“We are very grateful to have a president who respects science,” said Director Francis Collins this morning, addressing staff and leaders of the National Institutes of Health. Collins was introducing the man he referred to as “our scientist in chief,” [...]
More Americans know about synthetic biology, according to a survey from the Wilson Center Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. Some 22 percent of adults indicate they have heard a lot or some about synthetic biology—that’s up from only 9 percent last [...]
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
With a bold investment of federal resources into clinician education during their academic training years and throughout their careers, we can improve reproductive health care.
INTERNET
At the end of the month, the agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and the U.S. Department of Commerce expires. Hopefully, not much will change.
So who is speaking here, an ethicist, a scientist, or a policymaker? It’s very hard for me to have a conversation about these issues, because people adopt incredibly defensive postures…The scientists on one side and civil-society organizations on the other. [...]
INNOVATION
Investing in research and innovation can unleash Americans’ talents for discovery and entrepreneurship, says Congressman Holt.
Multiple blue-ribbon reports from the past few years have concluded what hundreds of post-doc researchers know: landing that first NIH grant is a daunting task. So daunting, in fact, that many younger scientists conclude that they’d rather move on to [...]
The National Institutes of Health announced the launch of a new website this morning where researchers can submit approval requests for human embryonic stem cell lines. Accepted lines will be eligible for use in federally funded research. The site is [...]
PUBLIC HEALTH
Office of Management and Budget review can be a good thing, but not when it duplicates peer review and delays generation of critical pubic health data.
Francis Collins took the reigns of the National Institutes of Health as director in August. Shortly thereafter, he invited a Kathy Hudson, a former colleague from the National Human Genome Research Institute, to serve as his chief of staff, a [...]
FOOD SAFETY
Fifty years after we figured out how to keep astronauts’ food from making them sick, the time has come to commit to keeping the rest of us as safe.
Researchers running clinical trials are required to submit information to the NIH-run ClinicalTrials.gov database. But two recent reports indicate that compliance with this transparency mandate is spotty at best for trials that lead to published biomedical research. What’s more, many [...]
HEALTH CARE
There are promising developments heralding the arrival of personalized medicine, a new medical field where the results of genetic tests or other biomarker assessments are used to tailor drugs and treatments to individual patients.
INNOVATION CLUSTERS
The federal government can assume a vital role in which it frames critical national challenges, facilitates the flow of information and expertise to and between regions, and helps finance, in a competitive and leveraged fashion, valuable activities that innovation clusters would otherwise be unable to undertake.
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
In spite of the issues raised by the birth of Nayda Suleman’s octuplets, we should not lose sight of the pioneering IVF research that laid the ground work for a scientific triumph that has helped millions of infertile couples for over 30 years.
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.