I’d Put Warning Labels On Mutagenic Plants Before GMOs
Imagine we lived in a world where spontaneous mutations were caused by radiation and then released on an unsuspecting public without any testing.
Well, we do. It's called nature.
High-energy cosmic rays have been breaking chromosomes into pieces that reattach randomly, and sometimes creating genes that didn't previously exist, for as long as some thing has eaten some other thing.
Science Left Behind: The Anti-Vaccine Update Update
Last week I did an update on the anti-vaccine situation in America compared to 2012, when my book, Science Left Behind, was published. I noted that things have gotten better, primarily because people on the left have turned on those people on the left who make up the bulk of the anti-vaccine movement; primarily wealthy, progressive elites.Why Do Random Walks In Evolution Lead To The Same Place?
An interesting experiment published in Science placed baker's yeast ( Saccharomyces cerevisiae) in separate identical bioworlds. Then, at the same time, historical contingency events would happen, just like they have on earth - and only the fittest survived.Evolution tells us that there are things besides natural selection going on - there are mutations and genetic drift. If we boiled up some primordial soup today, a few billion years from now the planet would be a lot different due to that randomness.
Or not.
Science Left Behind 2014: The Anti-Vaccination Update
Science Left Behind, a book I co-authored in 2012 with Dr. Alex Berezow, covered the ways that anti-science beliefs had become mainstream among political progressives in the United States.It addressed dozens of topics but the three biggest ones denied by progressives (along with a few fellow liberals and Democrats) were the findings that anti-vaccine, anti-biology and anti-energy science positions were overwhelmingly left.
Are Republicans Responsible For The Lack Of An Ebola Vaccine?
Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, has a $29 billion per year budget, which dwarfs the National Science Foundation and NASA - combined.
You'd think for all that money they could have done a lot to create an Ebola vaccine before the crisis was all over the pages of The New York Times. But it seems they need just a little more. Dr. Collins says they have been working on a vaccine since 2001 but haven't been able to complete it because of a "10-year slide" in funding.
Weekend Science: Coffee Drinker? Maybe You Hit The Genetic Powerball
A recent genome-wide meta-analysis has identified a biological commonality among 120,000 regular coffee drinkers - 6 new genetic variants related to caffeine metabolism, lipid and glucose metabolism, and its psychoactive effects, found among about 2.5 million variants in the genome.Orthorexia Nervosa – Do GMO Opponents Have A Psychological Disorder?
Some people are so obsessed with their food it smacks of zealotry. They might eat only a certain kind of fish cooked on a certain piece of wood.They might even believe that they can taste the difference between a strawberry processed at an organic farm and one processed at a conventional one.
When it becomes truly bizarre, it affects family and friends. Writing at Genetic Literacy Project I discuss people who are on an obsessive quest for health perfection, to an extent that they fetishize their food process.
VSV-EBOV: The Race For An Ebola Vaccine Heats Up
Canada, which has roughly 1,500 vials of an ebola vaccine called VSV-EBOV, has offered 1,000 vials to the World Health Organization and said the rest would be used for upcoming clinical trials in 5 locations: two in the United States, and one each in Germany, Switzerland and a non-Western-African country that isn't battling ebola.Is Chess The New Texas Hold ‘Em?
Credit: Millionaire Chess tournamentWhen I was a kid, no one outside Texas played Texas Hold 'Em. We played Stud, we played Draw, we played Liar's, but not Hold 'Em.
Like Esther Williams movies and organic food, some things just make their way into pop culture and there is no rational reason why. Texas Hold 'Em is now the most popular card game in the country, every month or so our neighborhood gets together at one of our homes and puts in 20 bucks each and we go at it.
Synthetic Biology: GMOs Without The Cultural Drama
Credit: Shutterstock
One thing certain about nature - it sure isn't efficient. Just take a look at the human male reproductive system and you get the idea that if it was designed, it was designed by fish, and on a dare. It is a problem waiting to happen, but evolution is about the survival of the fitter, not the fittest - and then we add in some random walks and mutations.