The National Cancer Institute funds a lot of important research aimed at treating cancer, but some experts would characterize very little of it as transformative work. Gina Kolata’s article in the Sunday New York Times describes a system geared towards [...]
GENOMICS
Policy must protect not just genetic information itself, but also access to care that is critical for prevention, early detection, and treatment—and to the support systems that help individuals care for themselves and their families when serious illness strikes.
According to the recent report from the United States Global Change Research Program, rising greenhouse gas emissions will damage human health and welfare in regions across the country. Among the many changes climate change will bring are more frequent heat [...]
The Food and Drug Administration Transparency Task Force held the first of its two public meetings for public recommendations on how to increase transparency in decision making yesterday. At the meeting, Kristi Zonno, Director of Genetics and Health Policy at [...]
SCIENCE, CULTURED
The Waxman-Markey bill’s progress to a first historic vote hasn’t been pretty—but it has been progress.
Federal funding for biomedical research saves lives. Not only that, but investment in research through the National Institutes of Health stimulates the economy by helping people stay healthy and productive. So says a new report published yesterday in the Proceedings [...]
WONK LAB PODCAST
Will access to our own genetic information make us healthier? That’s the idea, but there’s a lot to learn as we share and interpret it. Meanwhile, questions remain about proper oversight of an industry that blurs the line between consumer and research participant.
Maybe you remember this cartoon. It won the Union of Concerned Scientists 2007 Science Idol competition for editorial cartoons about scientific integrity. At the time, the Bush administration was actively diluting, distorting, downplaying, or denying scientific research on global climate [...]
ENVIRONMENT
Better management and conservation efforts are needed to stave off a worsening water crisis.
The latest report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program is a comprehensive overview of climate change science, but it is also a clear warning about how global warming will make life harder for millions of Americans. The agricultural sector [...]
Last week, the White House sent letters to the members of the President’s Council on Bioethics informing them that their services were no longer needed. According to a report today from Nicholas Wade in The New York Times, a spokesperson [...]
Abel Real attributes his transformation from likely high school dropout to nursing student at East Carolina University to classroom technology. Real, a self-proclaimed success story from poverty-stricken Greenville, North Carolina, shared his experience with a school laptop program that introduced [...]
SCIENCE, CULTURED
The latest report from the Global Change Research Program tells us a lot about climate science, but it also tells us a lot about a government that is finally managing science for the benefit of its citizens.
ENVIRONMENT
Climate change knits energy and water policy together—a fact western states discover as reservoirs drop and rivers dwindle. The newly confirmed head of the Bureau, Michael Connor, steps into a job that no longer focuses on building dams, but now centers on river restoration and climate change adaptation.
Is pathbreaking science the product of interdisciplinary groups or the interdisciplinary thinking of foresighted individuals? In a commentary in PLoS Computational Biology, Sean Eddy, a Howard Hughes investigator, argues that “roadmap” thinking from the National Institutes of Health for building [...]
BIOETHICS
Advances in genomics may yield profound medical, scientific, and social advances. But if we are not careful, commercial and forensic applications may resuscitate harmful ideas about race.
A flood of grant applications for Recovery Act funds, a heap of comments on the proposed stem cell policy, and feedback on how to manage conflicts of interest among researchers—here’s a look at some of the key numbers related to [...]
Getting a piece of the biotechnology industry to boost a state economy is a great idea, but it’s complicated. Successfully incubating a regional biotech cluster requires more than building million-dollar laboratories and hoping top researchers appear, Shaila Dewin reports in [...]
AGRICULTURE
We need not be shy about expressing our ethical predilections in the realm of caring for animals but we should be cautious in presuming that those predilections are supported by science.
Salmonella outbreaks from peanuts and tomatoes are scary enough, but consider the repercussions of contaminated medications people take several times a day. The Food and Drug Administration reported that 95 Americans died from ingesting tainted blood-thinning medication last year. The [...]
Science Progress and American Progress's Doing What Works project teamed up to produce a set of policy proposals that the Obama administration and Congress can adopt to reinvest in the building blocks of American science, innovation, and economic competitiveness. Read the overview of the five reports.
Science Progress proceeds from the propositions that scientific inquiry is among the finest expressions of human excellence, that it is a crucial source of human flourishing, a critical engine of economic growth, and must be dedicated to the common good. Scientific inquiry entails global responsibilities. It should lead to a more equitable, safer, and healthier future for all of humankind.