Genetics
Predicting Disease: How Technology in the Future Might Change Healthcare
What if disease could be predicted before it happened? No, this is not a fictional health-care version of Minority Report, but a possible end science is quickly developing towards. What began as an inquiry into how diseases are passed on to offspring has been steadily progressing towards a disease-predicting mechanism that could drive the future [...]
Fighting Cancer by Inhibiting Telomerase
Finding new ways to improve cancer therapies has presented opportunities and challenges to biomedicine and biotechnology. After learning that telomere length might serve as an effective predictor of cancer risk and survival, scientists have looked to these chromosomal ends for purposes that go beyond their use as signals of cell deterioration. By inhibiting telomerase, a [...]
Gene Patents: Sequencing Scientific Controversy
Do you have the rights to your own DNA? A question Genae Girard never considered until she was denied that right. How can someone else own your DNA? Current models estimate that as much as 20% of all human genetic material has been patented [1]. Recently this practice has entered the national spotlight with the landmark [...]
Your Genes Belong to Us: Gene Patenting and its Discontents
By Gengshi Chen Genae Girard, a 39-year-old woman living in the US, had to pay a staggering $3200 for a single genetic test for the BRCA gene associated with breast and ovarian cancer, only to find that she was unable to request a second opinion upon receiving the positive test result. After consulting with doctors, [...]
NASA’s Life changing Arsenic Organism?
NASA held a press conference on December 2, 2010, about their discovery of a bacterium researchers claimed was able to use arsenic, instead of phosphorous, as part of its DNA backbone. This press conference was extremely well advertised and promised the existence of something extraterrestrial. But the organism in question, GFAJ-1, is far from extraterrestrial [...]
Epigenetics: What It Means and Why You Should Care
Fundamental shifts in the way we understand our world and ourselves are rare, and when they do happen it is often with uproar. When discovery of the DNA double helix by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 showed us that all of nature was bound together by a common molecular mechanism, it was assumed [...]
Is All Fair in Love and Sport?
In the world of competitive sports, one hundredth of a second – the time it takes for lightning to strike – can define an athlete. One hundredth of a second can mean the difference between winning or losing, fame or anonymity, millions of dollars in endorsements or none. Because we handsomely reward strength, speed, and [...]
Food Frenzy: Growing Concerns Over Genetically Modified Foods
INTRODUCTION More than ten million farmers planted 252 million acres of genetically-modified (GM) crops in 2006 [1]. From 1996 to 2000, acreage of GM crops globally increased 25-fold [2]. The prevalence and rapid growth of GM crops are accredited to the benefits it provides. Biotechnology companies alter the DNA of crops, either by removing or [...]
TTH Online Podcast – Episode 001: Transhumanism and Sustainability
Guest: Brad Allenby How do we define being human? What are the implications of the increasingly sophisticated technologies that are “beginning to make the human a design space”? Drawing on his diverse and transdisciplinary experience, ASU professor Brad Allenby joins host David Edwards to explore the ethical, legal, and environmental implications of an increasingly technological [...]
Connect With Us
