Top 6 Five
We could use CRISPR to cure mental illness. Should we?
Would you want to be cured of a disorder that most people consider debilitating if given the opportunity? Cancer? Sure ...
Viewpoint: Scotland’s Green Party leads an “obstinate and visionless” opposition to sustainable gene edited crops while UK and Europe edge towards embracing agricultural science
In recent months, the pace of global policy developments in relation to gene editing has often been hard to keep ...
Viewpoint: EU gene-editing regulations requiring traceability and labeling to ‘protect co-existence’ with organic crops could stop innovation in its tracks
Major new developments in gene editing are now taking place with increasing frequency, as the world looks to harness the ...
Growing more ancient grain millet could help American farmers adapt to climate change
The Midwest is known for its rows and rows of corn and soybeans that uniformly cover the landscape ...
Viewpoint: Simplistic anti-agrobiotech narrative — ‘Companies lie; activists are outraged; regulations are tightened further; companies lie again… Wash, rinse, repeat’
Today’s narrative has a simplistic view: Companies lie; activists are outraged; regulations are tightened further; companies lie again… Wash, rinse, ...
New wave of migration: Transgender care crackdown prompts surge in families fleeing Missouri, Florida, Texas and other states
Hal Dempsey wanted to “escape Missouri.” Arlo Dennis is “fleeing Florida.” The Tillison family “can’t stay in Texas.” ...
Prominent international tech-investors throw support behind vaccine-rejectionist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s campaign for Dem nomination
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the latest scion of the Kennedy clan to seek the presidency, has a ...
Unleashing the swarm: Battling the global mosquito menace and defending public health
The Greek Ministry of Health has issued a stark warning: rapidly multiplying, stealthily infiltrating and carrying a deadly payload of ...
Will science ever be able to create an artificial womb?
In the coming years, the obstacles to ectogenesis --development outside of a mother from fertilization to full-term infancy-- will be ...
Viewpoint: Genetics of COVID — Research into why some people never got the virus should explore genetic predisposition to long COVID
Genetics might explain why some people have never had COVID – but we shouldn’t be too focused on finding out ...
Humans have been genetically modifying crops for thousands of years. Here are some examples of what some popular foods used to look like.
Ever wonder how your food would look and taste if humans had not genetically modified them over the course of ...
Viewpoint: How Russia teams up with US environmental activists to promote disinformation about the crop biotechnology science
As the now year-old war in Ukraine continues to unravel, so do the stories revealing the ruthlessness with which the ...
From dirt to the dinner table: Tracking how foods make the journey across a massive globally-connected food system
I’m a naturally curious person, but sometimes life (read: kids) takes me off course. But recently, I seized the opportunity for ...
New wave of neuroscience: Tech companies experimenting with controversial brain-focused products?
Consumer-facing neurotechnology could make computers more accessible — and pose a new kind of threat to data privacy ...
Viewpoint: How to interpret crude racial categories that have historically defined human biological variation
Racial categories are crude maps imposed on human biological variation. How do scientists square them with genetics? ...
Viewpoint: Social media amplifies misinformation — No, modern pesticides are not the driver of insect declines and no, they are not poisoning us
The aim of the European Seed series on Myths, Fake News, Misinformation and Disinformation is to dive deeper, taking a closer ...
Viewpoint: Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse ‘devalues both archaeology and Indigenous heritage’
Author Graham Hancock is back, defending his well-trodden theory about an advanced global ice age civilisation, which he connects in ...
Viewpoint: Anti-chemical film polemic “Into the Weeds” is wrong on the facts but a tort lawyer’s dream. Did lawyers and the organic industry fund it?
The organic food industry lobby was in full swing in Brussels with their StopGlyphosateWeek. A collective of NGOs ran an ...
Did Neanderthals’ meat-eating habits contribute to their demise?
Understanding our ancestors’ diets may reveal critical clues about their evolutionary success or failure ...
Viewpoint: Modern humanity is only 300,000 years along. Does that explain why we screw up so much?
How can humans have gotten so far, but still have so many problems? We are a young species. We are ...
Agriculture and climate change: Taking the best of all farming systems could tip the carbon scale in the right direction
Agriculture contributes a significant portion of the world's climate-changing greenhouse gases. In turn, changes in climate will reduce agricultural yields ...
Sweet genes: Why so many people are ‘practically programmed’ to love sugar
The sweetness of sugar is one of life’s great pleasures. People’s love for sweet is so visceral, food companies lure ...
Humans are ill equipped to handle freezing cold — so why do so many of us live in chilly climates?
Humans are a tropical species. We have lived in warm climates for most of our evolutionary history, which might explain ...
Viewpoint: ‘Only 60 harvests remaining on Earth’? Environmentalist exaggerations obscure dramatic advances in biotechnology-boosted agriculture
A little over 200 years ago, one of the noted economists and philosophers of the day, Thomas Malthus published an essay ...
Viewpoint: ChatGPT gets a lot wrong or garbled. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful.
It doesn’t take much to get ChatGPT to make a factual mistake ...
Analysis: US public health officials scramble to restore trust in science and vaccines after two years of COVID controversies
By the summer of 2021, Phil Maytubby, deputy CEO of the health department here, was concerned to see the numbers ...
How green are biofuels? Does corn-derived ethanol promote sustainability?
Tyler Lark, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, grew up among farms, working on a neighbor’s dairy, vaguely aware ...
