Author Posts Archive:
Jonathan Moreno
A large set of questions for 21st century neural and behavioral science has come into focus, and they will play a significant role in both national intelligence operations and in relations within a globalized scientific community.
The contemporary scientific community is a complex adaptive system woven among researchers across the globe. But the rules of the system tend to block scientists in poor nations from participating. A scientific system of the future would ignore national borders and solve the problems of everyday life.
Just over a year ago, we launched
Science Progress. Our goal was to provide a forum for progressive science policy, a venue in which those concerned about the future of the country could assess the current state of science in America.
Crippling our nation’s future economic competitiveness and military preparedness by crimping scientific learning and denigrating authoritative science puts our nation at risk.
The opening of the Beijing Olympics this Friday has provided another occasion for much public reflection on the ethics of sports doping. It is not hard to imagine that betting pools will be created not only on the number of medals won in this Olympiad, but also on the number of medals withdrawn due to doping rules violations.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has played a remarkably important role in America’s post-World War II history, yet few Americans are even aware that there is such a thing. In a recent report called “OSTP 2.0,” the Woodrow Wilson Center has published recommendations for reforms in the management of U.S. science policy.
The impetus for
Science Progress is the sense within the scientific community that, at many levels, American science policy has lost its way.
Anyone who has ever parented a 13-year-old human female knows this already: There is a sarcasm neural system, and its appearance must be associated with early adolescence. So far only the first assertion has been confirmed by neuroscience.
Presidents and candidates for the office voluntarily release their medical records. But with advances in screening and treatment for many kinds of medical conditions, how do we know we’re getting the full story on the health of the Commander-In-Chief? (And do we want it?)
The British parliament has passed a bill that authorizes inserting genetic material from humans into cow eggs in order to study diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
In a Washington Post column, former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson takes on claims that the administration has engaged in a “war on science.” He asserts that, “for the most part, these accusations are a political ploy.” Considering his qualifying phrase it seems that some of them are not ploys. Disappointingly, Gerson does not tell us which ones. Instead, he makes a careless historical argument to support his claim claim that liberalism threatens human equality.
Last week, at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania researchers announced that they had used a genetically engineered virus to introduce a gene into the retinas of young adults with a form of congenital blindness that has no treatment, Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA).
Amid the premature hype about induced pluripotent stem cells (hyped by everyone but the scientists who did the work themselves), the unique characteristics of embryonic stem cells as platforms for learning about human disease can too easily be lost. An important new study should help correct this oversight.
Researchers at Newcastle University in England report that they have created embryos with the DNA from three people: a sperm donor, an egg donor, and a second female donor whose contribution to the embryo is a packet of genes that lie outside the egg’s nucleus, called mitchochondria. If adopted in the U.S., the procedure could test FDA authority over
in vitro reproductive research.
Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland have succeeded in synthesizing the complete genome of a bacterium,
Mycoplasma genitalium. If the stitched DNA can be inserted into a cell that then replicates, it will appear to have met the criteria for the first “artificial life” form.
A San Diego company has announced that it has been able to obtain embryo-like bodies by depositing the nucleus of a human skin cell into a human egg cell that has had its nucleus removed. The process is technically known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) or, more simply, nuclear transfer, and popularly known as cloning.
Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology reports that it has grown embryonic stem cells from one cell of an 8-cell embryo left over in a fertility clinic and donated for research, without doing apparent harm to the remaining embryo. If the technique is successful the stem cell lines produced should qualify for federal research funding under President Bush’s policy.
James A. Thomson and Alan I. Leshner issued a stinging response to those who would claim that the Bush administration’s stem cell policy encouraged the research that led to induced Pluripotent Cells; they call the work “a breakthrough achieved despite political restrictions.”
The announcement that researchers can reprogram skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells is a triumph, but the discovery has implications beyond the creation of pluripotent cells.
In the Minor Cosmic Irony department, the same day that
The New York Times reported the monkey cloning story on the front page, back in obituaries the paper reported the passing of Ira Levin, the novelist whose
The Boys From Brazil became a fairly successful film.
The onrush of new genetic information that appears to reflect differences in various characteristics that are statistically associated with continents of origin means that we have special reason to be alert to that data’s misuse.
Some bioethics and health policy wonks argue that state-based stem cell research initiatives stimulated by the Bush administration’s limits on federal funding show the virtues of federalism. But NJ voters rejected a $450 million bond issue for stem cell research, in spite of Gov. Jon Corzine’s support.
October 4 marked the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, and as we leave that milestone behind, 21st-century America needs to prepare for the century of science and engineering. One pathway is adoption of a new National Defense Education Act.
In an interview with the magazine Medline Plus, NIH director Dr. Elias Zerhouni repeats his call for more embryonic stem cell research. While the Administration claims to agree, White House rhetoric seems to imply that scientists cannot make ethical decisions.
Researchers at Stanford University appear to have developed a blood test that can predict the onset of diagnosable Alzheimer’s Disease with up to 90 percent accuracy. If the technique is confirmed and does become widely available before effective interventions, it is sure to spark another chapter in an ongoing discussion about the wisdom of such predictive power.
Joseph Romm, climate advocate, on security through environmental peace, climate as a moral issue, and the bravery of scientists.
Our new publication embraces the best of American scientific and political thought.
