year-old Savannah, in the midst of a medical emergency.

“I entered [Savannah’s room] to see her tiny little body jerking about violently in her bed,” Tracy said in an interview. “I thought she was choking.” When she and her husband frantically called 911, the paramedic told them it was likely that Savannah had had a seizure—a term neither Tracy nor her husband had ever heard before.

Keep Reading Keep Reading
Sarah Watts

Sarah Watts is a health and science writer based in Chicago.

Is Finding Out Your Baby’s Genetics A New Responsibility of Parenting?

A doctor pricks the heel of a newborn for a blood test.

(© sushytska/Fotolia)


Keep Reading Keep Reading
Josephine Johnston
Josephine Johnston is Director of Research and a Research Scholar at The Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York. She works on the ethics of emerging biotechnologies, particularly as used in human reproduction, psychiatry, genetics, and neuroscience. Her scholarly work has appeared in medical, scientific, policy, law, and bioethics journals, including New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature, Hastings Center Report, and Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics. She has also written for Stat News, New Republic, Time, Washington Post, and The Scientist, and is frequently interviewed by journalists. Ms. Johnston holds degrees in law and bioethics from the University of Otago in New Zealand. Her current research addresses developments in genetics, including prenatal testing, gene editing, and newborn sequencing.
The Brave New World of Using DNA to Store Data

A panoramic view of DNA

(© vectorfusionart/Fotolia)


Keep Reading Keep Reading
Noah Davis
Noah Davis is a writer living in Brooklyn. Visit his website at http://www.noahedavis.com.