Slate
Scientists have created a luscious tasting non GMO tomato, but supermarkets won’t sell it
Tomato lovers, rejoice, for science has achieved the impossible: the perfect supermarket tomato. The Garden Gem won’t bruise during shipping, ...
Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal: Debating gender and racial identity
Some in the queer community have summarily dismissed any possible similarities between Caitlyn Jenner - who recently came out as a trans ...
Malpractice on Dr. Oz: Case of the maligned Arctic Apple
Dr. Oz gets it wrong again on science, this time on genetic engineering on last week's show on the non-browning ...
Food Babe’s shocking news: Food has chemicals in it!
“I couldn’t believe there was beaver’s ass in my vanilla ice cream, coal tar in my mac and cheese, yoga ...
Genetic engineering needs space from regulators
The newly approved, genetically engineered “Innate” brand of potato is quite remarkable. It is bruise resistant and contains 50 to ...
Are genetic databases and medical confidentiality compatible?
Personalized medicine, the hoped-for use of the information in our genes to inform our medical care, may end up helping ...
Human evolution isn’t all competition: it’s cooperation, too
People often have a grim view of what it means to be human. There’s this conception that inside each of ...
Fish-farmed genetically modified salmon could help alleviate overexploited wild fisheries
Seafood remains one of the last types of foods that we harvest from the wild at a commercial level, and ...
Climate change challenges demand more than GMO seeds
When my daughter turned 7 last week, we celebrated with a homemade chocolate cake. I wonder whether she’ll be able ...
In push to snare low income shoppers, Whole Foods to put cigarette-like warnings on GMO foods
Whole Foods’ central conceit as a company is that it sells only the best, healthiest food—which sometimes requires paying more ...
Conservation efforts save some species, drive others to extinction
Species reintroductions are some of the most dramatic and compelling stories in conservation. Bringing back wolves, black-footed ferrets, condors, and ...
Food challenges require overhaul of global food system not GMOs
Over the next 50 years, climate change will transform the world in ways we have only begun to imagine. Humans ...
Evolution is sometimes messy or even outright ridiculous
In the real world, evolution can’t explain itself. It acts without intention, and unless we find enough revealing fossils, we ...
Photographic romance of GMO breeding
The genetic modification of foods is not the sort of topic that inspires ambivalence. When photographer Murray Ballard first visited the John ...
Our Darwinian ideas of male infidelity and female loyalty have long been misguided
Ever since Darwin there had been an assumption among evolutionary biologists that females were coy and choosy in their sexual ...
Ebola virus preys on human caretaking behaviors for transmission
As the Ebola epidemic in West Africa has spiraled out of control, affecting thousands of Liberians, Sierra Leonians, and Guineans, ...
How will religious authorities deal with lab-grown meat?
In Genesis, God granted humans dominion over animals. In modern times, that dominion has spawned one of the planet’s biggest ...
Random events in human development important for both nature and nuture
Is our behavior determined by genetics, or are we products of our environments? What matters more for the development of ...
Find your genetic soulmate for the low, low price of…
Over the centuries, physics, chemistry, and biology have transformed what once was seen as mysterious or even magical—the rotation of ...
Humans colonize their homes with microbes, not the other way around
Microbes are everywhere. They live on and inside us, and cover most things we come into contact with, including our ...
Do Koko and other ‘talking’ apes communicate the same as humans?
Last week, people around the world mourned the death of beloved actor and comedian Robin Williams. According to the Gorilla Foundation ...
Efforts to cure rare genetic diseases target people who conquered them
Biologist Stephen Friend is president and co-founder of the nonprofit research organization Sage Bionetworks in Seattle, and co-director of the ...
Including vasectomies in court sentencing new eugenics
Put this in the "can they even do that?" files. Jesse Lee Herald of Edinburg, Virginia, received an unusual sentence ...
Human fetal biology is much more complex than the personhood movement is equipped to handle
What if at the very beginning stages of development you absorbed your twin’s cells? You’d be twins—a phenomenon called a ...
Are GMO food labels and a ‘right to know’ worth the price?
Whether the labeling debate continues to play out on a state-by-state basis, or the federal government eventually intervenes, chances are ...
Cultural timing hurts and benefits Wade’s new book on genetics of race
The paradox of racism is that at any given moment, the racism of the day seems reasonable and very possibly ...
To Mom: Thanks for the genes
Mother’s Day is a day of appreciation, of gratitude, and of guilt. Guilt for all the things I put my ...
Slate slashes New York Times and Center for Genetics and Society for faux ‘designer baby’ scare tactics
The Center for Genetics and Society created a splash in the NYT this week with its all-too-familiar attack on mitochondrial ...