Philip Ball
Viewpoint: Breakthroughs in effort to create ‘synthetic’ embryos have sparked criticism — but the research could help us reduce prevalence of miscarriages and genetic disorders
Are human embryo models a cause for hope or alarm? A recent breakthrough in the race to create ‘synthetic’ embryos ...
Ethical debate escalates over propriety of 14-day limit on lab-grown embryos
Embryo-like structures made using human stem cells could enable research that is not currently possible using natural embryos ...
Want your future child to get into Yale? 4 out of 10 Americans say they would pursue genetic testing of potential embryos to select for higher intelligence
The possibility of screening embryos for complex inherited traits will force society to profoundly rethink its reproductive ethics ...
Decolonizing universities: UK schools struggle with how to address legacy of racism
In February, the nineteenth-century naturalist Thomas Henry Huxley, escaped — in the eyes of some — from ‘cancellation’ at one ...
Viewpoint: Misleading rhetoric fuels belief that our genetic code is a deterministic ‘instruction book’ – but it’s far more interesting than that
[G]enes aren’t quite what we thought (in fact, there’s no consensus about what they even are). Yet plenty remain happy ...
What’s in the biomedical pipeline for CRISPR gene editing?
One great attraction of Crispr, says Niren Murthy, a bioengineer at Berkeley, is that it could be a one-shot affair ...
Crash effort to develop coronavirus vaccines has revolutionized disease treatment
The COVID-19 experience will almost certainly change the future of vaccine science, says Dan Barouch, director of the Center for ...
Anti-vaccine online movement targeting undecided groups in social media, spreading disinformation about safety and coronavirus containment efforts, study warns
As scientists work to create a vaccine against COVID-19, a small but fervent anti-vaccination movement is marshalling against it. Campaigners ...
Do genes affect our intelligence? The debate ‘is over’
Researchers are now becoming confident enough to claim that the information available from sequencing a person’s genome – the instructions ...
Viewpoint: Rethinking scientist Richard Dawkins’ classic book ‘The Selfish Gene’
Richard Dawkins’ 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which topped a poll last year for the most inspiring science books of all ...
Why design babies when we can sift through ideal embryos instead?
Brave New World has become the inevitable reference point for all media discussion of new advances in reproductive technology...But the ...
Studying coral could reveal evolutionary reason why humans develop sex cells as embryos
At the earliest stages of life, in the embryo, our germ cells begin to develop. These are the cells that ...
Is slippery slope argument against human embryo gene editing overblown?
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. “It is up to ...
Is there a method to the chaos of evolution?
Is the natural world creative? Just take a look around it. Look at the brilliant plumage of tropical birds, the ...
Reaching beyond Darwinian evolution to explain the diversity of life
Is the natural world creative? Just take a look around it. Look at the brilliant plumage of tropical birds, the ...
