Medical Regs & Ethics
Monsanto poised to take over the weed industry
Earlier this month, the state of Illinois joined the party and legalized medical marijuana, becoming the 20th state in the ...
As prenatal testing for Down syndrome increases, so do concerns about genetic counseling
Noninvasive prenatal tests provide early-pregnancy information about genetic abnormalities. Can genetic counseling keep pace? ...
Dentist buys John Lennon’s tooth at auction in hope of creating a clone
Dr. Michael Zuk didn’t blow $30,000 on John Lennon’s tooth for its medical significance or second-hand value. When the Canadian dentist purchased ...
Nobel laureate: Personalized medicine is already here
Professor Aaron Ciechanover, a faculty member of the Ruth and Bruce Faculty of Medicine and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (2004), ...
Genetics used to tailor cancer treatment
A British Columbia Cancer Agency study of 26 terminally ill patients is using genomic information from both tumours and normal ...
US health insurer to require genetic counseling before allowing BRCA1 and BRCA2 tests
Cigna Corp. will become the first U.S. health insurer to require genetic counseling nationwide before it pays for tests for hereditary ...
Mediterranean diet reduces genetic stroke risk
Eating a Mediterranean diet may lower the risk of stroke and offset other negative effects associated with a genetic variant ...
Glowing bunnies: Why they matter
The technique behind glowing rabbits may someday create animals that make biological pharmaceutical products ...
The old and new eugenics
Was "negative eugenics" truly something on the margins of society? Kirk Allison, Director of the Program in Human Rights and ...
Genetic switch to guard against escaped ‘superviruses’
Flu scientists disagree over experiments to make the H7N9 bird influenza virus even more dangerous. Some argue that "gain of function" experiments ...
Remnants of ancient viruses in human genome may play role in cancer
According to an international team of scientists from the United States, Europe and Russia, non-coding parts of the human genome ...
Unhidden traits: Genomic data privacy debates heat up
Is addressing genetic privacy concerns for scientific study participants essential, impossible, or maybe undesirable? ...
Whose stem cells are they anyway?
How should we regulate treatments that use cells taken from a patient's own body? If the cells are grown in ...
Gene breakthroughs spark a revolution in cancer treatment
Researchers have identified fifteen lung-cancer variants, most of them in just the past four years, by decoding DNA in tumors—akin ...
Military blood serum bank advances research, raises privacy concerns
The US Department of Defense's huge blood serum bank is great for scientific research, but not all donors know they're ...
Would you post your DNA on Facebook?
The case of Henrietta Lacks provides a cautionary tale for those who willingly give up their DNA for genealogy tests, lawyers ...
Elle’s botched response to previously botched anti-GMO story
Elle has had an opportunity to redress its botched GMO coverage by opening its pages to a genuine discussion of ...
Study tells the story of caste segregation and genetic diesase in India
Scientist provide evidence that modern-day India is the result of recent population mixture among divergent demographic groups. The findings describe how India ...
Ethical dilemma surrounds genetic tinkering with bird flu
Researchers have outlined plans to genetically experiment with the H9N7 bird flu to test how it might develop human-to-human transmission ...
Overcoming the “ick” factor key to understanding GMOs
One of the greatest obstacles to technological progress, especially but not only in areas such as food and medicine, has ...
Genomic sequencing identifies carcinogen in herbal remedy
Genomic sequencing experts at Johns Hopkins partnered with pharmacologists at Stony Brook University to reveal a striking mutational signature of ...
How gene therapy helped one bubble boy
Two-year-old Jameson Golliday was born with X-SCID, or "bubble boy disease," which means he has no immune system. At birth he had ...
Personalized medicine gives rise to new ethical questions
We stand at a great crossroads. We have begun to treat cancers arising from disparate organs in like ways as ...
Mammoth cloning: Big animal, big ethical concerns
Theoretically, mammoths could be cloned by recovering, reconstructing or synthesizing viable mammoth DNA but some object to “deep” human intervention ...
RNA drugs target genes that were once off-limits
A new class of medicines could give doctors the ability to awaken underperforming genes in patients who currently have no ...
Smithsonian’s genetics exhibit inspires mixed review
Smithsonian's new exhibit explains how the human genome relates to health, medicine and ethics, but not really how it works ...
Next-generation sequencing, with love
Last week, researchers at the University of Oxford announced that the first baby had been born after undergoing a technique which can ...
