{"id":128580,"date":"2025-09-03T01:45:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T01:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/128580\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T01:45:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T01:45:13","slug":"faculty-in-focus-shawneequa-callier-gw-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/128580\/","title":{"rendered":"Faculty in Focus: Shawneequa Callier | GW Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Shawneequa Callier<\/a> was an undergraduate, a sheep changed her life.<\/p>\n

It was the late 1990s, and Dolly<\/a> had recently become the first cloned mammal created from an adult cell. The breakthrough sparked an explosion of debate around the ethics and possibilities of cloning, and Callier remembers attending a talk given by Ian Wilmut, the embryologist who led the research team that created Dolly. Callier, behind rows of fellow students in the auditorium\u2019s balcony, listened in fascination.<\/p>\n

Having taken a class on the myths and realities of human cloning, Callier knew better than to heed the alarmist fantasies that Dolly triggered in some at the time. Sci-fi-style vats of cloned human beings were not in the offing. But she knew, too, that she was seeing history in the making. A fascinating new domain of biomedical research, with new possibilities, new consequences and new questions, was coming into being before her eyes.<\/p>\n

Callier had considered going to law school, and eventually would do so. But she would do it with ambitions that went beyond legal practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I wanted to continue exploring questions around breakthrough technologies like that, where there are so many social, cultural and religious questions and viewpoints,\u201d Callier said.<\/p>\n

Now, Callier explores these questions as an associate professor of clinical research and leadership at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She uses her legal training as an expert in the ethical, legal and social implications (a field also called ELSI) of genomics and data science research, focusing on the intersection of bioethics, law and technology. Her teaching history includes a University Seminar<\/a>\u00a0 with Sonia Suter, who holds two endowed research professorships and is co-founder and founding director of the Health Law and Policy Program at GW Law School. Currently, Callier works with graduate health science students to explore the thorny ethical issues they may encounter in translational health research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat excites me the most is preparing the next generation of scientists and healthcare professionals to anticipate future ethical challenges,\u201d Callier said.<\/p>\n

That may mean thinking through how a research team is composed\u2014scientists, subjects, and sometimes collaborators from government or industry\u2014and being able to recognize and ethically balance the interests of the parties involved. It may also mean seeing how research\u2019s effects may ripple beyond the primary focus of study.<\/p>\n

What would it mean for genes to be judged?<\/p>\n

Take Callier\u2019s work as a co-investigator on a project examining the legal implications of polygenic scoring<\/a>, a method by which a person\u2019s or community\u2019s genetic phenotype is analyzed to assess their risk of various conditions including cancer and heart disease. Callier is part of a team focusing on aspects of polygenic scoring that they call \u201cbeyond the medical,\u201d though these may have medical aspects\u2014conditions like criminality and educational attainment. Some even posit that polygenic scores could be created for political affiliation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a tempting knowledge proposition for many, Callier said, especially as more and more people turn to personal genetic analysis for, essentially, entertainment: Sending a swab to a DNA testing company may be a way to assess your likelihood of health risks, but users also do it to provide insight into family legends or find surprises in their family tree. As that information is used to analyze large populations, it\u2019s also a field ripe for possible misuse.<\/p>\n

Using polygenic scores to determine non-medical outcomes \u201ccan be very controversial, especially if we make the mistake of attributing genetics to particular groups based on how we socially construct those groups,\u201d Callier said. So she and her team have been \u201cscanning the horizon,\u201d exploring how ethical and legal pitfalls could arise and how to avoid them in advance<\/p>\n

\u201cHow would you regulate something that is considered an entertaining [activity], but not necessarily a medical one, especially in cases when there could be great harm to an individual or a community if you start defining the trait a certain way?\u201d Callier asks. \u201cWe’re creating case studies to help scientists and legal scholars better consider the potential ethical and legal implications.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do we need to do beyond the law?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the United States, a federal \u201cCommon\u00a0Rule\u201d<\/a> for the protection of human subjects guides researchers\u2019 interactions with the individuals who have opted in to a given study. There are a set of standards for informed consent: Research participants know that they are participating in research and are ensured awareness of their rights and, where applicable, of the risks they may face.<\/p>\n

But there is often no set of agreed-upon standards for how researchers should consider the potential reverberations of their work beyond these individual participants\u2014how a person\u2019s participation might affect their family, community or other networks.<\/p>\n

With students, Callier sometimes uses the example of members of the Havasupai, an Indigenous nation in Arizona, who approached researchers with a desire to understand the genetic causes of diabetes in their community. In the 1990s, the researchers engaged with the community to undertake this study, which included obtaining \u201cbroad consent,\u201d the right to use collected materials for unspecified future research, from participants.<\/p>\n

That broad consent, however, may not have fully communicated how these or other researchers might use the DNA they collected\u2014specifically in blood, which for the Havasupai has a powerful spiritual meaning. Eventually, a member of the tribe who had agreed to participate years before attended a lecture by a graduate student using data from that long-ago study. She was surprised by its scope, which went well beyond the diabetes research she remembered having been told about. Eventually, tribal members would find that researchers had drawn on their genetic data for papers that promulgated unexpected narratives about the Havasupai and undermined tribal beliefs about their own cultural and geographic origins. The tribe sued the university, which settled, agreeing to compensate participants and to return their blood samples.<\/p>\n

But a settlement is not legal precedent, Callier pointed out. Nor does it indicate moral consensus. The geneticist who led the Havasupai project defended the research as \u201cgood science\u201d<\/a> as recently as 2010. In genetic research, after all, lifesaving progress can often be made by investigating patterns that lead beyond the original question.<\/p>\n

A guiding principle, then, might be \u201cbidirectional learning\u201d between researcher and community, Callier explained. \u201cAs you engage with research participants about the nature of the science and what it really means, the community can share with you what might be [their] priorities or agenda related to that science. They should be teaching you, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Callier does provide her students with an overview of the rich ground of bioethics through case studies\u2014\u201cI love knowing the foundation\u201d\u2014 she hopes to help them move beyond understanding the field as it currently exists. The goal is to \u201cprovide them with a framework of how to ask good questions\u201d when they are faced with unforeseeable problems arising from technologies that either don\u2019t yet exist or are currently only in infancy. By learning to ask these questions, students can help build a research ecosystem that anticipates harm instead of reacting after its infliction.<\/p>\n

\u201cA big part of why I do what I do is because I want to maximize the benefit of new technologies for all people,\u201d Callier said. \u201cThe law can take us pretty far in understanding the limits and what we definitely should not do, and hopefully also builds in some accountability measures. But I also want to think, \u2018Okay, what do we need to do beyond the law in the middle of this completely new era of research, or this new technology we’re building where some of the questions that could come up have never come up before?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Genomics as a guide to AI ELSI<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence is an immediate example of that kind of evolving field. \u201cAI is literally everywhere right now,\u201d Callier said\u2014in teaching and learning, in the law, in healthcare and in scientific analysis. And it is itself a science under study. As societies grapple with establishing an ethical scaffolding for AI implementation, Callier said, thinkers and policymakers should take advantage of the resources offered by genomics\u2019 legacy of ELSI research.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the start of the Human Genome Project, so ever since the 1990s, we’ve had investigators funded to consider the ethical, legal and social implications of genomics,\u201d she said. Conversely, while principles, values and governance structures around AI have been widely discussed in the past few years, \u201cthe field does not have the benefit of decades and decades of empirical interdisciplinary research.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just a case of the established science informing the new. Here, too, Callier believes bidirectional learning should apply. \u201cI think as we try to solve the problems in AI, the fields should speak to each other. Genome scientists can learn a lot about the trade-offs AI researchers are making and how they have been highlighting the need for fairness and justice. Genomics has been going on for many, many years and the data sets we use are still limited in terms of the populations around the world that need to be included.\u201d<\/p>\n

At home in GW and D.C.<\/p>\n

The progress powered by cross-disciplinary conversation is a major reason Callier loves working at GW, she said. \u201cTo have the opportunity to benefit from not only the diverse disciplines, but the brilliant professors who are here at GW, who are doing groundbreaking work and are also open to breaking the silos and working together to help solve some of these big problems\u2014it makes me feel as if anything is possible here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Community has long been important to Callier, who grew up in Queens, New York\u2014\u201cthe most diverse suburb in the world\u201d\u2014and moved to Washington, D.C., for law school. She\u2019s now been in the District for almost 20 years and considers it a second home.<\/p>\n

\u201cD.C. history runs really deep,\u201d she said. \u201cIt’s not just a city of politicians, it’s a city of many different, amazing, diverse people\u2026I feel very invested in what happens to D.C. and the people here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of that investment is Callier\u2019s position as chair of the board of the Ben\u2019s Chili Bowl Foundation<\/a>, the community-service arm of one of D.C.\u2019s oldest Black-owned restaurants. A mainstay of D.C.\u2019s historic \u201cBlack Broadway\u201d<\/a> on U Street, Ben\u2019s storied history includes being the only restaurant open to provide meals and shelter during the 1968 riots. Through the foundation, Callier and her colleagues empower local community organizations in health care, job training, the arts and beyond.<\/p>\n

She also has served for more than a decade as a special volunteer with the National Institutes of Health, where she is the only person with a legal and bioethical background in a global laboratory of geneticists. \u201cI’ve been working side by side with this group of geneticists for 13 years, assessing and analyzing the ethical and legal implications of our work and engaging in ethics research projects,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Callier\u2019s daily life involves engaging with thorny intellectual and moral problems at a high, sometimes speculative level. But in her off hours, she gets down to earth\u2014literally. \u201cIf I spend a week working on a grant proposal, it’s almost guaranteed that I’ll spend that Saturday in the garden the entire day.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also a hiker and a runner, taking on her first half marathon last year and currently weighing the possibility of training for a full one. \u201cI spend as much time outdoors as I possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through the study of bioethics, Callier\u2019s students establish structures of thought that they\u2019ll be able to rely on even amid the most intractable ethical problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everyone should take a bioethics class, no matter what field they’re in,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Shawneequa Callier was an undergraduate, a sheep changed her life. It was the late 1990s, and Dolly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[81670,81669,526,200,28964,81666,28500,81668,81667,12097,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-128580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-dc-colleges","9":"tag-dc-universities","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-genetics","12":"tag-george-washington","13":"tag-george-washington-university","14":"tag-gw","15":"tag-gw-university","16":"tag-gwu","17":"tag-higher-education","18":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}