Bioethics.net

October 29, 2012 5:50 pm

Red Wine Compound May Not Help Healthy Women (WebMD Health News)

New research raises doubts about the health benefits of the much-hyped red wine compound resveratrol.  In a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, healthy women in their late 50s and early 60s who took resveratrol supplements showed no improvement in factors linked to developing diabetes and heart disease.  The finding suggests that resveratrol supplements do not benefit healthy people.

September 5, 2012 7:41 pm

Former Harvard professor Marc Hauser fabricated, manipulated data, US says (Boston.com)

Marc Hauser, a prolific scientist and popular psychology professor who last summer resigned from Harvard University, had fabricated data, manipulated results in multiple experiments, and described how studies were conducted in factually incorrect ways, according to the findings of a federal research oversight agency posted online Wednesday.  The report provides the greatest insight yet into the problems that triggered a three-year internal university investigation that concluded in 2010 that Hauser, a star professor and public intellectual, had committed eight instances of scientific misconduct. The document, which will be published in the Federal Register Thursday, found six cases in which Hauser engaged in research misconduct in work supported by the National Institutes of Health. One paper was retracted and two were corrected, and other problems were found in unpublished work.

August 22, 2012 5:04 pm

Stem Cell Trial for Autism Launches in U.S. (Scientific American)

A clinical trial being conducted by the Sutter Neuroscience Institute in Sacramento, California to address this situation began recruiting participants today for a highly experimental stem cell therapy for autism. The institute plans to find 30 autistic children between ages 2 and 7 with cord blood banked at the privately-run Cord Blood Registry, located about 100 miles west of the institute.

August 2, 2012 1:05 pm

Humanizing the Human Genome Project (projectsyndicate.org)

Since the human genome was first sequenced in 2000, genome science has accelerated at a remarkable rate. Rapid advances in DNA-sequencing technology mean that affordable decoding of the human genome is not far away. In fact, human genomes could be sequenced for as little as $1,000 in the next few years. Unfortunately, the current biomedical research establishment is entirely unprepared for such a scenario.

July 29, 2012 9:31 am

Synthetic life: the revolution begins (Financial Times)

July 18, 2012 10:11 am

The Meaning of Life — According to Geneticist J. Craig Venter (TIME)

A profile in Forbes by Matthew Herper, dubbed Venter “the Bono of genetics,” sniping that “he warps the reality field around genetic research through sheer force of ego and showmanship.”  And yet Venter endures. Say what you will about his synthetic bacterium, no one else has achieved such a feat. And he is pressing on with other projects, more recently engineering a type of algae that is yellow rather than dark green, enabling light to pass through it so it can grow in greater density — providing what he hopes will be an ideal raw material for biofuel.

July 16, 2012 9:29 am

Baby in a Box? (The American Thinker)

The rise of technology and research in the 21^st century has brought about advances in biology and medicine, specifically in genetics.  Anyone who has read the excellent cautionary tale Bloodline, by James Rollins, will wonder about the balance among morality, fate, and science, as well as how far science should go.  American Thinker decided to go beyond Bloodline‘s fascinating adventure story to explore the narrative of genetics by interviewing some experts as well as the author, James Rollins.

July 13, 2012 1:16 pm

DNA-Sequencing Factory Could Be The Future If It Survives The Present (Forbes)

“In the research market our advantages are pretty limited,” says Reid. “We have higher quality. But in the research market that doesn’t matter very much. Researchers can work with lower quality data. That’s really been a startling revelation to us that despite the community saying quality is everything quality really isn’t everything.”

July 10, 2012 4:39 pm

Searching genomic data faster (MIT News)

In 2001, the Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics announced that after 10 years of work at a cost of some $400 million, they had completed a draft sequence of the human genome. Today, sequencing a human genome is something that a single researcher can do in a couple of weeks for less than $10,000.

June 22, 2012 11:46 am

The Agony of Banning Ecstasy (Slate)

One of the things I find very disturbing about the current approach to drugs, which is simply prohibition without necessarily any full understanding of harms, is that we lose sight of the fact that these drugs may well give us insights into areas of science that need to be explored and may give us new opportunities for treatment.