Archive for August, 2009
Vaccines grown in cell cultures, virus-like particles that stimulate the immune system without threat of infection, and antibodies that could attack any flu strain are all promising routes to slowing pandemics.
In supporting health care reform, we can be good citizens and morally responsible neighbors, and still do right by those we love.
Sarah Arnquist, reporting for The New York Times, tells a moving personal story that captures the hope permeating some of the projects now breaking down barriers between patients, research participants, and scientists.
Her hook is the quest of Amy Farber, who found out in 2005 that she had LAM, a rare and fatal disease affecting women [...]
Washington, DC schools reopen this today, along with some Maryland districts, and officials and parents are preparing to keep influenza from returning to classrooms with students. The Washington Post reports that plans are underway for a large-scale immunization program, but there’s also a push to foster healthy habits that can stop the spread of the [...]
A recent discovery might open the door to an effective male contraceptive drug, a technology that could have been developed decades ago, were it not for social factors that enable women but not men to effectively regulate their fertility outside of sexual activity and without their partner’s participation or knowledge.
New guidelines from the NIH will let researchers expand on important research, and, presumably, allow them to stop color-coding equipment paid for by different funding sources.
The ethics of data selection, the potential conflicts of peer review, the “soft money lifestyle” of grant recipients, and other issues facing researchers.
Revolutions in economics, ecology and knowledge systems will alter the business model of today’s science parks. Here’s how it all might play out.
So what’s the appropriate progressive response to the recent under-the-radar attempts from conservatives to ban the creation of animal-human hybrids? Caricature.
There are compelling scientific arguments both for and against geoengineering our climate via ocean fertilization. But even if our best science indicates that ocean fertilization will succeed, there are clear ethical reasons to rule it out, as it can never meet with the scrutiny that most of us take to be emblematic of justified, right action.
Many genetic, reproductive, and biomedical technologies now in development pose new societal challenges, raising questions about how we understand and uphold social justice, human rights, and even our shared humanity.
If the Obama administration hopes to move a new bioethics commission beyond the culture wars that embroiled much of the Bush council’s work, substantial efforts will be necessary to bring together now-divided bioethicists for pragmatic discussion.
Chris Mooney joined us at the very beginning and has been contributing to Science Progress since we launched in October 2007. He’ll be taking a break for the next school year and will head to MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. In his “Temporary Last Column,” he looks back over two years of science [...]
Redressing the imbalance between research and outreach, between the creation of knowledge and its sharing.
Two financial crises—the dotcom meltdown and the current credit crisis—continue to inhibit the financing of young, innovative companies, requiring critical regulatory reform.
U.S. science education occurs in the context of an American culture that has very deep problems with science—problems that are manifested in many spheres other than the educational system, but are certainly reflected there, too.
Science matters, and so does science communication, argue the coauthors. And while advocacy and science are not always easy bedfellows, groups with antiscientific agendas put on awfully good briefings on Capitol Hill.
