"In the beginning, some people's eyes would glaze over," Durham said, referring to the notion that there might be specific concerns around vulnerable groups such as women and minorities.

"When I first started working in this area, some of the other women and I said, 'We're concerned because we know in terms of medical research that race and gender issues get neglected.' Mainstream genetic-research people just said, 'What are you talking about? Genetics is genetics, science is science. What could this have to do with race or gender?' "

These kinds of philosophical debates began to arise some years ago.

The U.S. Human Genome Project, funded by Congress in 1990, provided money to the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, with a portion of the funds earmarked for legal and ethical education. The rest of the funding was intended for mapping the human genome.

Franklin Zweig of the Einstein Institute for Science, Health and the Courts got federal grant money to establish some of the original judicial education programs.

In time, members of the National Association of Women Judges decided their organization would be a good one to establish a pilot program to look at the question of whether there could be special concerns and populations that should be examined.

In the past few years, the National Association of Women Judges got money from EINSHAC to establish pilot projects that specifically address gender and race in these scientific fields.

Now that a curriculum has been presented and evaluated, a second is under way and it, too, will be refined.

Durham said she and others hope this will eventually produce a "template" educational program that can be used nationwide by judicial educators, court administrators and court leaders.

Meanwhile, as judges learn more about scientific changes that are both disturbing and exhilarating, what about educating legislators who enact the laws that judges must enforce?

"Part of that," said Durham, "is the media's job."

---

E-mail: lindat@desnews.com