Science Controversies
Even as restrictions on vaccine eligibility disappear, hesitancy mushrooms
Places like Mississippi that have already scrapped their eligibility rules offer the rest of the country a glimpse of the ...
The B.1.1.7 British COVID variant is sweeping across the United States. How will vaccines fare?
The B.1.1.7 variant, first spotted in the UK, is not only more easily transmitted, but it also appears to be ...
FDA warns Joe Mercola to stop selling fake COVID remedies and cures
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned Joseph Mercola, an osteopath who heads a large online “alternative ...
This cold war neurosurgeon successfully transplanted monkey heads. Could it work on humans?
Robert White [was] a neurosurgeon who spent decades performing head transplants on monkeys, hoping to eventually use the procedure to ...
QAnon followers play key role in infecting Facebook with vaccine conspiracy theories
[A new research effort by Facebook] is a large-scale attempt to understand the spread of ideas that contribute to vaccine ...
AI emulates trained dogs’ ability to detect cancer and other diseases, including COVID-19
Humans already employ [dogs’] olfactory acuity for contraband and explosives detection. More recently it has also proved uncannily good at ...
Hope for long-haulers? Vaccines quell symptoms in some patients
Some people who have spent months suffering from long-haul covid-19 are taking to social media to report their delight at ...
How business is battling employee vaccine denialism and doubt
Across industries, business leaders are turning to all-hands staff meetings, video memos and other workplace forums to address skepticism about ...
Critics say gene drives could lead to species extinction. Scientists have developed a brake system
By exerting control over the degree of spread, those who unleash gene drives may realize the benefits promised by gene ...
Toothpaste that can treat peanut allergies? It’s in clinical trials
A New York City–based company has launched a trial to start testing [a new] concept in a small group of ...
Dark web scam: Here is why you shouldn’t source your vaccine from the internet
Sellers on 15 different "dark web" marketplaces have dispersed hundreds of doses of what they allege are COVID-19 vaccines, according ...
Less than 0.2% — that’s how many fully vaccinated Israelis developed COVID-19 symptoms
Out of those who were tested for the coronavirus at least a week after their second shot, less than 1 ...
Infographic: Africa and Asia are lagging behind rest of the world in mass vaccinating their populations
More than 345 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide in the three months since mass inoculation began ...
mRNA COVID vaccine efforts could lead to cancer vaccines within a few years, says BioNTech scientist
Ozlem Tureci, who co-founded the German company BioNTech with her husband [Ugur Sahin], was working on a way to harness ...
COVID-19 Variant Handbook: How many there are and which vaccines effectively protect against them
As the pandemic has progressed, new coronavirus variants have been detected around the world. Some that you may have heard ...
Vaccine diplomacy: Already supplying 97 countries and counting, China is winning the public relations war
The country that can manufacture and distribute lifesaving injections to others less fortunate sees a return on its investment in ...
‘Scorching ethical debate’: Designer babies are already here. The future looks even more revolutionary — and contentious
In one sense, genetically modifying a child with particular traits is already done on a fairly large scale. Couples with ...
More than 80% of Russian-originated tweets on US COVID vaccines are negative. Here is the story of Putin’s disinformation campaign
An official with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which monitors foreign disinformation efforts, identified four publications that he said ...
51,418 times higher — For one surviving baby infected with a new COVID variant, their viral load was astronomical. What might this portend?
[O]ne newborn [treated for COVID at the Children’s National Hospital in DC] was unusual. The baby was very sick, for ...
COVID’s Achilles’ heel: Will the DNA of disease-resistant patients offer clues to blocking the virus?
Mayana Zatz, director of the Human Genome Research Centre at the University of São Paulo has identified 100 couples, where ...
Vaccine refusal mania has captured entire indigenous communities in Mexico
In Aldama, a small town of about 7,000 located in the central highlands of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, ...
Lab-made embryos? Israeli researchers grow mice in artificial wombs
[Israeli] researchers have grown mice in an artificial womb for as long as 11 or 12 days, about half the ...
Herd immunity is the key to controlling COVID. How many people need to get the vaccine?
It has been clear for a while that, at least in the U.S., the only way out of the coronavirus ...
Why gene drives may be necessary to maintain healthy ecosystems
Gene driving is the process of introducing altered genes into a population capable of inducing infertility in females — which ...
The downside of ‘improving’ humanity: How CRISPR could edit out ‘abnormal genes’ — and human diversity
CRISPR has many functions; one of these is that it can be used to treat disease. Yet the far-reaching, more ...
Will Trump-country, vaccine-hesitant Republicans block the US from reaching herd immunity?
[U]nlike many at-risk Americans seeking safety and an end to the pandemic, [80-year-old retiree] Margaret refuses to get a coronavirus ...
‘Crisis of confidence’: What’s causing the panic around AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine?
AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine is facing a crisis of confidence, with one European country after another, as if seized by a ...
