Vox
Gene drives and other ‘out-of-the-box approaches’ can eradicate malaria by 2050, scientists say
“For too long, malaria eradication has been a distant dream, but now we have evidence that malaria can and should ...
‘Don’t try this at home’: New California law targets biohacking, do-it-yourself CRISPR
California wants to make it clear that tinkering with your own genes is a “don’t try this at home” sort ...
Nootropics and the quest to improve our brains through ‘barely regulated’ dietary supplements
It helped too that, as vague as the term “smart” is, “nootropics” is equally broad. It was coined by Romanian ...
9 questions about biohacking and the quest to upgrade the human body
As biohacking starts to appear more often in headlines, it’s worth getting clear on some of the fundamentals. Here are ...
Viewpoint: Fake autism treatments driven by fear and ignorance
NBC News recently published an exposé on the dangerous and all-too-common practice of orally and anally administering bleach-based treatments to ...
‘Third way’ agriculture: How technology, good judgement can save our food supply from climate change
Imagine waking up in a world that has become so hot and so crowded that most of what you eat ...
Sperm counts are falling. Here are 5 ways to boost male fertility
The concentration of sperm in semen, also known as sperm count, has halved in the West since the 1970s. The ...
How much did the Chinese government know about controversial CRISPR babies research?
When scientist He Jiankui announced he’d conducted an experiment that led to the birth of twin girls with CRISPR-edited genomes in November, ...
While Americans are ambivalent about plant-based ‘clean meat’ protein alternatives, Chinese and Indians are enthusiastic
Would you eat a burger grown from animal cells rather than a whole cow? What about a plant-based burger, once ...
DNA ancestry tests are not ‘crystal balls’—they’re approximations
Identical twins have virtually identical DNA. So you’d think if a set of twins both sent in a DNA sample ...
Fasting diets are soaring in popularity. Are they backed by science?
Over the past couple of decades, as dozens of diets and weight management schemes have come in and out of ...
Will we see illegal CRISPR IVF clinics in the US? Experts weigh in
The possibility of “CRISPR babies” became real [November 25], when a Chinese scientist stunned the world by announcing he’d used the gene-editing ...
Viewpoint: What ‘New Atheists’ get wrong about science and religion
New Atheism is a literary movement that sprung up in 2004, led by prominent authors like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, ...
Reading genes: How much of your future do they reveal?
The journal Nature Genetics recently published an enormous study demonstrating yet again how multiple sites on the genome can play a role ...
What is CRISPR? And why should you care?
If you haven’t heard of CRISPR yet, the short explanation goes like this: In the past six years, scientists have ...
Viewpoint: CRISPR crops have a chance to avoid the trust issues that plague GMOs
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on [July 18th] released a report on how to address the most pressing problems of American ...
Video: How gene drives could use ‘selfish’ genes to eradicate malaria
The invention of the CRISPR gene editing tool has injected new life into a line of research called gene drive ...
Genetically modified mosquitos could eliminate malaria, if we’re willing to take risk
[Kevin] Esvelt is a biologist at MIT and the first person to formulate a technology known as a CRISPR gene ...
Male birth control? Here are 3 methods headed our way
While a pill for men certainly isn’t coming to the pharmacy anytime soon, unfortunately, there is reason for (muted) hope ...
Harvard geneticist David Reich NY Times’ op-ed ignites debate over whether ‘races’ exist
On Monday morning, I woke up to a tweet from Sam Harris, the bestselling author and popular podcast host, referencing ...
Safer CRISPR? Cas13 version edits RNA, not DNA
CRISPR, while a major leap forward in gene editing, can still be a blunt instrument. There have been problems with ...
Biodiversity crisis? Humans may actually be creating more species than we’re killing
Chris Thomas … a professor of conservation biology at the University of York in the UK … does not deny that ...
9 reasons why IQ really matters
IQ is often dismissed as antiquated, misguided, or less important than personality traits. But according to Stuart Ritchie, an intelligence researcher ...
Perfect apple: Replicating Honeycrisp success to create new, tastier varieties
The Honeycrisp is a millennial apple born in the 1990s, after years of careful planning. It’s also considered the first ...
Linking genes to IQ could lead to treatment for Alzheimer’s, neurodegenerative diseases
[Recently], researchers announced [that] they’d found 40 genes that play a role in shaping human intelligence, bringing the total number of ...
Vaccines do not cause autism. Here’s what science says does
It doesn’t help that doctors have long struggled to explain what exactly causes autism if vaccines don’t — many medical ...
Did Bill Nye err when discussing Monsanto, GMOs in new Netflix series?
Bill Nye comes out swinging in the first season of Bill Nye Saves the World, his new Netflix series. ...
Cancer scientists fail to replicate key study results – for good reasons
The general principle [of replicating studies] is that if the results repeat, then the original results were correct and reliable ...
