Science Controversies
Is it ‘unconstitutional’ to let activists use Ghana’s court system to ban GMOs?
It’s unconstitutional to allow anti-science groups to use Ghana’s judicial system to deny farmers the benefits of biotechnology, Ghana’s National ...
Food scientist Marion Nestle: Meat industry hires ‘zombie’ lobbyist group to attack Beyond, Impossible Burgers
Just in time for Halloween, the zombie is back. I can hardly believe that the deeply discredited Center for Consumer ...
Should we be more careful with our genetic data? ‘People don’t understand what can actually be done with this information’
People in the United States view certain personal information, such as their social security number and the content of their ...
Young scientists urge New Zealand’s Green Party to embrace CRISPR for ‘sake of the climate’
Recently, there has been a shift in society's view of genetic modification and its potential applications in the fight against ...
Proposed US law would require Beyond, Impossible Burgers to be labeled ‘imitation’ meat
A federal bill that would require plant-based and cell-cultured meat products to be labeled as ‘imitation’ meat has been welcomed ...
Should we use gene editing on human newborns? Exploring scientific arguments for, and against, what may be inevitable
[L]et’s take a closer look at the headline question in own words of scientists. Below are exact quotes from documents, ...
Why defining ‘death’ is so much harder than it seems
Pronouncing a patient dead in a hospital seems relatively simple: palpate for lack of pulse, determine that the patient's neurological ...
‘Time to stop debating’: Researchers blame enterovirus for mysterious polio-like paralysis in kids
A team of researchers has published evidence that an enterovirus is to blame for a mysterious neurologic illness that has ...
Do GMO plant-based burgers violate FDA rules? Impossible Foods rebukes Center for Food Safety for ‘patently false’ claims
American consumers have eagerly embraced the plant-based Impossible Burger. Multiple fast food chains, including Burger King, Red Robin and White ...
Commercialization without consent: Sanger Institute accused of violating agreements with African scientists
The Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK had planned to commercialize a genetics array based on African DNA samples, whistleblowers ...
‘Unnatural Selection’: Netflix series tackles tough CRISPR issues, including biohacking and editing children’s DNA
Is it ethical to edit your child’s DNA — or your own? Does the answer depend on whether you’re perfectly ...
‘Holy grail of medicine’: Experimental drug promises to stop flu in its tracks—if it works in humans
We might be inching closer to a holy grail of medicine: an incredibly effective flu-killing drug that the virus can’t ...
Corporations have free speech rights? Lawsuit over industry opposition to Washington GMO labeling bill raises pressing questions
A Washington Supreme Court hearing [October 22] on a record $18 million fine against the food industry touched on boycotts, ...
Things to know about flu shots, including whether it’s too soon to get one
Three years ago, STAT laid out some of the questions surrounding flu vaccination in an article you can find here. Lots ...
Breast cancer drug may offer a precision treatment for aggressive prostate cancer tumors
A drug used to treat breast and ovarian cancers tied to certain genetic mutations may help combat some of the ...
‘A new kind of super-warrior’: US military pursuing mind controlled drones
Surgery is expensive, and surgery to create a new kind of super-warrior is ethically complicated. A mind-reading device that requires ...
Controversial ‘3-parent baby’ technique not effective for women over 36, fertility doctors warn
An experimental and much-hyped reproductive procedure that mixes DNA from three people is not effective at boosting the chances of ...
African Americans and Latinos are underrepresented in Alzheimer’s research. Here are 4 ways to fix that
UsAgainstAlzheimer’s, the organization we work with, recently analyzed more than 300 peer-reviewed studies of non-drug interventions for Alzheimer’s and dementia. Just ...
CRISPR avocados could withstand climate change, but political, scientific roadblocks remain
[In August], a team of scientists .... announced that it had mapped the DNA sequences of several types of avocados ...
Top 10 biotech innovations of all time, including CRISPR, IVF babies
Human Genome Project As biology’s first “big science” collaboration, the international Human Genome Project mapped and sequenced the entire human ...
Colombia green lights first homegrown, patent-free GMO corn variety
The Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA) has just authorized the planting of the country's first homegrown GMO corn variety. The seeds ...
EU Health Commissioner: Let’s talk about GMOs, CRISPR, because 100-year-old farming methods aren’t sustainable
“We cannot achieve sustainability with the exact same production models that we used 100 years ago when all the other ...
Channeling our ‘inner salamander’: Research suggests humans have ability to repair overworked cartilage
Our bodies have retained the capacity to repair injured or overworked cartilage in our joints, says new research published [October 9] in ...
Max Planck Society backs CRISPR crops, rejects human germline editing
As an organization of basic research, the Max Planck Society bears a special responsibility for the use of new scientific ...
Eugenics offers a warning about the perils of scientists chasing a brighter future at the ‘cost of innocent individual lives’
We tend to associate eugenics with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, but it was in fact developed in London. Its ...
CRISPR pigs can survive deadly disease, but regulatory uncertainty slows development
Cutting-edge gene-editing techniques such as Crispr-Cas9 will enable scientists to make precise genetic changes to pig physiology, they say, leading ...
FDA-approved edible cotton could help meet global protein demand
The US Food and Drug Administration announced this month that a genetically modified cottonseed has been approved for human consumption ...
