Medical Regs & Ethics
Viewpoint: Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s conspiracy-promoting, vaccine-rejecting surgeon general, is a public menace
He has blood on his hands. Even as the worst of the health crisis ignited by the SARS-CoV-2 virus fades, ...
Viewpoint: How US abortion pill case could could upend FDA approval of vaccines and drugs
The Supreme Court faces a decision that lays bare the threat to facts, evidence and the health of America’s patients ...
How a bad facial AI recognition match led to a false arrest
Randal Quran Reid was jailed after he was mistaken for a Louisiana suspect during a traffic stop near Atlanta ...
Russia claims US is creating genetically-engineered bioweapons. What are the facts?
Russian MPs have completed a probe into Washington's military-related biological activity at laboratories throughout Ukraine on the basis of the information ...
Is biology sexist and racist? The escalating battle over ‘inclusive terminology’ and the language of science
Science, biology in particular, is rife with racism and other egregious forms of prejudice and bigotry. That’s the belief now ...
What are the future prospects of legal abortions in conservative-governed states?
Last May in Wyoming, after a draft opinion of the Supreme Court’s decision to end federal protections for abortions was ...
Ozempic competitor: New weight-loss drug expected to get FDA approval in coming months could be even more powerful than Wegovy
Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro could outpace Ozempic as the most powerful treatment on the market. To develop it, the drug company ...
Ethical issues aside, CRISPR babies are too risky
While society grapples with the social and ethical implications of heritable genome editing, technical obstacles still abound ...
AI can generate new protein patterns in seconds. What are the risks?
Nature took millions of years to design proteins. AI can generate meaningful protein sequences in seconds. While there are good ...
CRISPR gene doping: The next ‘big issue’ in world athletics
In 2020, the Polish developer CD Projekt Red launched Cyberpunk 2077, a video game that pulled players in to a ...
CRISPR cats and dogs? Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals raises alarm that pets could be ‘created’ with extreme features under new UK gene editing law
Pets could be gene-edited under new English law, says RSPCA: Act opens door to technology being used to create cats ...
‘It’s an erroneous belief that racial categories are objective and natural’: Experts recommend losing racial labels in genetic studies
Human biological diversity is a continuum, but racial labels imply that people fall into discreet categories. For that reason, race ...
Why we may need safeguards to protect our brains from intrusive neurotechnology
A new era of neurotechnology means we may need new protections to safeguard our brain and mental experiences ...
Ancient human DNA ethics: ‘Who gives consent for study participants long gone — and who should speak for them today?’
The 2022 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine has brought fresh attention to paleogenomics, the sequencing of DNA of ancient ...
CRISPR gene editing has shown it can cure sickle cell anemia — raising questions about who can access this life-changing treatment
At age 37, free of symptoms, able to be a mom and work a full-time job, sickle cell patient and ...
Want your future child to get into Yale? 4 out of 10 Americans say they would pursue genetic testing of potential embryos to select for higher intelligence
The possibility of screening embryos for complex inherited traits will force society to profoundly rethink its reproductive ethics ...
Lab leak or animal source? Strong evidence that COVID traces to raccoon dogs in China
The strongest evidence yet that an animal started the pandemic: A new analysis of genetic samples from China appears to ...
Medication abortion has emerged as major legal front in US battle over abortion access. Here’s what might happen
Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling on June 24, 2022, four new cases have been filed in federal courts specifically regarding aspects of the FDA’s ...
Offspring born from two males: Now that it has been achieved in mice, what are the prospects for humans?
Scientists in Japan say they have succeeded in breeding mice with two fathers, using eggs originating from male cells. While ...
Befuddled Congress struggles to understand (let alone regulate) AI
In recent weeks, two members of Congress have sounded the alarm over the dangers of artificial intelligence ...
Unregulated peptides are the latest weight loss and energy-boosting fad. What’s the science?
As influencers share stories of physiological transformations, more people are seeking out experimental treatments: ‘If I can be a superhero ...
Next generation medicine: Will the people who most need gene therapy and gene-editing tools have access to them?
One of greatest risks of gene editing tools ‘is that the people who would benefit most will not be able ...
GLP podcast and video: Eating bugs safe? Pesticide use exploding? COVID and trust in science
The European Union is all too happy to allow consumers to eat potentially dangerous bug-based food, yet it remains hostile ...
Viewpoint: Capitalism and technology — Whose interests does AI serve, and what unrecognized dangers about data privacy are around the corner?
A.I. researchers obsess over the question of “alignment.” How do we get machine learning algorithms to do what we want ...
Texas judge may block access to abortion pills. Here’s how that ruling could disrupt the US approval system for all drugs
‘A slippery slope’: A looming nationwide abortion pill ban could undermine the entire drug approval system ...
Eugenics, racism and injustice: Inside the contentious history of the American Society of Human Genetics
The American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) recently released Facing Our History – Building An Equitable Future Initiative, a report ...
Viewpoint: Producing more intelligent humans? Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom ventures into eugenics-fraught science of the future
An overlapping set of movements— effective altruism, longtermism, and transhumanism, all with strong links to eugenics—have recently made news, thanks ...