Who Decides What Scientific Research to Fund?
Today is the anniversary of the day in 1945 that Vannevar Bush submitted to President Truman his seminal report Science — The Endless Frontier. That report led to the creation of the National Science...
View ArticleRomney and Obama Debate Science Policy
This week, the Obama and Romney campaigns each submitted written responses to a set of 14 questions about science-related issues. The questions were posed by Science Debate, an organization originally...
View ArticleUpdate on Stem-Cell Lawsuit
Lost amid all the coverage of the conventions a few weeks back was a bit of news about stem-cell politics: On August 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the plaintiffs...
View ArticleThe Bioethics of Womb Transplants
Earlier this week, doctors in Sweden announced that they had performed two uterus transplants — the first time the procedure has been done with living donors. (A uterus collected from a deceased donor...
View ArticleScientists Turn Stem Cells into Sex Cells
This week, researchers working with mice reported in the journal Nature that they had successfully used stem cells to create oocytes (egg cells) for the first time. A similar approach could presumably...
View ArticleChris Murphy and the Audacity of Stem-Cell Hype
In Sunday’s debate between the two contenders for the Senate seat that Joe Lieberman is vacating, Democratic candidate representative Chris Murphy touted his support for human embryonic-stem-cell...
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Tea, Tobacco, and Science
Tea Party members rally in Springfield, Ill., April 15, 2009.A small exchange at a House subcommittee hearing this past Tuesday provided the occasion for a useful lesson about the proper relationship...
View ArticleMontana Senate Defeats Assisted-Suicide Prohibition
On Monday, the Montana state senate voted 27–23 to defeat a bill that would have definitively outlawed doctor-assisted suicide in the state. The legislation was first introduced in February as a...
View ArticleFor First Time, Stem Cells Created Through Cloning — Why It's Even More...
There’s major news in the world of biomedical research today: For what seems to be the first time, scientists have successfully cloned human embryos. In a paper published online in the journal Cell,...
View ArticleCorrecting Cloning Confusion
There has been a great deal of confusion and obfuscation surrounding the news this week that scientists have cloned human embryos for the first time. Embryonic stem-cell research advocates have been...
View ArticleJust What Is Wrong with Human Cloning?
If we weren’t in the middle of a perfect storm of national political controversies, last week’s announcement from Oregon of the first cloned human embryo might well be dominating the airwaves. Even so,...
View ArticleUpdate on Stem-Cell Lawsuit
Lost amid all the coverage of the conventions a few weeks back was a bit of news about stem-cell politics: On August 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the plaintiffs...
View ArticleThe Bioethics of Womb Transplants
Earlier this week, doctors in Sweden announced that they had performed two uterus transplants -- the first time the procedure has been done with living donors. (A uterus collected from a deceased donor...
View ArticleScientists Turn Stem Cells into Sex Cells
This week, researchers working with mice reported in the journal Nature that they had successfully used stem cells to create oocytes (egg cells) for the first time. A similar approach could presumably...
View ArticleChris Murphy and the Audacity of Stem-Cell Hype
In Sunday’s debate between the two contenders for the Senate seat that Joe Lieberman is vacating, Democratic candidate representative Chris Murphy touted his support for human embryonic-stem-cell...
View ArticleEnd of the Road for the Stem-Cell Lawsuit
This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in the long-running court casechallenging the Obama administration’s policy of funding research on embryonic stem cells. The legal...
View ArticleTea, Tobacco, and Science
A small exchange at a House subcommittee hearing this past Tuesday provided the occasion for a useful lesson about the proper relationship between science and politics. Dr. Francis Collins, the...
View ArticleMontana Senate Defeats Assisted-Suicide Prohibition
On Monday, the Montana state senate voted 27--23 to defeat a bill that would have definitively outlawed doctor-assisted suicide in the state. The legislation was first introduced in February as a...
View ArticleFor First Time, Stem Cells Created Through Cloning — Why It's Even More...
There’s major news in the world of biomedical research today: For what seems to be the first time, scientists have successfully cloned human embryos. In a paper published online in the journal Cell,...
View ArticleCorrecting Cloning Confusion
There has been a great deal of confusion and obfuscation surrounding the news this week that scientists have cloned human embryos for the first time. Embryonic stem-cell research advocates have been...
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