Rene Almeling / Sex Cells: The Market for Human Eggs and Sperm

You are Invited to the 4th Annual Darwin Day Dinner, to be held on Saturday, February 11th, 2012 at The Inn at Longshore in Westport, located at 260 South Compo Road.

Cocktail Hour will begin at 6pm and a full course Dinner will be served at 7pm. The price is $55 per person. There once again will be a Science Quiz (with prizes!) and a Talk by Rene Almeling PhD, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University, titled “Sex Cells: The Market for Human Eggs and Sperm.”

Rene Almeling’s research and teaching interests are in gender, markets, medicine, and genetics. Her book, Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm, was published by the University of California Press in Fall 2011. This project received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. Currently, she is doing research on genetic testing, genetic counseling, and in vitro fertilization. In the past, she has collaborated on research about obesity science and abortion training. She received a BA in Gender Studies and Religious Studies from Rice University in 1998 and a PhD in Sociology from ucla in 2008. From 2008 to 2010, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley.

Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12th, the day on which Charles Darwin was born in 1809. Specifically, the event celebrates the discoveries and life of the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. More generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity. This will be a memorable event for all, and everyone is guaranteed to go home smarter, or at least knowing more than when they arrived!

This event is sponsored by The Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Fairfield County, The Wilton Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), the Unitarian Church in Westport and the Norwalk Public Schools Science Department.