11th Annual DNA Day Essay Contest
Deadline:
March 11, 2016
Maximum Award:
$1000 plus teacher receives a $1,000 grant for laboratory genetics equipment.
Eligibility:
All high school students
The American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) sponsors Annual DNA Day Essay Contest. Students in grades 9-12 are eligible to participate. The contest asks students to think about the important concepts of genetics.
Essays need to be well-reasoned and show a thorough understanding of the concepts.
Biology students and those that enjoy thinking about science are invited to write 750 words or less about the question below. It is important to support your argument with citations from scientific journal articles, books, newspapers, etc.
2016 Question
Choose a genetic test that is currently available for a condition or disease that does not cause symptoms until adulthood (i.e., an adult-onset condition such as hereditary breast cancer). Describe how the test works and how certain the test results are. Then, either defend or refute the recommendation below from ASHG’s recent position statement on pediatric genetic testing.
"Adolescents should be encouraged to defer predictive or pre-dispositional testing for adult-onset conditions until adulthood because of the complexity of the potential impact of the information at formative life stages."
Check out other essay contests for which you may be eligible.
