Science Controversies
Debunking 7 myths about the COVID vaccine
[W]idespread immunization is the fastest and best way to begin to return to a more normal way of life. Seven ...
Best in the world — 90% of Israelis over 50 are fully vaccinated against COVID. How did Israel do it?
A rush of Israeli medical research — some emerging too fast for academic journals to keep up — reveals that ...
The Human Genome Project and the field of genetics have a diversity problem
The Human Genome Project was an international, collaborative research program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all ...
What CRISPR can do for the world
What might CRISPR do to the diversity of our species? If we are no longer subject to a natural lottery ...
COVID shots and “The Mark of the Beast’? Battling religious vaccine misinformation
The Book of Revelation describes the End Time as a bloody battle filled with persecution, during which a beast forces ...
Mass vaccination campaigns are always challenging. Here’s how the US fared with a previous outbreak
On April 12, 1955, the U.S. government licensed the first vaccine against poliomyelitis, created by Dr. Jonas Salk, after scientists ...
Sickle cell gene therapy trial halted after two patients develop cancer, though the link is not certain
A patient who was treated [with gene therapy for sickle cell disease] five and a half years ago has developed ...
Organs on a chip? Device tracks Parkinson’s disease by modeling how the gut microbiome interacts with the brain, liver, and colon
[B]acteria living in our gut can influence some neurological diseases. To help researchers better understand how this gut-brain axis communicates, ...
COVID evolution: ‘What other variants might be out there?’
Tracking the subtle changes to the virus’ RNA is like global detective work, requiring health officials around the world to ...
Here is COVID good news: It’s jumpstarted biomedical innovation
As we look back at the past few months, I see three lessons that health care researchers can take from ...
Optimizing vaccine rollout: Should we be concerned about taking possibly less effective — but easier to distribute — COVID shots like AstraZeneca’s and J&J’s?
Yusuff Adebayo Adebisi knows that a vaccine that offers 70% protection against COVID-19 could be a valuable tool against the ...
What you need to know about the one-shot vaccine by Johnson & Johnson
More than two months after its last COVID-19 vaccine authorization, the FDA authorized for emergency use a one-shot vaccine from ...
How structural racism undermines independent science research and hurts racial and ethnic minorities
It is critical to acknowledge the societal structures - the groundwater, as it is called in "The Groundwater Approach: Building ...
Viewpoint: Why assisted reproduction needs to be more comprehensively regulated
The United States fertility market is growing very rapidly, and is projected to reach $15.4 billion in 2023, more than ...
Could vaccines accelerate the evolution of more dangerous mutant COVID variants?
Some scientists have argued that it would be better to use the scarce vaccines to give first doses to as ...
Cancer detection in minutes? New device measures biomarker exosomes on a chip
Leyla Esfandiari Ph.D., is an assistant professor [at the University of Cincinnati’s] College of Engineering and Applied Science. She has ...
Emerging symptoms of COVID: Stuttering, forgetfulness, mania, and even psychosis
An early survey of 153 COVID-19 patients in the U.K. and a more recent preprint study of people hospitalized with ...
Playing ‘wait and see’ with the COVID vaccine? Here’s the variety of reasons why people report hesitancy
31% of the public say that when an FDA-approved vaccine for COVID-19 is available to them for free, they will ...
Did closing schools cost lives?
Killing people? Because of several months of Zoom school? How could that be? Well, there is a well-documented association between ...
Viewpoint: An open economy by April? Why the US could reach COVID herd immunity by spring
[COVID] cases are down 77% over the past six weeks. If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we’d call it ...
Bubble bursting: Is vitamin D an effective treatment for COVID-19?
The case is simple: we know vitamin D – the “sunshine vitamin” – is involved in immune function, so could it ...
How COVID is revolutionizing vaccine development and production
According to Charles Christy, head of commercial solutions, Ibex Dedicate, Lonza, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been driving ...
Viewpoint: Tanzania’s anti-vaxxer president is slowing COVID response and endangering lives
In politics, there are generally two ways of making decisions. The first is evidence-based, weighing the pros and cons and ...
Antibody treatments: Vaccines are in demand while other effective drugs go unused. Here’s why
Hospitals and clinics, staggered by the needs of the sick and gearing up to help administer the new coronavirus vaccines, ...
Viewpoint: It’s time to extend the limit on human embryo research from 14 to 28 days
[The 14-day limit for human embryo research was originally] chosen because it’s only after this stage that the central nervous ...
Antidepressant paroxetine could halt osteoarthritis and degenerative cartilage damage
Research headed by scientists at Penn State College of Medicine has found that the antidepressant paroxetine can halt the progression ...
‘Cancer is a life sentence. But Covid is a death sentence’: Patients with compromised immune systems unable to access vaccines
Facing conflicting guidance and logistical chaos, many cancer patients are struggling to navigate the bumpy rollout of the Covid-19 vaccination ...
