Science Controversies
Podcast: Did a legendary train ride really lead to the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws?
A Victorian scientist's train ride to London leads to the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of inheritance, Nice story, but is ...
Monsanto ‘abused’ market dominance in India to inflate GMO seed prices, investigators say
A probe by the investigations unit of India’s antitrust body has found that Monsanto abused its dominant position as a ...
Washington Post editorial: We have an ‘urgent need’ for international rules on gene-edited babies
WHEN CHINESE scientist He Jiankui announced last November his experiments making heritable genetic changes in human embryos followed by live ...
Will GMO-wary China accept virus-resistant CRISPR pigs?
As China struggles to stem a contagious, hog-ravaging disease, a British company offers some hope. But it may first need ...
EU Commission prepares for possible ‘overhaul’ of GMO crop rules to address CRISPR gene editing
The EU executive has already prepared the ground for a new initiative on gene editing to overhaul the current GMO ...
Bayer hires law firm to probe Monsanto’s Europe-wide data collection on pesticide regulators, journalists
Bayer on [May 21] hired law firm Sidley Austin to investigate a Europe-wide data collection scheme run by its Monsanto ...
Is childhood trauma linked to depression? Why this paper may have overestimated the impact
A paper in PNAS got some attention on Twitter recently. It’s called Childhood trauma history is linked to abnormal brain connectivity ...
Australian scientists eager to begin CRISPR crop research as deregulation deadline nears
GM crops continue to produce productivity gains and environmental benefits worldwide, although those benefits are mostly limited to cotton and ...
‘Untreatable’ childhood brain cancer gets its first drug therapy
A new type of drug that targets a genetic weakness in an untreatable childhood brain cancer could become the first ...
UK biotech firm Genus seeks approval to sell virus-resistant CRISPR pigs in China, world’s biggest pork market
British livestock genetics firm Genus agreed on [May 16] to license its know-how on virus-resistant pigs to Beijing Capital Agribusiness ...
Human Genome Project pioneer now on a quest to solve chronic fatigue syndrome
[Ron] Davis, who is 77, leads a lab that invented much of the technology that powered the Human Genome Project. Now ...
Chipotle attempts to derail lawsuit alleging its non-GMO marketing misled customers
Chipotle customers suing the burrito maker over its “non-GMO” menu claims are pressing a federal judge to deny the company’s ...
Stem cell treatment could create ‘living drug’ against cancer tumors
In a first-of-its-kind clinical trial, a natural killer cell immunotherapy derived from induced pluripotent stem cells is being tested for ...
Brazil urges China to import sugar from biotech sugarcane, says final product has no GMO ingredients
Brazil’s agriculture minister [asked] Chinese officials on [May 16] to greenlight exports to the Asian nation of sugar made from ...
Reproducibility crisis: Is scientific research ‘fundamentally flawed’?
A new report released [May 2019] by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is weighing in on a contentious debate ...
Sen. Chuck Grassley: EU hostility to biotech, conventional agriculture shouldn’t be allowed to ‘scuttle’ trade talks with US
When trade representatives visit me to discuss biotechnology products, often the first thing I do is eat a genetically modified ...
Anti-GMO Russia joins global CRISPR ‘bonanza,’ investing $1.7 billion in gene-edited crop research
Russia is embracing gene-editing. A 111-billion-rouble (US$1.7-billion) federal programme aims to create 10 new varieties of gene-edited crops and animals ...
Ghana farmer groups demand accelerated approval of GMO crops
Farmer groups in Ghana are asking the government to speed up the process of commercializing genetically modified (GM) crops as ...
Scavenger hunt for new antibiotics sends researchers to strange places
It’s said that for nearly 200 years, residents of a small rural area in Northern Ireland called Boho (pronounced “bo”), ...
Argentina, Brazil, Canada, US call for ‘science-based’ biotech crop import rules to prevent global trade disruptions
The Ministers of Agriculture from Argentina, Brazil, Canada and the United States highlighted that food demand is rising while agricultural ...
Dark days: Examining Europe’s history of eugenics, including forced sterilizations in Sweden
In Sweden the self-examination has already begun. A government minister has admitted that “what went on is barbaric and a ...
Chronic fatigue syndrome could soon be diagnosed with a blood test
Researchers at Stanford University and elsewhere say they’ve taken an important step in potentially helping people with a barely understood ...
Podcast: Are you ready for the Zero Dollar Genome?
We've broken through the thousand dollar genome barrier and are heading towards $100. Leading geneticist George Church want to take ...
Will ‘common sense” keep us from making human clones?
Prominent scientists involved in cloning say they’ve never had any intention of replicating a person — and are as wary ...
Undervaccinated US population adds tinder for blaze of measles outbreaks
U.S. health officials are putting all they have into extinguishing measles outbreaks, many of them raging in cities throughout the ...
‘Gene doping’ could be the future of athletics. But is that a bad thing?
[A] technique could theoretically be used to add muscle bulk to athletes, a concept called gene doping. Doctors could, theoretically, inject cells ...
Sen. Bernie Sanders proposes breakup of agribusiness ‘mega-mergers’ in bid to woo farm belt states
Bernie Sanders on [May 5] released a sweeping rural and agriculture plan that targets big companies and calls for more ...
