In 2013, the US FDA got tired of being stonewalled when it came to seeing proof of Google-backed 23andMe marketing claims regarding BRCA-related genetic risk and drug response, along with marketing blurbs that they can make it possible to “take steps toward mitigating serious diseases” such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, and breast cancer. read...
read moreI am a firm believer that physics is the One Science To Rule Them All and can accomplish almost anything, but I had not predicted that the "fourth state of matter" - non-thermal plasma - could show immunology how it's done and kill off noroviruses, the most common cause of non-bacterial gastroenteritis around the world that gets fame far too often for making people sick on things like cruise...
read moreImagine a site where the lead developer supported the Discovery Institute, the Tea Party, the Mitt Romney campaign, Greenpeace, Joe Mercola, Just Label It, and various other political activist and anti-science groups.Would you believe it was really neutral about science?Perhaps. It depends on how many other people are involved in the project, but it would certainly bring a higher level of...
read moreRight now, the police can't do much to help you until after a crime has been committed. In a science-fiction tale about free will and psychological determinism, Philip K. Dick's "Minority Report" detailed a world where PreCrime officers stop acts before they happen. They know who is going to do it. But psychic mutants are a simplistic convention, criminologists have instead been trying to do it...
read moreAs most culturally astute people of a certain age know, 2015 is "The Future" of "Back To The Future II." "Back To The Future" was, of course, a seminal comedy in 1985 - a time when terrorists were from the Mid-East and you could do a time-travel experiment on your dog without getting protests outside the theater. read...
read moreArtificial hearts were invented at a time when progress in science couldn't come fast enough. In 1969, when they first went into human use, DDT hadn't been banned, vaccines were considered the medical highlight of the century, and the Green Revolution promoted genetic modification as the way to feed the world's poor in the future. read...
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