Author Posts Archive:
Michael Rugnetta
Yesterday, Michigan voters amended the state constitution to allow Michigan’s scientists to derive human embryonic stem cells without fear of criminal prosecution. The amendment will allow fertility patients to donate excess embryos from IVF clinics, a practice which up until now was illegal in Michigan.
“Saving” embryos from destruction through the Human Cloning Ban Act, as conservatives suggest, would neither save them or the women carrying them to term.
Deep brain stimulation is an experimental technique in which electrodes are implanted into the thalamus to correct the effects of neurodegenration or brain injury. Scientists have used the process to treat essential tremor since 1997 and Parkinson’s disease since 2002. The Neurophilosophy blog reports that doctors have recently used the technique to monitor brain surgery in real time—and in tempo. Neurosurgeons had their patient, the legendary bluegrass musician Eddie Adcock, play his banjo while he was undergoing deep brain stimulation.
Today, the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News both endorsed a new policy that will be on the ballot this November in Michigan, and, if passed, will allow stem cell research. Michigan has the most restrictive anti-stem cell research laws in the nation, a tragedy which is compounded by the fact that Michigan has one of the most productive biotech R&D infrastructures of any state.
When James Thomson’s and Shinya Yamanaka’s research teams published their ground-breaking papers last year on induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, one of the major hurdles to clinical application was the propensity of the cells to cause cancer. Now, scientists from Harvard University have successfully introduced the pluripotency-inducing genes into mouse somatic cells by way of adenoviruses, which are less harmful than retroviruses.
At the beginning of the month, NIH pulled pooled GWAS data from its website and began encouraging other institutions to follow suit, because a team of scientists have figured out just how to identify a single person’s DNA from a sample of hundreds.
Major innovations in the United States are often driven by collaborative research. Regenerative medicine is no different, and the federal government can help coordination.
The anti-science forces in Missouri don’t know when to call it quits. This week a state judge decided to hear a lawsuit from the Missouri Roundtable for Life that seeks to block $21 million of state funds from going to the state’s Life Sciences Research Board. The suit may tackle the definitions of reproductive and therapeutic cloning.
The Association of British Insurers has extended a moratorium banning the use of genetic testing results in setting life insurance premiums.
What do researchers and clinicians actually need to understand about a gene in order to diagnose and treat patients? Play-by-play from a lively discussion on the state of genetics at the World Science Festival.
The Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (H.R. 493) moved another step closer to becoming law yesterday. Although the House passed the bill last year, a reconciled version had go through again, as the Senate added an amendment when it passed the bill last week.
New technologies enable scientists to understand, alter, and enhance our brains. These raise a host of policy-relevant questions about privacy, social and political coercion, access to technology and therapy.
The Senate just passed the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (H.R. 493) by a vote of 95-0 after two hours of debate consisting of mostly well-deserved self-congratulations. Senator Enzi (R-WY), a cosponsor of the bill, raised a very good point, saying about GINA that “If the publicity doesn’t go out on it, the people don’t know about it….we are interested in people knowing what this bill does that will help them and that will encourage them to use the genome.”
The Senate is closing in on a deal for the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (HR 493), and a vote might come as early as Wednesday. According to Congress Daily, Senate Majority Leader Reid will “hotline” the bill to determine if any Senator objects to the legislation.
The NSF has been making measurable headway in its efforts to improve STEM education from Kindergarten to Grad School and beyond, but it still has a long way to go. On Jan. 15th and 16th the NSF held a conference in DC entitled “Science Education and Workforce Development: Key Challenges for Innovation in the States,” focusing on progress an challenges in the overlapping fields.
New helmet sensors will improve army body armor; the disorganization of state stem cell initiatives; acute stress spikes after 9/11; think tanks for developing nations.
Health coverage inequalities limit patient access to the free drugs pharmaceutical companies distribute, accelerate the illnesses of elderly patients, and limit access to preventative cancer screenings.
The National Research Council of the National Academies convened a symposium Wednesday to explore approaches among “Future Directions in Research at the Intersection of the Physical and Life Sciences.” The intersections up for discussion ranged across the research spectrum: from synthetic biology to geoengineering to bioterrorism.
Healthcare professionals helping patients with mental health problems have an increasing array of treatment and prevention tools at their disposal. But on the horizon is a preventative tool that poses challenging public policy questions about ethics and privacy: personal genomic sequencing.
Presenting at a policy summit last Wednesday, Dr. Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, offered recommendations for tax policies that offer “enterprise-focused” tax credits for Research & Development.
Advances in nanotechnology may yield myriad powerful technical applications. But to grapple with the gap between research and regulation, the Center on Nanotechnology and Society held its 2nd Annual Conference on Nanopolicy this past Friday.
The efforts of China’s State Food and Drug Administration to crack down on drug and medical device companies seems to be improving the industry’s reputation and will hopefully make for a safer marketplace.
“A new way to trick skin cells into acting like embryos changes both everything and nothing at all.” Alan I. Leshner and James A. Thomson on the new advances in stem cell research, and other news and commentary from the mainstream press.
Researchers working independently in Japan and the U.S. published papers this week announcing the creation of non-embryonic pluripotent stem cells. The method side-steps the ethical concerns over the destruction of embryos and could open the doors for federal funding of research on stem cells and the medical breakthroughs they promise.
A recent
New York Times Op-Ed on brain response to political keywords has drawn criticism from the neuroscience community for its incomplete findings and its false air of scientific certainty.
The J. Craig Venter Institute, along with researchers at MIT and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recently released a report entitled “Synthetic Genomics | Options for Governance.” But are there larger unanswered questions about the societal impacts of creating synthetic life?
Fear of science is still alive and well. This past Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation, John West of the pro-Intelligent Design Discovery Institute gave a lecture entitled, “The Abolition of Man? How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science.”
Two companies are about to become the first Embryonic Stem Cell biotech firms to draft FDA applications for human testing. For some time, ESC-research opponents have complained that human trials have involved therapies utilizing adult stem cells, but none have utilized embryonic stem cells.
Nanotechnology is fertile new field with a host of unexplored risks, so how should the government go about cultivating it? This was the major question at yesterday’s hearing on the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
Vint Cerf leaves his post as Chairman of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers this Friday. ICANN has drawn criticism in the past for U.S. control of the Internet, but new changes will expand and internationalize possibilities for domain names.
Andrew A. Rosenberg on how “emphasizing what we don’t know often drowns out what we do know.” Also, a new Urban Institute study claims that the U.S. has more than enough scientists and engineers.
This week boasts a slew of congressional hearings on science and technology policy issues including: renewable energy, gene patenting, aviation safety, nanotechnology safety, and drug-resistant TB.
Only in rare cases should women freeze their eggs in order to save them for fertilization at a later date, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
Cures Without Cloning, a Missouri group that opposes embryonic stem cell research, is trying to overturn the results of last year’s ballot initiative that protected stem cell research in the state. The CAP Bioethics Initiative posted an update last week. Here’s a roundup of the latest.
MSNBC’s Cosmic Log reports that NASA has disowned Rocketplane Kistler, the private company that, along with SpaceX, was the co-winner of NASA’s rocket competition in August of 2006. The effort was part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation System program. COTS was designed to encourage private companies to devise low-cost ways of resupplying the international space station.
No new stem cell funding will be included in the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill (S.1710). Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) promptly offered an amendment removing language that he and Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) had previously inserted to expand funding for stem cell research. There was no vote, only a removal.
Robot sex is only five years away, robot marriage a mere 45 years, and the first state to legalize it will be Massachusetts. Those are the predictions of David Levy, a researcher at the University of Maastricht who successfully defended his thesis, “Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,” on October 11 and made
international headlines.
The University of Virginia is being accused of encouraging doctors to prescribe Johnson & Johnson’s anti-seizure and migraine drug Topamax “off-label” to treat alcoholism. But is the medicine safe for treating alcoholics without FDA approval?
Jonathan Moreno tells
Nature podcast host Kerri Smith about what happens when neuroscience meets warfare. Be prepared for soldiers who don’t need sleep and detainees who can be chemically induced to trust their captors.
The Guardian reported this past weekend that J. Craig Venter will soon announce that he has created artificial life. But even his spokesperson is saying that’s not the whole story.
