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.
Depression gene? Gene link found for some with depressive symptoms
One in 10 people have a major depressive disorder (MDD) during their lives, which makes depression the most common mental illness ...
Sperm drugs: Women’s best bet for cancer-killing gynecological tumor treatments
Delivering drugs to cancerous tissue is one of the more urgent medical issues of our time. The problems with drug ...
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and bioethics: How his philosophy could shape the court
In his Senate confirmation hearings, Neil Gorsuch gave little away...Practiced, garrulous, tedious, combative, and smugly civil, the judge repeated stock ...
Conventional (GMOs) vs organic farming: Which is better for animals and the environment?
[Editor's note: Iida Ruishalme is a writer and a science communicator from Sweden who holds a M.Sc. in Biology.] I ...
Is the US unwittingly funding anti-agriculture and anti-Monsanto conspiracy theories?
There is an organization that is using [US] tax dollars and they have replaced fact-based science with conspiracy theories and ...
EU Food Safety Authority: Risk from pesticide residue on foods low, unlikely to pose health risk
[Editor's note: The following is from the EFSA's 2015 European Union report on pesticide residues in food, published April 11, ...
Hawaii documentary claims presence of Big Ag GMO test facilities forces islands to import food
Did you know that the state of Hawaii imports between 80 and 90 percent of its food? This is, among ...
Why government-recommended PSA screening for prostate cancer may be bad advice
PSA screening [for prostate cancer] remains a difficult decision for healthy men and their doctors [even after the latest recommendation upgrade] ...
Are we ready, without professional help, to decide what to do when our genes tell us we have a potential disorder?
The FDA's decision to allow 23andMe to offer consumers disease screening has triggered a debate over whether the public is ...
Parkinson’s stem cell therapy 2.0: New treatment coaxes the brain to repair itself
For the past five decades pharmaceutical drugs like levodopa have been the gold standard for treating Parkinson’s disease. These medications ...
Scientists push back over criticism that they pander to political correctness for rejecting genetic-based male-female differences
Mainstream journals increasingly publish studies that reveal how misleading assumptions about the sexes bias the framing of hypotheses, research design ...
Fighting infections: Using probiotic ‘good’ bacteria could slow resistance to antibiotics
As scientists continue their exploration of the thousands of organisms that live inside our body, a new study is showing ...
Keys to heart disease, diabetes, cancer may be in genome’s ‘dark matter’
A new method lets researchers quickly screen the non-coding DNA of the human genome for links to diseases that are driven ...
Why we sleep less as we age
It’s a known fact that as we age, we sleep less. But the reasoning behind this phenomenon is poorly understood ...
At what age should you get screened for prostate cancer?
The last time the US Preventive Services Task Force weighed in on prostate cancer screening via blood tests, in 2012, ...
How to address skeptical concerns about GMOs and ‘violating nature’
The main concern with GMOs seems to be rooted in a disgust for the artificial — “synthetic” has become synonymous ...
Precision medicine could revolutionize healthcare in Africa, but obstacles abound
Although scientists worldwide have been pushing for ways to improve health care by tailoring diagnostics and treatment to the environment, ...
Monsanto is changing the way people eat — Using traditional breeding to make better fruits and vegetables
Monsanto is no one-trick GMO pony. Founded in 1901, the agricultural biotech company has fueled innovations in herbicides, pesticides, and ...
Should Trump scrap USDA’s National Organic Program?
Federal subsidizing of organics has health as well as economic consequences. Many consumers now believe that organic food is healthier, ...
Rigging natural selection: Fight against Zika requires mosquito genes that resist mutations
Of the many great things promised by Crispr gene editing technology, the ability to eliminate disease by modifying organisms might ...
Congenital hearing loss could be treated with ‘Trojan horse’ virus
There are more than 300 genetic defects that have been found to prevent the hair cells in the human inner ...
Will CRISPR plant breeding be used for good — Or mostly to drive corporate profit?
This rapid-fire timing [of agribusiness mergers] may have been a coincidence, but it also may be a sign of what’s ...
Video: How gene therapy could treat rare, incurable ‘day blindness’
[Editor's note. Achromatopsia is a visual disorder sometimes referred to as "day blindness".] Imagine stepping out into a bright South ...
Will China relax GMO cultivation restrictions in wake of Syngenta takeover?
Although China imports preapproved GM foods, the agriculture ministry has never approved a biotech food crop—other than papaya, a minor ...
Cancer’s evolution hinders new drug treatments
While immunotherapies provide a better chance for a long-term and durable response, [Retired Major League Baseball administrator Bill] Murray’s story ...
Epigenetics Around the Web: No, income inequality does not cause epigenetic changes, botching Lamarck, and more
A psychology professor claims that income inequality is causing epigenetic changes and a Huffington Post article on climate change and ...
Herbicide use has increased more for non-GMO crops than genetically engineered varieties
[Editor's note: Andrew Kniss is a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Wyoming.] Herbicide use is ...
