Science Controversies
Exploring the ethics of vaccine and immunity passports
COVID-19 immunity licenses can be ethical in principle but in practice depend on 4 important questions related to both the ...
Viewpoint: Europe’s anti-GMO ‘doom mongers’ have been astonishingly silent about safe, effective GE COVID vaccines
The procurement of the vaccine and the rollout in the UK has been truly world leading and it is already ...
Viewpoint: What can we learn from the Bush Administration’s effort against AIDS as we battle COVID in developing countries?
In 2004 [AIDS] was burning across Africa. Treatments were available but expensive, and everyone wanted to expand Africa’s access to ...
Viewpoint: Why the effort to find a ‘biological basis’ for being transgender is misguided and unhelpful
The search for a biological cause of transness—also known as “biological essentialism”—may be well-intentioned, but it is a dangerous path ...
Key to COVID herd immunity: Getting children vaccinated
As governments push to move past the pandemic, vaccinating children is emerging as a key obstacle, along with initially limited ...
Manipulation and persuasion: Here’s what goes on inside a $600 COVID conspiracy boot camp
Marketplace journalists took part in a U.S. COVID-19 conspiracy "boot camp," where aspiring activists — including the leader of one ...
Arizona House passes bill making it a felony to terminate a pregnancy if the fetus has a survivable genetic abnormality
The Republican-controlled Arizona House on [April 1] approved a sweeping abortion bill that makes it a felony for a doctor ...
Vaccine mandates come to colleges: Rutgers becomes one of the first schools to require COVID shots for in-person instruction this fall
Rutgers University is requiring students attending classes in person this fall to be vaccinated against Covid-19. It is among the ...
Evolution and COVID-19: How nature is staying one step ahead of vaccines and the dangers that pose for the years ahead
As scientists work to get a handle on [COVID] variants, the situation gives the public a rare front-row seat and ...
Mutant dangers: AstraZeneca vaccine doesn’t protect against South African COVID variant
[A] double-blind multicenter study, led by scientists at the South African Medical Research Council Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research ...
Facebook says it has banned vaccine disinformation — but it’s still far too easy to find
Facebook issued a broad prohibition in January 2020 on false claims or conspiracy theories about the coronavirus “that could cause ...
‘We don’t need to work with BioNTech’: After a successful COVID vaccine collaboration, Pfizer plans on tackling other diseases with mRNA technology alone
Pfizer will develop new shots using the technology, called mRNA, to target other viruses and pathogens beyond the coronavirus, Chief ...
COVID variants present new threat as US virus cases plateau
Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and a leading expert on infectious diseases, ...
Who will win the battle over CRISPR-Cas 9 patent rights?
History is full of cases in which several researchers have found the same or similar inventions almost simultaneously. This is ...
How women turned the tide against smallpox in the 1700s
Smallpox was far deadlier than the coronavirus the world is currently battling. Fatality rates were as high as 30%, and ...
Is it beneficial, and safe, to mix COVID vaccines from different manufacturers?
Participants in [a] 13-month study will be given the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines in different combinations and at different intervals, ...
Many long-term care workers resist COVID vaccinations. Can they be mandated?
It’s a question that many long-term care employers, from individual families to big national companies, are confronting as vaccines become ...
Human embryo research restrictions: Scientists move to drop 14-day limit on research
For the last 40 years, the rule, which is law in some countries and a guideline in others, has served ...
Psychedelic mushrooms in your future? Oregon edges closer to becoming first state to license therapeutic use
Oregon is about to become the first state in the country to try to build a support infrastructure through which ...
Viewpoint: India’s ‘retreat’ from GM crops in the face of dogmatic opposition will harm its farmers
In deciding to consider proposals for GM crop field trials only upon the recommendation of state governments, [the Indian government] ...
Variants on top of variants: COVID continues to mutate in Brazil, posing more perils to country already crushed by the pandemic
The unchecked spread of the more contagious SARS-CoV-2 variants in Brazil appears to have created even more dangerous versions of ...
‘When, where and how’: WHO report on COVID’s origins leaves many unanswered questions
A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic said in a report that data examined during ...
While many prisoners agree to vaccinations, prison guards emerge as hotbed of vaccine hesitancy
As states have begun COVID-19 inoculations at prisons across the country, corrections employees are refusing vaccines at alarming rates, causing ...
World’s most expensive drug: £1.79 million one-off Zolgensma treatment approved by British National Health Service to treat spinal muscular dystrophy in children
Zolgensma, which costs £1.79m per dose, halts the progression of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), which involves loss of movement, muscle ...
‘Another animal in the zoo’: Indian virus expert expects coronavirus to mutate into less harmful variants
Will the coronavirus, which has already killed more than 2 million people worldwide, eventually be eliminated by a global vaccination ...
WSJ Viewpoint: Europe looks like the Keystone Kops in its bungled vaccine rollout
Protectionism, mercantilism, bureaucratic ineptitude, lack of political accountability, crippling safety-ism—it’s all here. The Keystone Kops in Brussels and European capitals ...
EU should speed its adoption of CRISPR crops to keep up with global competition, officials say
Using genome editing technologies in plants could help the EU ensure food security and reduce the impact of current agriculture ...
