Biomedical Regulations & Ethics
Global COVID vaccine supply crunch? Wealthy developed countries snap up two years of supplies, hardening rich-poor divide
The European Union, Canada and other developed countries have signed deals to get hundreds of millions of doses of Covid-19 ...
Viewpoint: Who is behind anti-vax propaganda claiming COVID shots are killing people? Meet disinformation provocateurs Peter McCullough, Mike Adams and RFK, Jr.
At the extreme end of the antivax hysteria is, as one might expect, Mike Adams at NaturalNews.com proclaiming... VACCINE HOLOCAUST ...
Viewpoint: Debating the debate over the new stem cell research guidelines
An organization of scientists is recommending that limitations on several experimental and controversial research procedures – including heritable genome editing, ...
Nearly 500 Trump-voting US counties have less than 25% of their populations vaccinated, opening door to fall COVID revival
As much of the country emerges from masking and social distancing, undervaccinated pockets in the U.S. still threaten to bring ...
6 eyewitnesses identified a Texas man as a murderer. It took forensic DNA to prove they were wrong — sparking conversation on how to prevent ‘lineup bias’
On the strength of six eyewitnesses’ lineup identifications, Lydell Grant was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for the murder ...
‘The New Apartheid’? Conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s latest anti-vaccine film spins real history of medical racism to scare Black Americans into rejecting COVID shots
[The film “Medical Racism: The New Apartheid”] is the latest effort by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder of Children's ...
While much of the world moves towards mandatory vaccine passports, the US rejects them. Here is a less intrusive alternative that could enhance public safety: CDC vaccination cards
Rather than waste any more time squabbling over passports, which aren’t going to be created at a national level, let’s ...
GLP Podcast: Hollywood’s vaccine-autism nonsense; COVID lab-leak story won’t die; Africa ignores Greenpeace on pesticides
Many Hollywood celebrities have endorsed the bogus link between vaccines to autism. Looking back, it appears their influence has been ...
Viewpoint: Reassessing the reassessments of COVID’s origins — The Wuhan lab leak theory is still the less likely scenario but we may never know for sure
How did the pandemic start? From the early days, experts have considered two possibilities. Either the virus somehow escaped from ...
Who bungled their nation’s COVID response the most? 5 world leaders in the running, and why
COVID-19 is notoriously hard to control, and political leaders are only part of the calculus when it comes to pandemic ...
Viewpoint: Zantac BS—Sanofi’s marketing sleight-of-hand in ‘reformulating’ its Zantac acid-reducer deceives consumers
Back in 2019, I wrote about some of the tricks that drug companies use to hang onto brand name sales ...
Should I wear a mask? More than one year into the pandemic, science provides updated advice
The evidence is clear that masks cut down on COVID-19 deaths, but nearly a year and a half into the ...
After a fertility clinic freezer filled with 3,500 frozen eggs and embryos malfunctioned, many families lost their only chance at having kids. A jury just awarded them $15 million in damages
[In March 2018, a] tank storing frozen human embryos and eggs at Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco had failed, ...
Top China virologist who conducts risky experiments in Wuhan with bat coronaviruses rejects lab leak theory
Shi Zhengli, a top Chinese virologist, is once again at the center of clashing narratives about her research on coronaviruses ...
Humanized pigs: How scientists bioengineered swine with human immune systems to accelerate research on viruses, vaccines, cancer and stem cell therapeutics
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires all new medicines to be tested in animals before use in people. Pigs make ...
The pandemic has roiled international surrogacy. What’s an ethical path going forward?
[T]he pandemic has created new challenges to engaging in international surrogacy ethically due to changes in how healthcare is administered, ...
Video: China boasted about its bat cave virus research — before denying its existence. Here’s the government’s propaganda short issued in December, weeks before the outbreak became public
In [a video released by the Chinese government,] researchers scale [a] cavern wall, their headlamps ghostly blue. “If our skin ...
‘It does not violate the Nuremberg Code’: Judge throws out suit by Houston medical workers protesting mandated COVID vaccines
A federal judge tossed out a lawsuit from more than 100 hospital employees who sued Houston Methodist over its policy ...
Viewpoint: ‘Magic promised by genetically pruning ‘defective’ embryos has fairy-dusted the eyes of even the most intelligent’ — Maybe it’s time to hit the pause button
Advances in genetics have been revolutionized in the last few years. First came CRISPR, which can edit single genes, possibly ...
Viewpoint: Why loosening rules on human embryo use in stem cell research was a good move
Most scientists want clear boundaries delineating which experiments [on human embryos] are acceptable, both legally and to society. And the ...
‘They can put a key on their forehead. It sticks’: Ohio GOP embraces crackpot doctor’s view that COVID vaccines magnetize people and interface with 5G towers
[Cleveland-based doctor Sherri Tennpenny, an] anti-vaccination advocate known for spreading unfounded claims falsely told legislators that [COVID shots] could leave ...
Organ transplantation: Challenging ethical questions on race, economics, and the meaning of life
At an international conference on kidney transplantation in 1963, a disagreement broke out about exactly when a patient should be considered ...
‘This was the first time nobody voted for approval of a drug’: Neurologist on FDA panel that negatively evaluated controversial Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab resigns after agency pushes through approval
Neurologist Joel Perlmutter of Washington University in St. Louis, a member of the FDA’s expert panel for nervous system therapies, ...
Viewpoint: Patenting human embryo gene editing? Two rival universities push the ethical and legal debate
Two prominent groups of scientists, and two major American universities, are trying to patent methods for editing human embryos, with ...
Viewpoint: How right wingers are pumping up the Wuhan lab leak theory — and why it’s still an unlikely explanation for COVID
Even as far back as February 2020, I noted that antivaxxer James Lyons-Weiler was falsely claiming that he had “broken ...
Top US scientists concluded last spring that the Wuhan COVID lab leak theory is plausible and should be investigated, leaked classified documents show
A report on the origins of Covid-19 by a U.S. government national laboratory concluded that the hypothesis claiming the virus ...
Infographic: From the Spanish flu to COVID — How long has it taken to develop vaccines?
In the graphic [below], we explore how long it has historically taken to bring a vaccine to market during pandemics ...
