Regular old selective breeding can create monsters like the industrial turkey, giant with grotesquely over-sized breasts and muscles. This raises the obvious ethical question: Just because we can breed this turkey, should we? The turkey lives a short, miserable life but we get an affordable, healthy source of protein. It is obvious which choice we’ve made as a society, but…
A massive research project in California is beginning to show how genes, health habits and the environment can interact to cause diseases. The project’s goal is to find new ways to identify people at risk before they develop problems like heart disease, cancer and diabetes. 100,000 individual members of Kaiser Permanente’s health plan agreed to share their health and genetic information…
A company called Poo Prints claims Dallas and other cities can find irresponsible dog owners by lab testing feces. The company sells $29.95 DNA kits that come with a swab to take an oral sample from a pet that is then recorded in a world pet registry. Poo Prints sells $49.95 testing kits to sample dog waste, which can be matched…
A pair of whales that died after washing ashore in NZ turn out to be the world’s rarest whale, the spade-toothed whale. Although it looks similar to the Gray’s beaked whale, the spade-toothed can be identified in part by a black beak and dark-colored eye patch. But no one would have ever known this if not for DNA tests done on…
Robert Cook-Deegan (Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA) and colleagues explain that whole genome analysis has the potential to significantly improve medical care if utilized correctly, but say that interpreting variants of unknown significance can prove challenging. Private genetic databases run by companies, such as Myriad Genetics in the USA, contain important information that may be vital to interpreting such variants, but…
Excerpt: “Gender equality has been more of a national focus than usual in the United States over the past few months, thanks to the 2012 presidential election. But how does the United States stack up against other countries when it comes to said gender equality? According to the 2012 Global Gender Gap Report, released on October 23rd by the World Economic Forum,…