Science Controversies
Annual COVID shot likely necessary to protect against virus, Pfizer chief says
Despite the 95 percent effectiveness at preventing coronavirus infection after two doses of its vaccine, Pfizer is now seeing what ...
Here’s the skinny on the CRISPR patent saga between the Broad Institute and the CVC group
CRISPR was first reported by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2012, as an outgrowth of their work on bacterial ...
CRISPR gene editing roils public discussion over ‘what it means to be disabled’
The gene-editing technology CRISPR promises enormous potential as a therapeutic for curing illnesses, including potentially devising new vaccines. But the ...
What could go wrong with vaccine passports? ACLU issues a warning
President Joe Biden's administration is working to establish a set of standards for people to prove they've been vaccinated against ...
NDV-HXP-S ‘game changer’: A new low-cost vaccine made in chicken eggs now in clinical trials could change the way we fight COVID
[A new] vaccine, called NDV-HXP-S, is the first in clinical trials to use a new molecular design that is widely ...
Infographic: COVID rejection ideology — Vaccine skeptics are also prevention skeptics
How many Americans won’t get the vaccine? If the figure is fairly low, the ability of the virus to spread ...
Assessing AstraZeneca’s vaccine: Are those who get the shot in danger of blood clots or are governments being overly cautious?
[A] few cases of a rare blood-clotting disorder — some fatal — emerged within the past month or so, [and] ...
‘Public health can supersede individual rights’: Government mandated vaccinations are not violations of personal liberty, courts determined a century ago
[A]s millions of Americans get vaccinated voluntarily against the coronavirus and society starts to reopen, questions loom about how far ...
Viewpoint: Human genetics has a racist history. Here is what needs to be done to clean up the mess
Combined with Mendelian determinism, which was wildly popular in the U.S. in the early 20th century, [eugenicist and father of ...
If you’ve had COVID, do you need to get vaccinated?
A few weeks ago, a message popped up in the corner of my screen. “What do you think about people ...
Video: Did Sweden’s ‘no lockdown’ and ‘no mask’ strategy work?
Sweden’s approach to COVID-19 has been radically different from other countries in Europe — and much of the rest of ...
6 ‘rare and severe’ blood clot cases, all in women, out of 6.8 million doses: US pauses Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to review the evidence
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Food and Drug Administration are recommending that the United ...
Quickly-advancing human embryo research raises prickly ethical questions
Nature published two peer-reviewed papers about generating in vitro, with slightly different methods, “blastoids” or “human blastocyst-like structures”... Notably, none ...
Eastern European countries that opted for less expensive (and possibly less safe and effective) AstraZeneca vaccine see surge in cases as supplies lag
Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia, which declined part of their Pfizer allotments to wait for Astra doses, are among ...
Top disease control official in China admits its vaccines are less effective, then gets rebuked by central government
China has distributed hundreds of millions of doses of domestically made vaccines abroad and is relying on them for its ...
Inside the Biden Administration’s current plan to help shape ‘vaccine passports’ in the US
The [vaccine passport] initiative has emerged as an early test of the Biden administration, with officials working to coordinate across ...
Brazil is now the world’s global COVID epicenter. Here is why the country has failed
More than a year into the pandemic, deaths in Brazil are at their peak and highly contagious variants of the ...
Military resisting COVID vaccines: Nearly 40% of US Marines have rejected shots
As of [April 9], approximately 75,500 Marines have received vaccines, including fully vaccinated and partially vaccinated service men and women ...
Viewpoint: Do some of us carry ‘warrior genes’ that pry the door open to more violent behavior? Courts and scientists debate
Should a criminal defendant be allowed to argue that a specific gene rendered him unable to control his violent behavior? ...
Europe is the global epicenter for COVID mismanagement and vaccine distribution — and leadership is facing political repercussions
Europe’s third wave will cost thousands of lives and billions of euros. Summer vacationers, essential to the economies of Southern ...
Masks that kill viruses? Meet the next generation of face coverings
In the near future, if you’re on a plane and the person next to you sneezes, you could be wearing ...
7 fold: For COVID survivors, a vaccine jab dramatically boosts antibody response
For people who have not had Covid, the first dose of the vaccine provided protection equivalent to having had the ...
Heartbeat abortions: Arizona legislature rejects bill that would have banned abortions as early as five weeks into pregnancy
[Arizona] Senate President Karen Fann told Capitol Media Services [April 6] she will not allow House Bill 2140 to come ...
Pesticides and Food: It’s not a black or white issue — Part 3: How dangerous is glyphosate?
Although pesticide toxicity and biodegradability has decreased overall during the last few decades, many consumers are still worried about pesticides ...
56% of antibiotic treatments found inappropriate in hospital study
[A] study, led by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published [March 18] in JAMA ...
Even after we reach herd immunity, COVID booster vaccines will likely be necessary to stop variants
Influenza viruses are fast-changing, making it difficult for the human body to build an immune response, which is why the ...
Drugs on the shelf: Repurposing existing therapies to treat COVID
"The advantage of drug repurposing is that that drug is already approved. It's already gone through the regulatory process to ...
