Virginia Hughes
Scientists, fearing safety, silent as Planned Parenthood attacked for sale of fetal issue
In recent weeks, it’s been nearly impossible not to hear people — presidential candidates, attorneys general, lawmakers, pundits, outraged relatives ...
Are too many newborns receiving costly, unnecessary intensive care?
More and more newborns are going to the neonatal intensive care unit. Between 2007 and 2012, NICU admission rates in ...
Is Facebook overstepping privacy boundaries with DNA testing app?
A new medical research study aims to screen the genes of at least 20,000 people. Part of a surging tide ...
For some pregnant women, prenatal genetic test results in cancer diagnosis
MaterniT21 PLUS was the first noninvasive prenatal test (NIPT) to hit the market, in October 2011, and Sequenom has sold ...
For hypersomniacs, no amount of sleep is enough
For most teenagers, getting out of bed in the morning is a drag. But when Lloyd Johnson was 13 years ...
Why we see faces in inanimate objects
Most people are obsessed with faces. We see faces everywhere, even in things that are most definitely not faces. The most ...
Dangers of exaggerating premature scientific findings
In 2011, Petroc Sumner of Cardiff University and his colleagues published a brain imaging study with a provocative result: Healthy men ...
Autism research plagued by major flaw
I’ve written a lot of stories about autism research, and I’d say one of the biggest scientific developments in the ...
Is a dead body a person?
On the night of July 19, 1916, halfway through the First World War, troops from Australia and Great Britain attacked ...
When does personhood begin?
I went to a Catholic high school, where I was taught in religion class that life begins at conception. I ...
Exposure to mother’s immune response in utero may lead to neurological problems
Monkeys exposed in utero to their mother’s immune response to a mock infection show inflammation in their brains four years later. Researchers ...
Woman’s quest to uncover family history using DNA tests upturns her life
In 2008 the story’s protagonist, 56-year-old Cheryl Whittle from rural Virginia, heard about DNA testing on Oprah. Just for kicks she ...
Epigenetics may explain Neanderthals’ extinction
Late last year, scientists unveiled the complete genome of a female Neanderthal whose 130,000-year-old toe bone had been found in a cave in Siberia ...
Justice requires that forensic sciences be standardized to protect the innocent
Santae Tribble is one of more than 350 people who have been exonerated by DNA testing after going to prison ...
Girls who never grow up offer clues for aging research
An exceptionally rare genetic disorder causes a handful of girls to never age. Could they offer clues to help us ...
Extinguishing the memory of fear, with a drug that changes the epigenome
A new drug changes the chemical markers that attach to DNA, making it possible to treat even old traumatic memories ...
My risk-benefit ratio for personal genetics
Personal genomics is going to play a role in future medical care. If 23andMe can't provide medical results to customers, ...
Comparison of aging patterns sheds light on evolutionary purpose of aging
A new comparison of aging patterns of humans and 45 other species reveals that some species live much longer than ...
Do animals inherit basic memories through sperm, epigenetics?
New research from scientists at Emory University suggests that mice inherit specific smell memories from their fathers, even when the offspring have ...
Using the Human Genome Project as a model for scientific success
Obama should take a lesson from the Human Genome Project if he wants his ambitious brain-mapping project to succeed ...
How having three parents leads to disease-free kids
This summer, government health officials in the United Kingdom made headlines by announcing that they will let scientists create babies ...
Uprooted: The dangers of DNA testing
As genetic database grow, they become increasingly more useful, but it also raises the looming specter of privacy concerns for ...
Clinics unroll genome tests for undiagnosed disorders
Over the past few years, teams of scientists have been finding genetic glitches related to a wide variety of disorders by sequencing exomes, ...
So science might have gotten it wrong… Now what?
The following is an edited excerpt. This week I learned about an unfolding scientific debate that’s got me thinking about ...
The jumping gene: Friend or foe?
The following is an edited excerpt. In the 1940s, geneticist Barbara McClintock of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York wanted ...
The womb’s strange epigenome
The following is an excerpt. This week, a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesdescribes a little-known feature ...
It’s time to stop obsessing about the dangers of genetic information
The personal genomics horse has bolted, yet many members of the medical community are still trying to shut the barn ...