Science Controversies
Ellume: 91%+ accurate at-home COVID test given first emergency authorization in the US
The Food and Drug Administration on [December 15] issued an emergency authorization for the country’s first coronavirus test that can run from ...
COVID vaccine made from GMO tobacco? It’s now in human trials
While large pharmaceutical companies are already producing vaccines, [the company British American Tobacco] believes its own can be produced in ...
COVID could come back with a vengeance in mutated forms, jumping back and forth between animals and humans
Coronavirus could potentially leap to other animals, such as rats, mice, ferrets and voles, as well as mink, an expert ...
How most of Europe has kept schools open safely during the current COVID surge
Most of Europe kept schools open even during a worst-on-the-planet second wave of infections this fall. And still, schools appear to ...
Pfizer vaccine data offer hope for a return to normalcy
[A]dvisors to the US Food and Drug Administration voted in favor of emergency authorization for Pfizer’s covid-19 shot, and the data in ...
Foreshadowing repeat of spring chaos, Trump Administration leaves vaccine distribution to individual states
Federal and state officials agree that the nation’s 21 million health care workers should be first in line [for a ...
School children will not get a COVID vaccine in time for the next school year, experts believe
Children’s immune responses are different from that of adults, so there is a consensus that pediatric [COVID vaccine] trials are ...
37%-to-60% of Americans say they are not sure they will get a vaccine. If that resistance holds, we won’t reach ‘herd immunity’ and COVID will not go away
The World Health Organization estimates that 65 to 70 percent of a given population must be vaccinated to halt the spread of ...
All leading COVID vaccines so far require two shots, making it even more challenging to contain the pandemic
As the nation gears up to vaccinate tens of millions of Americans against the novel coronavirus, public health officials… are ...
Epidemiologist who guided Sweden’s ‘no lockdown’ policy sidelined after surge overwhelms the country
The high-profile epidemiologist who led Sweden's no lock-down strategy in the spring appears to be being sidelined by the government ...
Viewpoint: How Trump and Steve Bannon aided by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs promoted the ‘China created COVID in a lab’ conspiracy myth
[Chinese researcher Dr. Li-Meng Yan] appeared in the United States on Fox News making the unsubstantiated claim to millions that ...
Vaccine diplomacy: China poised to introduce first COVID shots to Latin America, increasing its regional influence
China is actively making “deals to try to get the vaccine deployed and employed” around the globe to stop the ...
Sweden imposes mandatory COVID restrictions, ending its ‘voluntary’ distancing experiment
Like other Europeans, Swedes are now heading into the winter facing restrictions ranging from a ban on large gatherings to ...
How might mass COVID vaccinations work? Louisiana sets up drive-through flu vaccine effort as a test
Getting all those shots into arms will be a monumental task. Shreveport, Louisiana, is getting ready now. The city recently ...
Conservative media touts Danish study raising doubts about mask effectiveness. Health experts say that’s dangerous
In [a] large, randomized study published [November 18] in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers observed more than 6,000 people in Denmark ...
Psychedelics are gaining gradual acceptance by mainstream medicine
Interest in psychedelic healing on the whole shot up in the last few decades, but a combined cultural stigma and ...
Government-issued proof-of-vaccination cards are on the way
Vaccination cards will be used as the "simplest" way to keep track of Covid-19 shots, said Dr. Kelly Moore, associate ...
Viewpoint: Chinese scientists push unsupported claim that COVID originated in India
[A] recent preprint by Chinese scientists Libing Shen, Funan He and Zhao Zhang titled ‘The early cryptic transmission and evolution of ...
Emergency use authorizations for COVID vaccines seem like a no brainer, but they potentially pose real threats. Here’s why
The FDA can grant an [emergency use authorization, or EUA] to a drug to treat COVID-19 to facilitate the distribution ...
60% of Americans now say they will get a vaccine. Who are they?
Overall, 60% of Americans say they would definitely or probably get a vaccine for the coronavirus, if one were available ...
We are on the cusp of an on-the-spot COVID test
In an Australian first, [University of Technology Sydney] scientists have used novel optical technology to design a highly sensitive saliva ...
Back of the line? Poorer countries pressing WHO to free COVID-19 vaccines from patent protection
The pandemic requires a temporary suspension of the world’s usual intellectual property system, [a group of developing countries led by ...
Genetically-engineered vaccine shows promise in elusive quest to control herpes
A genetically edited form of a herpes simplex virus (HSV) has outperformed a leading vaccine candidate in a new preclinical ...
‘Zoom boom’: Why is Asia the only part of the world weathering the economic fallout from COVID?
China remains on track to grow nearly 2% this year, the most of any major economy, while the world is expected to ...
Airlines moving towards required pre-flight COVID testing to boost traveling
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to caution that even with masks, social distancing and other measures, travel ...
Viewpoint: If you care about science and the well-being of our children, don’t close schools
We should not be going to public events. We should not be eating indoors at restaurants. We should not be ...
Lockdown has spurred more women to freeze their eggs, but success rates are vanishingly low
[Egg freezing] is currently the fastest growing fertility treatment, but experts worry that the majority go into the process not ...
