Science Controversies
Patient death prompts new rules for fecal transplants: ‘Why weren’t these guidelines already in place?’
In June [2019], after a patient died and another was sickened from a fecal transplant that contained drug-resistant bacteria, the ...
Expanded screening recommended for BRCA breast cancer gene. Federal panel stops short of suggesting all women should be tested.
On [August 20], the US Preventive Services Task Force, a panel of federally appointed independent experts that makes recommendations about ...
Uganda’s president rejects GMO safety bill for second time—will it pass without his signature?
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for the second time declined to sign a controversial genetic engineering regulatory bill into law citing ...
Scientists extract ‘near-complete’ HIV genome from 50-year-old tissue sample found ‘sitting in a drawer’
Scientists extracted a near-complete HIV-1 genome from a lymph node that had been preserved in wax for more than 50 ...
Viewpoint: Our efforts to learn more about cannabis benefits, risks are hampered by federal research barriers
As cannabis researchers, we work in a field whose unknowns could positively or negatively affect the health of millions of ...
Brazil plan to breed gene-edited dairy cattle on hold after bacterial DNA found in animal’s genome
Up until a few months ago, Brazil was all set to create the country’s first herd of genetically dehorned dairy ...
Viewpoint: FDA should expand drug safety test program to include new technologies, including ‘organs on a chip’
Every March, thousands of toxicologists from around the world gather for the Society of Toxicology’s annual meeting. Animal-based approaches once ...
Anti-GMO ‘volunteer reapers’ destroy experimental crops, claiming research violates EU biotech rules
Individuals claiming to be volunteer mowers destroyed two test plots of oleic sunflower on August 13 in the Hérault [France] ...
Australian Academy of Science ‘slams’ anti-GMO myths as nation contemplates relaxed biotech crop rules
The nation’s leading scientists have started a publicity campaign to dispel what they say are unfounded fears over genetically modified ...
We’ve almost eradicated Polio. But recent measles outbreaks show us why the battle isn’t over.
[T]he polio campaign must push on across the finish line. Failure to do so could have dire consequences. ... For ...
Fecal transplant industry needs a lot of ‘quality’ poop. Where does it come from?
To reset the microbiome, the best medicine comes from the last place you’d expect: a fecal transplant, in which a ...
Viewpoint: Here’s why we should cut back on cancer screening for the elderly
Although some of my patients are still working full time or traveling the world in their 70s and 80s, I ...
‘Rare and unsettling’: Young woman had undeveloped ‘twin’ in her abdomen for 17 years
A young woman in India unknowingly lived with one of the rarest and most unsettling medical conditions for nearly two ...
Crop gene editing needs proactive communication plan, scientist warns
Effective science communication is critical to ensure gene editing technology does not suffer from the perception problem now facing GMOs ...
New cancer-fighting strategy: Coaxing breast cancer cells to turn into harmless fat cells
Researchers have been able to coax human breast cancer cells to turn into fat cells in a new proof-of-concept study ...
Are you ‘icked out’ by human-monkey chimeras? Here’s why scientists have taken this controversial step
[July 31], news broke that a prominent stem cell researcher is making human-monkey chimeras in a secretive lab in China ...
Farmers face sentencing in seven-year organic food fraud scheme
Four Midwestern farmers who cheated organic food customers are scheduled to be sentenced for the largest fraud scheme of its ...
Viewpoint: Beef industry opposition to plant-based burgers about stifling competition—not consumer protection
There’s a speech war brewing in your supermarket’s meat section. On one side are the beef producers who are fed ...
Rushing to revamp international gene-editing rules before ‘crazy people’ start opening embryo-editing clinics
The second-most shocking thing He Jiankui told the international genome editing summit in Hong Kong last November — right after ...
American farmers urge UK to accept GMO crops, US food safety standards in post-Brexit trade deal
The UK must accept US food standards as part of any future trade deal with Washington, the head of America’s ...
What’s next from stem cell research? Diabetes treatments and safer kidney transplants
Treatments for eye diseases are considered among the most promising for stem cells, which have been under study for more ...
‘Don’t try this at home’: New California law targets biohacking, do-it-yourself CRISPR
California wants to make it clear that tinkering with your own genes is a “don’t try this at home” sort ...
FDA mulling whether patients should have to pay to join clinical trials
Some [clinical trials] plan to ask participants to pay $7,000 or so to enroll. Another wanted to ask for upward ...
Why we may never know the fate—good or bad—of China’s controversial CRISPR babies
Since the gene-edited babies known as Lulu and Nana became international news in November 2018, scientific debate and media speculation ...
Viewpoint: Aggressive US approach to cancer doing ‘more harm than good’
To paraphrase [author and oncologist Siddhartha] Mukherjee, testing represents an inversion—or perversion--of the Hippocratic oath to do no harm. A ...
2 experimental Ebola treatments show promise in clinical trials, boosting survival rates
For the first time, preliminary clinical-trial results suggest that two experimental Ebola drugs can lower the death toll of the ...
Why China’s willingness to push ethical boundaries with CRISPR research ‘could end up benefiting us all’
Today, [China] serves as the global center for CRISPR animal experiments, with its scientists being the first to use the ...
