This Wednesday, April 11 at 3 p.m. as part of the university’s Game Changers series, Professors Andrea Gore and David Crews will be part of a special double header edition of Game Changers with Professor Art Markman speaking at 6 p.m.
Game Changers brings The University of Texas at Austin’s intellectual talent beyond the classroom with a live 60-minute show that will also be broadcast on the Longhorn Network.
The talk is in Studio 6A at the KLRU studios in the Jesse H. Jones Communications Center B on The University of Texas at Austin campus.
Sign up to attend one taping or both.
“Living in a Contaminated World: Are Chemical Advances Making Us Sicker, Fatter and Less Intelligent?”
The promise of chemicals designed to act as pesticides, solvents, fungicides and plastics has played out as improvements in many aspects of life. They protect our grapes from fungus, our leafy greens from pests, our children from fire ants and flammable pajamas. They lubricate our factories, refineries and power plants. Thousands of chemicals are now found in the environment and also in our bodies. Research shows that exposure to these compounds may alter our very genetic makeup, making us sicker, fatter and less intelligent. This exposure also affects our descendants. Gore and Crews discuss how environmental exposures to commonly used chemicals cause irreversible biological changes and increased disease states in us, our children, our grandchildren and beyond.
About Andrea Gore and David Crews
Andrea Gore, the Gustavus and Louise Pfeiffer Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the College of Pharmacy, has published three books and more than 100 papers related to how the brain controls reproductive function. She is an internationally recognized expert on biological actions of endocrine disruptors on neurobiological and hormonal functions. Gore’s research, which is supported by NIH and NSF funding, has been recognized with numerous awards and honors.
David Crews, the Ashbel Smith Professor in the College of Natural Sciences, examines how the environment shapes the brain and body. He provided the evidence that male sexual behavior need not depend upon sex hormones. His demonstration that progesterone is important for male sexual behavior has quickly found therapeutic application. His recent work showing that chemical contaminants in past generations alter how animals respond to common challenges is a breakthrough.
