Tag: Scientific Research
A Simpler Life: Synthetic Biological Experiments Talia Dan-Cohen Cornell University Press, 2021. 174 pages. First, take a self-consciously self-aggrandizing area of bioengineering,…
More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus causing the disease remains uncertain. The predominant theory is that its emergence in human populations…
Cover Arrowsmith, Pocket Books, 1944 Edition Sinclair Lewis’s novel Arrowsmith, published in 1925 to critical and public acclaim (the book was awarded the Pulitzer prize, although Lewis refus…
Background: Disease stratification practices have long been used as a means to produce and make sense of cancer, distinguishing ‘types’, tumour development stages, and even patients’ sociode…
Recently, physicians, public health experts, and anthropologists (among others) have pointed to a prevalence of gender, class, race, age, and ethnic bias in biomedical research and the specific…
In late November, He Jiankui, a scientist in China, announced that he had created the first “CRISPR babies,” meaning that he performed germ-line genome edits on human embryos, which…
The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome Jenny Reardon University of Chicago Press, 2017, 304 pages. Genetics: A Situated View How enduring is the…
Through my work in African laboratories I am regularly made aware of the challenging equipment shortages faced by research laboratories in many low/middle-income countries (LMICs). This extends far…
As I’m sure many of you saw, this month started with the successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, giving a boost (sorry) to privatized space travel, and providing…
Recently, a number of news outlets reported the results of a new research study on the correlation between hormonal contraceptives and breast cancer. The study analyzed data from…
Nothing seems to be more self-evident than gender differences, and yet when we have to establish what these differences are, things seem to become complicated. Is it the…
Many of you may have marched (or chosen not to march) at last week’s March for Science. I marched with my partner and young son here in Coimbatore,…
I assume everyone is, like me, tired of (and stressed out about) the US election, so let’s take a break from that to take a quick look around…
The web roundup for this month is a sequel to last month’s roundup on Mind, Consciousness, and Artificial Intelligence. I will address another interface between machines and minds,…
Carlo Caduff’s The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger (University of California Press, 2015) is a story of the influenza pandemic that never…
This month’s web roundup comes through a bit late – paradoxically- due to technical difficulties (my computer died!). Although I will be able to recover most of my…
As the year winds up, many publications around the web are doing “highlights of 2015”-type lists, so I thought I’d compile some of these to give a bit…
This month it was hard not to pay attention to what was happening in the world of Pharma, where several cases came to light illustrating just how murky…
The capacity of individuals to imagine another’s perspective or personal agenda, and our own ability to feel anger, despondency or frustration in response to their pain and distress,…