How far do you go to weed out lesser genetic defects

William Saletan | Slate | 
Two days ago in the New York Times, Gina Kolata told the story of Amanda Kalinsky, a 30-year-old woman who ...
KIDS EatOrganicFruit CROP original original

“Organic Shmorganic” says Slate: Organic produce no healthier than conventional

Melinda Wenner Moyer | Slate | 
Does feeding your child organic food really makes a difference to his health, considering that he’s been known to lick ...
MEDEX Mammogram CROP original original

Insurance coverage for genetic counseling varies from state to state

Jeanne Erdmann | Slate | 
The affordable care act should improve insurance coverage for some genetic tests. But what about the counseling that helps you ...

Banana apocalypse? GM one of few options to save threatened cavendish

Joshua Keating | Slate | 
Scientists are experimenting with genetic modifications to protect Cavendish bananas from a variant of the banana wilt fungus. If the fungus jumps ...

Best to tell donor-conceived kids about their origins

Naomi Cahn, Wendy Kramer | Slate | 
Secrecy has long been intimately intertwined with donor conception. Once upon a time, non-disclosure was standard. Almost no one talked ...
SCI FemalePrimateSexuality CROP original original

Female promiscuity a pragmatic approach to survival

Eric Michael Johnson | Slate | 
New research suggests that female primates seek out multiple sexual partners as an evolutionary strategy and opportunistically shift that strategy ...

Female promiscuity just makes sense, evolutionarily

Eric Michael Johnson | Slate | 
Ever since Darwin there had been an assumption among evolutionary biologists that females were coy and choosy in their sexual ...
e coli

Genetics of the human gut microbiome might be the next big thing

Brian Palmer | Slate | 
Even genetically similar individuals play host to vastly different communities of gut bacteria, a study says--a reminder of how little ...
Slate year

Who deserves the Nobel for sequencing the human genome?

Laura Helmuth | Slate | 
There's a political angle to having the 10th anniversary celebration for the human genome in 2013: it implies the NIH ...
david

How personal genomics is like Michelangelo’s David

David Dobbs | Slate | 
Personal genomics is awash in stories of genetic discoveries that turned out to be weak or wrong, yet the field ...
herpes CROP promovar mediumlarge

Study uses herpes virus to track human migration across the globe

Joshua Keating | Slate | 
The genomic analysis of different strains of the herpes virus reveals migration patterns of early humans ...
baby slate thinkstock

Project BabySeq to test how knowing your genome from birth changes your life

Carl Zimmer | Slate | 
Brigham and Women’s Hospital's Robert Green wants to know how having your complete genome sequenced at birth changes the course ...
Robert Neubecker slate

How do traits trickle down from grandparents to grandchildren? Partially by chance.

Razib Khan | Slate | 
Personal genome sequencing allows us to take a closer look at inheritance and highlights the situations in which genetic and ...
BonD Shutterstock

Does finding cancer mutations lead to cures?

Jessica Wapner | Slate | 
We don't have drugs to treat most cancer mutations. So how does hunting for mutations help? ...
CROP promovar mediumlarge

Using the Human Genome Project as a model for scientific success

Virginia Hughes | Slate | 
Obama should take a lesson from the Human Genome Project if he wants his ambitious brain-mapping project to succeed ...
DNA purification

The delicious, religious debate over junk DNA

Sam Kean | Slate | 
What exactly do "non-coding" regions of DNA do? As scientists sequence more genomes, we get closer to the answer to ...

The human genome’s mapped. Where are all the miracle drugs?

Brian Palmer | Slate | 
Sequencing the human genome seemed like a discovery so important that it couldn’t be overhyped—we had, after all, transcribed the ...

Mark Lynas on Philippines travesty: True story about who destroyed Golden Rice GM rice crop

Mark Lynas | Slate | 
Did you hear that a group of 400 angry farmers attacked and destroyed a field trial of genetically modified rice in the ...

A hippie’s defense of GE foods

Saul of-Hearts | Slate | 
I’m a vegetarian yoga instructor, and even I can tell the case against genetically modified food is overblown.  Let me ...
Watson Steve Jurvetson

James Watson weighs in against Myriad in gene patent debate

Torie Bosch | Slate | 
Last month, co-discoverer of DNA, James Watson, took a break making controversial remarks to file an amicus brief in the ...
FUT MonsantoProtest CROP rectangle large

Open-source GM: Separating Monsanto from modification

Frederick Kaufman | Slate | 
Open-source GMOs will "help fight climate change and stick one in Monsanto’s eye." ...

Shaky science of the gene patent ruling

Noam Prywes | Slate | 
The following is an edited excerpt.  In a unanimous ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court held that patenting a gene violates Section ...
SCI dna CROP original original

Personal genomics and accidental paternity tests

Daniel Engber | Slate | 
What happens when your 23andMe results reveal that your brother is your uncle and your father isn't your father? ...

Can China really breed a crop of genetically selected geniuses?

Will Oremus | Slate | 
The following is an edited excerpt. What if science offered a way to stack the odds in favor of a ...

Why collecting DNA from criminals won’t help solve crimes

Brandon L. Garrett, Erin Murphy | Slate | 
The following is an excerpt. [When it comes to solving crime] bigger is better. Add arrestee profiles to the database ...
MEDEX DNASequence CROP rectangle large

It’s time to stop obsessing about the dangers of genetic information

Virginia Hughes | Slate | 
The personal genomics horse has bolted, yet many members of the medical community are still trying to shut the barn ...

Leading anti-GMO activist’s confession: I was completely wrong to oppose GMOs

Torie Bosch | Slate | 
If you fear genetically modified food, you may have Mark Lynas to thank. By his own reckoning, British environmentalist helped ...

Food movement needs to follow the money, not waste time on labels

Frederick Kaufman | Slate | 
Over the past several years I have spent a great deal of time in high-security, limited-access genetic modification laboratories. While ...
glp menu logo outlined

Newsletter Subscription

* indicates required
Email Lists