Dr. Belinda Martineau is the Principal Editor at the UC Davis Genome Center. In an excerpt from the article, Martineau states: “Once scientists have told the truth, warts and all (and genetic engineering has its share of warts), society as a whole must decide how to use and control the technology based on that science. Controlling technology, Feynman said, “is something not…
Geneticists from Oregon Health & Science University in Portland reported Wednesday(10/24) that they had crossed a threshold long considered off-limits: They have made changes in human DNA that can be passed down from one generation to the next. NPR has the story
Excerpt: Colman Chadam, an 11-year-old California boy, has been ordered to transfer from his current school to another one miles away because of his genetic makeup. Now, his parents are taking the issue to court. Colman carries the genetic mutations for cystic fibrosis, a noncontagious but incurable and life-threatening disease. Despite the gene’s presence, the Jordan Middle School student in Palo…
The new research from York University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests that the reason worker bees are such a highly skilled and specialized workforce is that the genes controlling their behavior are re-shuffled frequently, helping evolution build a better bee. redOrbit has the full story
Our national “obesity epidemic” is spawning disease, shortening life spans and bankrupting our health care system. Or is it? Could our negative attitudes about fatness-a disease that people bring upon themselves through sloth and gluttony-be more hazardous to our mental and physical well being than excess weight? Huffington Post covers the full story
This article addresses the controversy surrounding an 107-page paper by Oded Galor of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and Quamrul Ashraf of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts that is scheduled to appear soon in American Economic Review. The paper argues that there are strong links between estimates of genetic diversity for 145 countries and per-capita incomes, even after accounting…