Although facial recognition software proves to be useful in certain scenarios, what happens if this technology falls into the wrong hands. Researchers must recognize that unethical facial recognition practice is fundamentally dangerous.

“With the emergency use authorization process in a swirl of controversy, understanding the ethical dimensions of issuing it for a vaccine can provide clarity on the necessity of stringent guidelines from the FDA.”

Nursing homes have been overwhelmed by the pandemic and residents account for a fair share of cases world. “Recent studies suggest that for-profit ownership may have endangered residents by skimping on care, while funneling cash to owners and investors.”

Rebekah Jones was fired last month from her job at the Florida Department of Health, where she helped create a data portal about the state’s COVID-19 cases. Now, she has created a dashboard of her own.

An academic strike is planned for this week, alongside marches and demonstrations worldwide.

There’s a new war raging in health care, with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake and thousands of lives in the balance. The battle, pitting drug companies against doctors and patient advocates, is being fought over the unlikeliest of substances: human excrement.

The clash is over the future of fecal microbiota transplants, or F.M.T., a revolutionary treatment that has proved remarkably effective in treating Clostridioides difficile, a debilitating bacterial infection that strikes 500,000 Americans a year and kills 30,000.

The therapy transfers fecal matter from healthy donors into the bowels of ailing patients, restoring the beneficial works of the community of gut microbes that have been decimated by antibiotics. Scientists see potential for using these organisms to treat diseasesfrom diabetes to cancer.

At the heart of the controversy is a question of classification: Are the fecal microbiota that cure C. diff a drug, or are they more akin to organs, tissues and blood products that are transferred from the healthy to treat the sick? The answer will determine how the Food and Drug Administration regulates the procedure, how much it costs and who gets to profit.

A near-drowning had left the woman in a persistent vegetative state for nearly a decade. So when she went into labor a few days after Christmas, her caretakers were flummoxed.

On Dec. 29, with help from one of the facility’s nurses, the patient gave birth to a healthy baby boy, KPHO reported. The birth — and the sexual assault of a vulnerable individual that must have preceded it — has cast a harsh glare on conditions at a nonprofit organization that bills itself as a leading provider of health care for Phoenix’s medically fragile.

Six months after halting a study of moderate drinking that was underwritten by donations from the alcohol industry, the National Institutes of Health outlined a series of steps to prevent similar conflicts of interest and to safeguard the integrity of its research and its reputation.

In a report issued on Thursday, N.I.H. officials said its 27 institutes must evaluate all current research projects that receive private donor support for conflicts of interest of the kind that compromised the alcohol trial. The institute directors are to report their findings to Dr. Francis Collins, director of N.I.H., early next year.

It sounds like science fiction: A research program funded by the U.S. government plans to create virus-carrying insects that, released in vast numbers, could help crops fight threats such as pests, drought, or pollution. “Insect Allies,” as the $45 million, 4-year program is called, was launched in 2016 with little fanfare. But in a policy forum in this week’s issue of Science, five European researchers paint a far bleaker scenario.

Last month, NSF’s biology directorate announced that researchers could submit only one proposal a year in which they are listed as a principal investigator (PI) or co-PI. The cap applies only to the directorate’s three core tracks and excludes several other NSF programs from which many biologists receive support… But 70 scientists have signed onto a letter asking the agency to reconsider the new policy, which they also complain was adopted without any community input.