Science Controversies
How AI is turning the world of copyright protection upside down
In 2016 a short novel written by a Japanese AI reached the second round of a national literary prize and ...
New UK COVID variant is not only more infectious – it appears to be more deadly
Public Health England, Imperial College London, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Exeter have ...
Will we ever reach COVID ‘herd immunity’? ¾ of the population of the Brazilian Amazon capital Manaus has been infected but the coronavirus marches on
In September, a preprint appeared online with the startling results from a study of covid-19 antibodies in blood-bank samples from ...
Over 60 years, vaccines have prevented 4.5 billion cases and saved 10 million lives. Now anti-vaxxers want to roll back the clock
The misleading claims Americans will soon hear about the newly released COVID-19 vaccines are nearly identical to claims made about smallpox ...
India’s scientists urge government to approve gene-edited crops to help battle yield losses
Unlike transgenic technology, in which genes from other organisms are inserted for developing better crops, the CRISPR-Cas9 technique makes it ...
Most religious leaders at the head of the anti-abortion movement are backing COVID vaccines
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which says fighting abortion is its “preeminent” priority, said last month that getting vaccinated ...
COVID-19 linked to early Alzheimer’s and other forms of cognitive decline
Decades of evidence from other respiratory viruses, along with observations of patients in recent months, suggests such infections may increase ...
USDA, Health and Human Services reach agreement to bring US animal gene-editing rules ‘into the 21st century’
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue issued the following statement after signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Assistant Secretary ...
Viewpoint: Why Francis Collins is a bad choice to head the NIH
[I]n his eight years in charge of federal efforts to understand, diagnose and cure disease, current NIH Director Francis Collins ...
Genetic engineering gave us COVID vaccines. Here’s how they work, and why you shouldn’t be frightened
We’ve all heard the conspiracy theories about COVID-19. Now a whole new set is emerging around COVID vaccines — and spreading ...
USDA approves GM petunias engineered to produce orange flowers
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) [January 19 announced] the deregulation of petunia ...
Viewpoint: The COVID vaccine rollout isn’t going well in the US. Here’s what we need to change
[F]ew Americans can answer the basic question: When and where can I get vaccinated? The country needs a distribution strategy ...
Streamlining animal biotech rules unlikely as FDA rejects USDA proposal to take over regulation, citing ‘potential health repercussions’
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn has told the Health and Human Services Department that he would refuse to ...
Why Black Americans are among the largest group of COVID vaccine skeptics
[A]cross the U.S., only 32% of Black adults say they would definitely or probably take a COVID-19 vaccine, according to ...
CRISPR crops ‘aren’t GMOs,’ France says, challenging EU’s strict gene-editing regulations
France sees crops developed using gene-editing techniques as different to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and opposes a European Union court ...
$850,000 in Trump Administration PPP loans went to anti-vaccine activist groups
Five prominent anti-vaccine organizations that have been known to spread misleading information about the coronavirus received more than $850,000 in loans from ...
To beat COVID-19, we need a global vaccination effort. How is that going?
Even with several vaccines approved for emergency use, there remains the tremendous challenge of producing enough of them for the ...
Single-dose COVID vaccine by Johnson & Johnson/Janssen up next for approval
Among the multiple vaccine candidates around the globe, next up in the arsenal against COVID-19 is likely the single-dose Ad26.COV2.S ...
‘Year of the Plague’: The New Yorker explores America’s continuing tragedy
In October, 2019, the first Global Health Security Index appeared, a sober report of a world largely unprepared to deal ...
Global health groups urge countries to donate COVID vaccines to humanitarian stockpiles, protecting stateless people in asylum camps
Public health groups are lobbying countries to commit a portion of their Covid-19 vaccine supplies to a “humanitarian buffer” that ...
How virtual reality could become a vital treatment to deal with the uncertainty of COVID
A national shortage in mental health clinicians existed before COVID-19. Now, health care organizations must decide how to rapidly scale ...
Viewpoint: Europe’s double standard—politicians celebrate genetically engineered COVID vaccines, but prohibit use of GM crops
“These are fantastic results,” UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson enthused, as politicians across Europe queued up to praise [COVID vaccine] ...
GM chickpea could halt drought-fueled yield declines
In the long run, [a new line of drought-tolerant] transgenic chickpea can contribute to the decrease of annual chickpea yield ...
People with certain DNA sequences are much likelier to get severe COVID. Is that you?
A new study of thousands of COVID-19 patients has revealed eight genetic sequences that are more common in people who ...
Here’s how to address the confusing data hampering the USA’s COVID response
The challenges of defining the spread of COVID-19 relates in part to existing deficiencies – “We don’t really have a ...
Heated copper mesh face masks that kill viruses may soon be available
Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have submitted a patent for a prototype mask with a heated copper mesh, a news ...
Should schools reopen for in-class study? Evidence suggests they are not major COVID spreaders
Emerging data on contact tracing — which illuminates the origins of infections — shows that the virus does not seem ...
