Science Controversies
Skeptical meat eaters and complex regulations could slow Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat expansion into China
Over the last couple of years, Impossible Foods and its main rival, Beyond Meat, have gone from start-ups with niche ...
CBD fraud? Fate of controversial CBD industry could be decided by lawsuits alleging misleading marketing
Since the Food and Drug Administration can’t figure out whether supplements that contain cannabidiol, the marijuana-adjacent oil known as CBD, are ...
Geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam explains how the CRISPR gene editing ‘revolution’ can improve our food
The final instalment of Technology Networks Explores the CRISPR Revolution is an interview with Dr Alison Van Eenennaam, a livestock ...
Rapid-diagnosing AI makes brain cancer operations ‘safer and more effective than ever before’
Expert human pathologists typically require around 30 minutes to diagnose brain tumors from tissue samples extracted during surgery. A new ...
Forecasting: 2020 could bring major advances in gene therapies and pig-to-human organ transplants
Here are two stories in biotech we’re keeping our eyes on. Although successes likely won’t come to fruition this year ...
USDA, FDA, EPA launch website to promote ‘science-based’ agriculture biotechnology rules
[I]n recognition of January 2020 as National Biotechnology Month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration ...
Rapid genetic sequencing marks key step in China’s efforts to contain mysterious new viral outbreak
Chinese scientists have recovered a previously unknown virus from an infected individual and generated a full genetic sequence of it, ...
US cancer death rates fall for 26th year in a row. 2.2% marks largest single-year drop
The rate of people dying from cancer in the United States continued to decline for the 26th year in a ...
Want consumers to embrace CRISPR? Don’t call it a gene-editing ‘revolution,’ explain its agricultural benefits
How can you talk to consumers about gene editing when most have little understanding of how plants are bred? The ...
Second opinion? Google AI spots breast cancer more accurately than radiologists, in trial
Researchers at Google, working alongside experts at Northwestern University and three British medical institutions, have created an AI model that ...
Activists escalate efforts to stop Indian farmers from using GMO seeds
Anti-GMO activists in India have escalated their war on the country’s resource-poor farmers by moving their efforts to stop genetically ...
Metabolism, environment, lifestyle are better than genetics at predicting disease risk, study says
Many diseases have been associated with common gene mutations, or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). But how well do SNPs or ...
Podcast: Agricultural economist Stuart Smyth explains the risks and benefits of GMOs and the future of crop biotechnology
Few academics eagerly engage the public on controversial scientific topics, content to quietly focus on their research. Agricultural economist and ...
AquaBounty aims to win over consumers before its GMO salmon hits US markets in 2020
Only in the past five years has it become possible to raise thousands of healthy fish so far from the ...
Skepticism of GMOs, CRISPR won’t slow crop biotech innovation, biologist predicts
Genetically modified crops have the potential, if widely adopted, to help feed the world and vastly change the crop input ...
Viewpoint: In 100 years, we’ll be honoring controversial CRISPR scientist He Jiankui
When I saw the news that He Jiankui and colleagues had been sentenced to three years in prison for the first human ...
Petition urges India’s Supreme Court to halt illegal GMO crop cultivation, citing ‘irreversible’ genetic contamination
The Supreme Court on [Jan 6] issued a notice in the matter of illegal planting of non-approved Genetically Modified (GM) ...
Neurologist Steven Novella: Greenpeace opposition to Golden Rice approval will be ‘enduring stain’ on activist group’s reputation
[T]he Philippines have just approved Golden Rice as safe for human and animal consumption .... The Philippines is the first ...
China poised to approve 192 GMO crops, including insect-resistant, glyphosate-tolerant corn
China is set to award safety certificates for genetically-modified corn, paving the way for domestic production as the world’s most-populous ...
‘Strange’ decade gave us CRISPR, gene therapy advances and a Neanderthal genome
[H]ere, we present some of the innovations, both conceptual and technological, that stood out throughout the past decade. … In ...
Would the US prosecute a rogue scientist like China’s He Jiankui who illegally gene edited an embryo?
13 months after He Jiankui announced that he had created the world’s first gene-edited babies, the Chinese scientist was sentenced to ...
Indian farmers highlight higher yields from banned GMO herbicide-tolerant, insect-resistant cotton to defy nation’s biotech crop rules
As farmers [headed] to Yavatmal in Maharashtra to showcase post-harvest success stories of banned [herbicide-tolerant] cotton on [Jan. 5], their ...
Kenyan approval opens door to spring planting of country’s first GMO, insect resistant Bt cotton that increases yields by 300%
The government is set to provide .... the initial BT cotton seeds to farmers to plant during the forthcoming March/April ...
Viewpoint: Price controls would stifle private sector innovation that gives us most of our new biomedical drugs
The false maxim that the government is primarily responsible for all innovation has been refuted through published literature in peer-reviewed ...
Confusion over GMO label exemptions hinders Jan. 1 rollout of USDA bioengineered food rules
The USDA regulation mandating identification of food ingredients with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) went into effect on New Year’s Day ...
Viewpoint: We need ‘public buy-in’ before moving forward on human gene editing
In response to [China's controversial CRISPR babies], the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), the Chinese Academies of ...
Emergency approval sends new oral polio vaccine to front lines, bypassing clinical trials
To stem a growing polio crisis, health officials are accelerating the development of a new oral vaccine with plans for emergency ...
