SCIENCE ON TAP

Science on Tap is a science lecture series where you can sit back, enjoy a pint, and laugh while you learn. Listen to experts talk about the science in your neighborhood and around the world. You don’t have to be a science geek to have fun—all you need is a thirst for knowledge!

August 14th at 7pm

THE SCIENCE OF GENDER

Mention the word gender, and everyone has an opinion.  We have been taught that gender is a social construct that determines behavior based on sexual anatomy.  Biology focuses on the 23^rdpair of chromosomes as if there is no variation in the XX/XY function.  It all seems so simple, until we learn that it isn’t.

In this special Science on Tap, you will hear from both Dr Jena Lopez and Linden G. Jordan that chromosomes can vary widely with variations in results and why it is not useful to speak of sex and gender as the same entities.  Sharing about fetal development and the many variations that occur that directly impact one’s anatomy and one’s sense of self where gender is concerned, this discussion will give new meaning to the words gender, transgender, gender fluid, intersex and queer.

Jena Lopez M.D. is a Board-Certified Emergency Physician, currently practicing in the Pacific Northwest.  She started the Northwest Trans Youth Clinic, where she helps people hormonally transition so their bodies can be in alignment with their gender identity. Prior to opening the clinic, she spent three years learning by attending conferences and working with experts in the field, such as Johanna Olsen-Kennedy MD (at CHLA) and Keven Hatfield MD (at Polyclinic in Seattle). Dr. Lopez is also a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.  She has presented to numerous healthcare professionals on transgender health, in an effort to create awareness and help educate the healthcare community on how to better serve this population.

Linden G. Jordan, MA, JD has worked as an attorney, a mental health counselor and a professor in his career spanning 34 years.  When he retired, rather than taking up golf or going around the world, he transitioned from his assigned birth gender of female to male.  His lived experience will add meaning to the discussion about the Science of Gender. He is currently a board member of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) where he is on the Speakers Bureau. He lives in the little town of Marblemount with his partner, three dogs and several chickens.

Get your tickets here or at the Theatre box office the night of show!

September 11h at 7pm

THE MICROBIOME: FECAL TRANSPLANT AND MICROBIAL ECOLOGY

Over the past several decades, we have gained immense insight into the world of the human microbiome. The observations made using techniques like Fecal Microbiota Transplant and microbial sequencing are contributing to a new paradigm of what it means to be human. We now know we are not alone in our own bodies. We have a compilation of trillions of microbes living in and on us. They are working together with our cells as a complex ecosystem, one that defines us as a holobiont. Through the lens of the human microbiome we are challenged to approach health like we do ecology. We can begin to think about how every choice we make is interfacing with this ecosystems.

Andrea McBeth is a Naturopathic Doctor with a passion for shifting perspectives toward microbiome-centered health. Her scientific background includes a degree in biochemistry and research pursuits in various areas of molecular and cellular biology. After years working in cancer research, she left academia and the hospital to be a full-time patient advocate for a family member with cancer. That experience and her own journey of chronic pain and autoimmune disease led her to the pursue healthcare and advocacy using the tools of naturopathic medicine. As a licensed N.D. in Oregon and Washington, she focuses her clinical care on functional gastrointestinal and autoimmune issues. In conjunction with her functional medicine practice, she founded and runs a stool bank that provides Fecal Microbiota Transplant for the treatment of resistant Clostridium difficile infection as well as investigational applications for other microbiome therapies.

Through her work with Fecal Transplant and as a functional medicine physician, she believes strongly that we will need to be creative in our ways to save the microbial diversity of the human microbiome for the sake of our health. Just as climate change is ravishing the Earth’s biodiversity, so too, our microbiomes are being decimated by Western lifestyles. Standard American diets, overuse of pharmaceutical medications, beauty products, and the loss of everyday interactions with natural soil and plant microbes are all contributing to this loss. She posits that our approach to saving our health and planet will need to be as multifaceted as the ways in which we are destroying it.

This is a repeat of the talk held at the Alberta Rose Theatre in February 2019. Get your tickets here or at the Theatre box office the night of show!