Health & Medicine
Through the study and use of genetics, we can identify measures that could lead to the improvement of human health and wellness. These methods and procedures aim to prevent years of chronic disease and thousands of dollars in health care costs, and provide families and communities with knowledge of how to live healthier.
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
First ever FDA glyphosate study finds weed killer exposure ‘not concerning for public health’
FDA testing of glyphosate residues in food found no detectable amounts of the herbicide in over half of commodities tested ...
25 Genomes Project: Conserving British wildlife through genome sequencing
Crucially, every single [Carrington’s featherwort] plant found in this secluded Caledonian enclave is male. … But hope is at hand ...
Mimicking brain death: The danger of overdosing on this muscle relaxer
In a new case report, Turkish doctors from Dokuz Eylul University present a curious case of drug intoxication mimicking brain ...
Mysterious ‘Ebola-like’ outbreak linked to synthetic marijuana
Since March, hundreds of people in the U.S. have come down with horrific, Ebola-like symptoms of bleeding. The initially mysterious ...
Scientists engineer bacteria-hunting virus to kill E. coli in drinking water
To rapidly detect the presence of E. coli in drinking water, Cornell University food scientists now can employ a bacteriophage ...
Monitoring blood pressure with a wearable ‘stick-on patch’
The last time you had your blood pressure checked, it was probably at a doctor’s office with a bulky cuff ...
Biotech firm Calyxt strikes deal with non-GMO food processor to release gene-edited soybeans
Minnesota-based gene-editing firm Calyxt has found a market for its new, healthier type of soybean, announcing a deal with a soybean ...
Rewiring the brain and what’s happening when we’re ‘thinking ourselves better’
A self-help skeptic is confronted with evidence — anecdotal and scientific — that we may be able to think ourselves ...
Talking Biotech: Thalidomide once caused birth defects—now it treats cancer
The sleep medication thalidomide caused thousands of birth defects in the 1960s. But experts say it's also a powerful cancer ...
Patenting the genes of marine life and what it means for medicine
[Marine animal] DNA is included among thousands of patents owned by BASF, which calls itself “the largest chemical producer in the ...
‘Theory of mind’: Why artificial intelligence needs to understand how we think
What AI needs, [said Dr. Jun Wang at University College London] is a type of deep communication skill that stems from a critical human ...
GMOs are ‘yucky’—the real reason consumers dislike biotech crops?
Twenty-two years after Monsanto introduced its Roundup-resistant soybeans, the debate over genetic modification is far from over .... in the U.S., ...
Can we eradicate malaria with promising new gene drive technique?
Malaria is among the world’s worst scourges. In 2016 the disease, which is caused by a parasite and transmitted by ...
Human eggs from blood cells? New technique could ‘transform reproduction’
Scientists in Japan made progress recently in the quest to combat infertility, creating the precursor to a human egg cell in a ...
Genetic Noah’s Ark intends to sequence DNA of 66,000 species
An international consortium involving over 50 institutions has announced an ambitious project to assemble high-quality genome sequences of all 66,000 ...
‘Fight or flight’: Body’s natural stress response linked to depression, diabetes and heart disease
[Our] so-called “fight-or-flight” response served our ancestors well, but its continual activation in our modern-day lives comes with a cost ...
‘Gluten free,’ ‘organic’ and other health fads driving ‘huge’ changes in food production
U.S. consumers are increasingly scanning labels to check that products do not contain certain ingredients, such as gluten, GMOs, antibiotics, pesticides ...
Sexual reproduction may not be the best evolutionary strategy. So why do we do it?
In many ways asexual reproduction is a better evolutionary strategy: only one parent is needed, and all of their genes ...
Proxima Centauri b: Why Earth’s cosmic neighbor could be suitable for life
Ever since the discovery of the exoplanet—known as Proxima Centauri b—in 2016, people have wondered whether it could be capable of ...
Viewpoint: UC-San Francisco is the ‘academic home of the anti-GMO movement’
Being anti-GMO is the biotech equivalent of being anti-vaccine. The scientific literature overwhelmingly and definitively has concluded that GMOs are safe ...
Biotech crops could soften impact of climate change, Gates Foundation says
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) just released its 2018 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the ...
Bayer asks judge to toss ‘flimsy’ $289 million glyphosate-cancer verdict
Bayer on [September 18th] said it wants a California state court judge to overturn the jury’s verdict, order a new ...
Viewpoint: There’s no such thing as an organic ‘superfood’
If you do a Google search of "Oz superfoods" you will get more than 40,000 hits. The good doctor really likes superfoods ...
New opioid promises ‘gold standard’ pain relief without the addiction
Opioid drugs like morphine and Oxycontin are still held as the gold standard when it comes to relieving pain. But ...
‘Voluntary euthanasia’: Are we ready to harvest organs while donors are still alive?
In the dystopian society of Nobel prizewinner Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, cloned people are raised to provide organs for ...
Can a blood test find your body’s internal clock
Your body has a clock—and thanks to the travails of modern life, that clock may not line up with the timing ...
Viewpoint: Coffee cancer warning illustrates failure of California’s Prop 65 law
On August 29, the FDA threw its hat into California’s eternal does-or-doesn’t-coffee-cause-cancer fight. “Requiring a cancer warning on coffee, based ...
