Science Controversies
Are we overreacting to the coronavirus? Here’s why we should hope so.
From my perspective, staring down the barrel of a “once-in-a-generation pathogen,” as the former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner ...
Even small villages were ravaged by Black Death, mass grave in the UK shows
Archaeologists recently excavated a mass burial of at least 48 men, women, and children on the grounds of a medieval ...
We still have time to slow the spread: 4 things to know about the coronavirus
The experts are telling us that here in the United States, we can avoid hitting that threshold where sizable regions ...
Facing the coronavirus and uncertainty: Why do some of us shrug it off, while others hoard toilet paper?
MANY people seem to be dealing with the recent coronavirus outbreak in one of two ways: by panicking or shrugging ...
Worst case scenario for coronavirus: 200,000 to 1.7 million US deaths
Officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and epidemic experts from universities around the world conferred last ...
If we use it correctly, artificial intelligence could help us fight the next epidemic
It was an AI that first saw it coming, or so the story goes. On December 30, an artificial-intelligence company ...
Viewpoint: Cannabis legalization fraught with ‘confusion and false promises’
Not all cannabis is created equal; neither are the people that use it. As an epidemiologist, I have studied cannabis ...
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ordered to stop hawking bogus coronavirus cures
New York attorney general Letitia James has ordered radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to stop claiming that InfoWars’ ...
Second person cured of HIV after experimental stem cell transplant
A London man living with HIV who received an experimental stem cell transplant has appeared free of the virus for ...
Viewpoint: Crop biotech advocates should stop pushing organic industry to embrace gene editing
Farming is not nature; we learn from nature and use that knowledge to produce the goods that we need. Farmers ...
There appears to be a coronavirus vaccine on the horizon—but it’s a GMO and the FDA would need to approve testing
A Canadian company says that it has produced a COVID-19 vaccine just 20 days after receiving the coronavirus’s genetic sequence, ...
Should America stop public gatherings to slow coronavirus? Hard lessons learned from the Spanish flu pandemic in Philadelphia in 1918
In 2020, as sports officials here and elsewhere struggle to deal with the worldwide coronavirus outbreak, the influenza epidemic of ...
Biotech experts, farmers call for updated US gene-edited crop, animal rules at Senate Agriculture Committee hearing
In opening comments during a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on [March 12], ranking member Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) said ...
After years of studying Huntington’s, pioneering researcher reveals that she has the disease
Year after year for two decades, Nancy Wexler led medical teams into remote villages in Venezuela, where huge extended families ...
Coronavirus mystery: Why aren’t there more cases in Africa?
Experts still don’t know why so few cases of the new coronavirus have been reported in Africa, despite China – ...
Promising cancer-fighting tactic—using nanoparticles—runs into a potential glitch
The challenge of chemotherapy is to kill off the tumor cells without doing too much harm to healthy ones. The ...
Infographic: Track the global spread of the coronavirus
The numbers for COVID-19 cases and deaths are changing rapidly. The following charts only provide an approximation of the current ...
Viewpoint: Developing countries begin rejecting anti-GMO ‘fearmongering’ to reap benefits of biofortified crops
Gene and genome editing for crops has been presented as a reasonable solution to create healthier, more plentiful food but ...
Viewpoint: Promise of genomics and precision medicine a ‘wave of hype without substance’
An undeclared civil war is breaking out in biomedicine. On one side is precision medicine, with its emphasis on tailoring treatments ...
Eliminating HIV by 2030 a real possibility, but ‘we’re not getting off to the right start’
During his State of the Union address in February, President Donald Trump reiterated a promise he had made a year earlier: By ...
Battling antibiotic resistance by stopping evolution
One of the ways that bacteria evolve to become "antibiotic resistant" is by picking up free-floating genetic material from their environments. They ...
Viewpoint: Embracing biosimilars will drive down prices, increase access to drugs
The biosimilar category holds incredible promise, and the market for these products is on an upward trajectory. But it’s been ...
CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna on why we need human gene-editing regulations
In this episode of Reset, host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with Jennifer Doudna about the promise and peril in CRISPR’s future, what’s ...
Tracking the coronavirus—and failed containment efforts—by digging through its genome
In the unprecedented outbreak of a new coronavirus sweeping the world, the germ’s genetic material may ultimately tell the story ...
‘The Invisible Man’ and science: You’d probably go blind while your DNA falls apart
True invisibility, the type wherein the body itself is actually rendered transparent (unlike the kind portrayed in the recent movie, ...
Promises and pitfalls of treating aging like a disease
Over the years, the movement to classify aging as a disease has gained momentum not only from longevity enthusiasts but ...
Infographic: Which 3D printed organs are closest to being transplantable?
No one has printed fully functional, transplantable human organs just yet, but scientists are getting closer, making pieces of tissue ...
