Science Controversies
How should states use huge influx of money from legal marijuana sales?
More than $3 billion in marijuana revenue was generated in 2021. A handful of states over the last four years have ...
Baseball’s COVID problem: Unvaccinated players won’t be allowed in Canada to play against Toronto Blue Jays
Major League Baseball players have been more reluctant to take the Covid-19 vaccine than their counterparts in any of the ...
Viewpoint: What is ‘abolition medicine’ — and why we must address racism in embedded in our healthcare system
Racial violence is a public health crisis. Several organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Public Health ...
Norwegian scientists use gene editing to ensure wild salmon and farmed salmon don’t interbreed
The Institute of Marine Reseach (HI) in Norway has been using CRISPR since 2013. The goal of the first project ...
Some states are trying to limit residents from getting abortions or gender-affirming treatments in other jurisdictions. Is that legal?
Conservative lawmakers across the U.S. have let loose a wave of state legislation attempting to restrict access to abortions and ...
Viewpoint: Why almost all research showing homeopathy efficacy is worthless
Research on homeopathy, a 200-year-old form of alternative medicine, is often biased to make it look more effective than it ...
Top 10 myths demonizing genetically modified foods debunked
10. GMOs are used to create "Frankenfoods" The vast majority of GMOs are used for things like making crops resistant ...
Solving the mystery of Epstein-Barr: Virus found in 95% of people leads to hundreds of thousands of cancers a year. Can we develop a vaccine?
In the 1970s, Hank Balfour, a virologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School, was studying the long-term survival prospects ...
At least 20 states propose bills reducing women’s access to abortion pills
Since January, legislators in at least 20 states have proposed bills that would restrict or ban access to abortion pills ...
Switzerland appears poised to approve crop gene editing by 2024
After lengthy debates, the National Council and the Council of States agreed to relax the moratorium on GMOs. In 2024, ...
As CRISPR baby geneticist He Jiankui exits prison, the future of embryo gene editing becomes more ethically and scientifically confounding
Biophysicist He Jiankui, having served a 3-year sentence for creating the world’s first genetically engineered babies, may be released from ...
‘Real-life Hunger Games’: Zolgensma is a revolutionary gene therapy — but it costs $2 million a dose
Zolgensma, a drug made by the pharmaceutical company Novartis, that offers the most tantalizing hope [for children born with spinal ...
Proposed Missouri anti-abortion bill would ban women from life-saving ectopic pregnancy surgery
Here is a scientific fact: Ectopic pregnancies are not viable. They occur when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, ...
Evusheld mystery: 7 million Americans are immunocompromised — but a drug that could protect the vulnerable against severe COVID is going unused
As much of the nation unmasks amid plummeting caseloads and fresh hope that the pandemic is fading, the Biden administration ...
French president Emmanuel Macron on Europe’s pro-organic, anti-biotechnology sustainable food strategy: ‘It was based on a pre-Ukraine war world and should be reviewed’
Brussels agreed two years ago to reform its farm practices as part of a drive to eliminate net carbon emissions ...
More disappointing news on ivermectin: Largest trial to date shows no reduction in COVID hospitalizations
Researchers testing repurposed drugs against Covid-19 found that ivermectin didn’t reduce hospital admissions, in the largest trial yet of the ...
Idaho abortion bill on governor’s desk allows rapists’ families to block early-stage terminations
On [March 14], the Idaho House passed Senate Bill 1309, which, like in Texas, would prevent pregnant people from obtaining ...
Californians debate release of genetically engineered insects with a DNA ‘kill switch’ to fight disease
A biotech firm is seeking permission to release genetically modified mosquitoes into the open air of California for the first ...
‘It was like someone blew a dog whistle in my ear’: Mayo Clinic vaccinologist developed tinnitus side-effect after COVID vaccine
Gregory Poland, MD, director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minnesota, remains a steadfast vaccination advocate — ...
This season’s flu shot offered virtually no protection against infection
This season's flu shot offered virtually no protection against infection, a new government report shows. While this latest vaccine only ...
Kenya joins Nigeria in Africa in approving guidelines for CRISPR and other gene editing techniques
Kenya's National Biosafety Authority (NBA) has published Genome Editing Guidelines, marking an important step towards the development of a genome editing regulatory ...
How did children fare at schools that all but ignored mask mandates? Pretty well, it turns out
As school systems around the country were battening down for their first remote start-of-school in the fall of 2020, the ...
Russian invasion of Ukraine throws cloud over European Union’s Green Deal Farm to Fork plans
The European Commission’s “Farm to Fork” strategy seeks to reduce pesticides by 50 percent, devote 25 percent of agricultural land ...
Young plant scientists eager to develop climate resilient and more nutritious crops see CRISPR gene editing as key
In the summer of 2018, the European Court of Justice (that’s Europe’s highest court) reviewed a case and concluded that gene-edited crops ...
When will the pandemic be over? Not when the CDC or WHO decides
All pandemics end eventually. But how, exactly, will we know when the COVID-19 pandemic is really “over”? It turns out ...
With Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupting food supplies, European Union open to importing GMO feed grain to support meat industry
The European Parliament has moved in the face of the shortage of cereals that European countries are beginning to suffer, ...
What’s the likelihood of developing universal broad spectrum coronavirus vaccine?
Individual researchers from eclectic fields are finding new ways to prevent future pandemics. Artem Babaian, PhD, a computational biologist at ...
