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.

Genetic Engineering For All: The Last Great Frontier of Human Freedom

Josiah Zayner in his home lab.

(Courtesy Zayner)


Keep Reading Keep Reading
Josiah Zayner
Dr. Josiah Zayner is a biohacker and CEO who is constantly pushing the boundaries of science outside traditional environments including human genetic engineering. After his Ph.D., he worked at NASA's Synthetic Biology program, genetically engineering bacteria to help terraform Mars. He left NASA to found The ODIN, a company that makes genetic engineering available to consumers at home. His work has been featured in Time, Scientific American, Le Monde, Businessweek, The Guardian and NPR, among many others. He enjoys whiskey and Red Bull, sometimes together.
Hacking Your Own Genes: A Recipe for Disaster

Employees of ODIN, a consumer genetic design and engineering company, working out of their Bay Area garage start-up lab in 2016.

(Courtesy Josiah Zayner)


Keep Reading Keep Reading
Marcy Darnovsky
Marcy Darnovsky, PhD, is Executive Director at the Center for Genetics and Society, a Berkeley, California-based public affairs organization working to encourage responsible uses and effective societal governance of human genetic and assisted reproductive technologies. She speaks and writes widely on human biotechnologies, focusing on their social justice, equity, human rights, and public interest implications. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Nature, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, New Scientist, and many others. Beyond Bioethics: Towards a New Biopolitics, an anthology co-edited with Osagie K. Obasogie, is forthcoming in March 2018 from the University of California Press. Her Ph.D. is from the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. (Photo credit Barry Zuckerman)