Science Controversies
‘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 ...
How might COVID’s ‘second wave’ play out? 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic offers bracing precedent
[An] interdisciplinary team [from the University of Zurich and the University of Toronto] compared the Spanish flu of 1918 and ...
‘We don’t know what we don’t know’: Next slate of vaccines might be better at fighting new COVID variations
Now, a year after the pandemic first erupted, three COVID vaccines have been given emergency authorization by either the U.S ...
Drug development revolution: Messenger RNA has taken the lead in the COVID response – and that’s only the beginning
Unlike traditional vaccines, which use live viruses, dead ones, or bits of the shells that viruses come cloaked in to ...
With widespread COVID vaccine hesitancy, the US may never reach herd immunity. Where will that leave us?
For COVID-19, the herd-immunity threshold is estimated to be between 60 and 90 percent. That’s the proportion of people who ...
I got my COVID-19 vaccine. Can I still get and transmit the virus?
There are two main types of immunity you can achieve with vaccines. One is so-called "effective" immunity, which can prevent ...
Common anti-depressant pill Luvox shows promise in preventing serious COVID infections
A commonly prescribed pill — approved more than 13 years ago by the Food and Drug Administration for depression and ...
A nasal spray to fend off the common cold?
[An] experimental drug—delivered via nasal spray—could help the immune system fend off all sorts of respiratory infections. The treatment is ...
Viewpoint: Wishful worries? Fears about the transhumanist, human-enhancement movement are overblown
[A] problem arises when pundits concerned about possible social and ethical downsides of a technology exaggerate its technical feasibility. This ...
We’ve made remarkable progress developing vaccines but treatments for COVID victims remain elusive
The only fully approved COVID-19 drug, the antiviral remdesivir, has shown modest benefit, at best, in hospitalized patients. Two “monoclonal ...
Mystery of how COVID-19 ravages the brain deepens
That SARS-CoV-2, the culprit of the COVID-19 pandemic, is also associated with neurological symptoms isn’t entirely surprising, given some evidence ...
‘They will turn into alligators’: Evangelical Christian missionaries turning Amazon villages against COVID vaccines
On the São Francisco reservation in the state of Amazonas, Jamamadi villagers sent health workers [arriving with COVID vaccines] packing ...
Viewpoint: Why we need to require COVID vaccines in high-risk settings such as nursing homes and prisons
In long-term care facilities, residents are usually very elderly, and many of them have medical conditions that put them at ...
PFAS chemicals found in many consumer products could reduce effectiveness of vaccines and other COVID treatments
Small amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl (or PFAS) chemicals are commonly found in the bodies of people in the US, ...
Viewpoint: FDA took 24 years to approve fast-growing GM salmon. Let’s hope lab-made meat, dairy hit the market sooner
[Numerous] startups are pursuing the production of cultured meats including Israel-based Future Meat Technologies and Dutch companies Meatable and Mosa ...
Pregnant women were excluded from COVID vaccine trials. Now many are debating if they want to risk getting a shot
As the F.D.A.-approved vaccine candidates make their way from production lines to frontline workers in nursing homes, hospitals, and in ...
Ebola reemerges in the eastern Congo, complicating COVID-19 vaccine rollout
[A woman in the Democratic Republic of Congo] was found with symptoms of [Ebola] in the town of Biena on ...
Will Biden Administration preserve Trump USDA’s science-based crop biotechnology rules?
"Listen to the science" was an oft-heard riposte in political debates about how the government should respond to the COVID-19 ...
‘Good first step’: Teachers union tepidly endorses CDC roadmap to open schools without requiring teacher vaccinations
Calling the CDC’s proposals [to reopen US schools] “an informed, tactile plan,” [American Federation of Teachers president Randi] Weingarten said ...
UK COVID variant now spreading across the US likely deadlier than original virus
[British scientists recently said] that there was a “realistic possibility” that the variant was not only more contagious than others, ...
Acid redux: Here’s how psychedelics are shaping the next generation of antidepressants
As of 2018, nearly one in eight Americans use antidepressants. Unfortunately, more than a third of patients are resistant to ...
Beer that combats cancer? Czech scientists have developed gene edited therapeutic hops but EU biotech restrictions block rollout
Czech researchers from the Biological Center of the Czech Academy of Sciences in České Budějovice are modifying select genes in ...
Viewpoint: In the ‘brave new world’ of AI transhumanism, not everyone will benefit
The transhumanist agenda is a runaway freight train, barely mentioned in the mainstream media, but threatening to run over us ...
Protection, Kansas was the first town in the nation to be fully vaccinated against polio. Now it’s an epicenter of vaccine skepticism.
Sixty-four years ago, residents of this tiny town in southwestern Kansas set a public health example by making it the ...
Worse than COVID-19? Why the next virus might be a lot more dangerous
Since the first reports of the coronavirus began circulating nearly a year ago, the WHO has repeatedly warned that the ...
Vaccine crisis? South Africa halts Astra-Zeneca shot rollout over mutant strain, sending alarm through global health community
South Africa has put its rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on hold after a study showed "disappointing" results against its ...
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. banned from Instagram for spreading vaccine misinformation and COVID conspiracy theories
Instagram on [February 10] took down the account of controversial anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "We removed this account ...
