Biography
Retirement. A scary word, but I think I've finally done it. As textbooks continue to evolve, I'll be updating Human Genetics: Concepts and Applications in some form now and then. I'll write an occasional piece for Genetic Literacy Project, when DNA news intersects with history or sociology in a way that my brain connects. And I'm busy with volunteer work – for a food pantry, hospice, and a new organization of scientists and physicians that is setting standards for clinical DNA testing companies.
But I will never stop writing my blog, DNA Science. I'm forever grateful to Public Library of Science (PLoS) for supporting it for more than a decade.
My career slowed when COVID finally did – writing 100+ articles on the unfolding pandemic was an unexpected coda to my decades of cranking out articles, for a long list of publications: Science, Nature, Medscape Medical News, Scientific American, Biophotonics, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Discover, BioScience, the Lancet, Genetic Engineering News, The New York Times Book Review, The Scientist, High Technology, various encyclopedias and even Pet Care Reports for the veterinary set and a sexual fantasy in Playgirl under a pseudonym. I think I might have written the mesothelioma pamphlet that's hawked on TV now.
I've also authored books – many editions of an intro biology text and two human anatomy and physiology textbooks (all for McGraw-Hill Higher Education), and an essay collection, a novel about stem cells, a human genetics primer, and "The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It" (St. Martin's Press), my first (and only) attempt at narrative non-fiction. It relates the story of a boy who rapidly regained his eyesight after gene therapy, against the backdrop of the turbulent history of the technology.
I started this website, from the Author's Guild, to promote The Forever Fix, and my blog caught the attention of PLoS, which quickly snatched it up. I wish the response to The Forever Fix had been as good! But it forever connected me to the world of families pushing research for treatments of rare diseases, most of them genetic.
For the past two years, I've been editing a medical journal, and find that I love it. At this point I have a great command of style that physicians and scientists tend to lack, yet enough technical knowledge (PhD in genetics) to be accurate. So if anyone needs a medical or scientific editor, please get in touch! I'd love more editing to be my next chapter.
Thanks for reading my work, and please suggest topics!
Ricki Lewis