Biomedicine & Disease
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 ...
Does DNA ‘determine’ our health? The way you live your life can significantly modulate the effects of our genetic endowment
The study of genetics has always been an attempt to understand our biologically determined fate. Many of us know of ...
A pill for breast cancer? There’s one for early-stage patients with aggressive cases — and it works
A drug sold by AstraZeneca and Merck & Co. reduced the recurrence of breast cancer in women with an early ...
At least 80% COVID vaccine coverage is needed to significantly lower risk of ‘imported’ coronavirus variants, WHO says
COVID-19 vaccination coverage of at least 80% is needed to significantly lower the risk that “imported” coronavirus cases like those ...
Russia approves first animal COVID vaccine to protect vulnerable species and thwart viral mutations
While many scientists say the virus causing covid-19 initially jumped from bats to humans, perhaps through another intermediary, infections have ...
COVID is outsmarting our immune systems — and it’s rendering essential monoclonal antibody treatments less effective
The use of monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of COVID gained national and international attention last October, when President Trump ...
Which provides better long-term protection against coronavirus reinfection: An actual infection or a vaccine?
Two recent studies have confirmed that people previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can be reinfected with ...
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 ...
‘COVID is well on its way to becoming endemic’: With hopes for herd immunity fading, living with the coronavirus could be long term reality
Experts now say [SARS-CoV-2] is changing too quickly, new more contagious variants are spreading too easily and vaccinations are happening ...
Europe offers alternative to US-backed proposal to waive COVID vaccine property rights, saying its plan would spur innovation and help developing countries
The European Union is pushing back hard against U.S.-backed calls to temporarily waive intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines, preparing ...
Could we cut out cancer genes using CRISPR gene editing?
An oncogene is a gene that has the potential to cause cancer. Fusion oncogenes are cancer-causing genes that are made ...
‘Magic mushroom’ migraine relief? Single dose of psilocybin shows significant impact in reducing intractable headaches
Migraine treatments can be either preventive or abortive, and they range from prescription drugs, to over-the-counter medications like Advil Migraine, ...
‘We don’t want to be human guinea pigs’: Vaccine-rejecting medical workers sue, invoking Nuremberg Code designed to prevent experimentation on human subjects
A group of 117 unvaccinated staffers from Houston Methodist Hospital filed a lawsuit [May 28] seeking to avoid the hospital’s ...
Chronic pain is a pain: How gene editing offers hopeful alternative to addictive opioids
Chronic pain—defined as pain that persists for longer than 12 weeks despite medication or treatment—is estimated to affect some 20 ...
Podcast: Bad science in the headlines—Epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat explains how to spot flawed research on Google News
A just-published study found that consuming two or more sugar-sweetened beverages in a day is linked to a doubling of ...
Dangerously high cholesterol? CRISPR gene editing could lower it, tests on monkeys suggest
A team of researchers from Verve Therapeutics and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has developed ...
Incurable Huntington’s disease? microRNA offers hope in the wake of failed clinical trials
A recent DNA Science post considered the ebb and flow of treatment possibilities for Alzheimer’s disease. This week, it’s Huntington’s disease. Like ...
For decades, scientists struggled to find a treatment for one of the most common lung cancer mutations. Amgen has won US approval for the first drug targeting the KRAS variant
[A new] drug, called Lumakras, was approved [May 28] to treat a portion of lung cancer patients with a particular ...
Viewpoint: ‘Make America Safe Again’—Conservative calls for fellow rightists to get vaccinated
As a conservative, I praised most of President Trump’s efforts to “Make America great again,” including the financial incentive to ...
No, COVID vaccines do not harm the placenta — the organ that provides the fetus with oxygen and food
As the first organ to form during pregnancy, the placenta is critical to the development of a fetus because it ...
We will need COVID tests for years to come, posing challenges for poorer countries. Here’s how trained, virus-detecting bees could be a godsend
Dutch researchers on [May 10] said they have trained honeybees to stick out their tongues when presented with the virus’s ...
Tick-tock: Inside the race to eliminate the scourge of Lyme disease
In the centuries-long arms race against ticks, the enemy has always held the upper hand, and now its grip appears ...
Immunocompromised and wary about getting a COVID vaccine? Here’s what experts say
None of the large-scale vaccine trials included people who are immunocompromised, though every indication is that vaccines are safe in ...
If you get a vaccine and you experience side effects, is that a sign it’s working?
If someone gets a headache or feels a bit under the weather after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, it’s become common ...
Science Facts and Fallacies Podcast: COVID’s mysterious origins; Why some anti-vaxxers got their shots; Unwise J&J ‘pause’?
Where did SARS-COV-2 come from? For most of the last year a natural origin story was the predominant view among ...
No, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: Requiring proof of vaccinations—COVID or otherwise—is not a violation of HIPPA (sic) rights
Some Americans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), are balking at [questions about COVID vaccine status from businesses, employers, and ...
One-third of veterans have rejected COVID vaccines. This Veteran Affairs mobile van unit is trying to convert them, but it’s not going well
The rugged communities that stretch from eastern Washington through the Idaho Panhandle into northwestern Montana include some of the country’s ...
