The Strange Tale of a Chimera
The Chimera had a serpent’s tail with the head of a lion and a goat on its monstrous body. That was a Greek myth, but real-life chimeras exist. They originate from the blending of cells from two fertilized eggs into a
Biomedical
Trust your Microbiome (Gut)
The gut feelings of psychic “scatomancers” who studiously examined the color, shape, and buoyancy of poo to forecast well-being and life prospects were more reliable than palm-reading, tarot cards, and astrology. They had “data,” and now we have the microbiome.
Howard W. Jones Jr., M.D. (1910-2015)
Our dear friend and mentor died today in Norfolk after a short illness. Lucinda and I were able to exchange a few words and smiles with him in the hospital yesterday. He asked how our children are doing—so typical of
Trust me, I’m a Scientist!
According to a MORI poll, nine out of ten people in England trust scientists. That’s a higher confidence level than for most professions. Apart from a few bad guys in history and fiction, the public often caricatures scientists as benign
Fertility owes Preservation to a Sheep
The journal Human Reproduction reported a 27-year old woman in Belgium has delivered a healthy baby boy. That would not be newsworthy if she had not been rendered sterile at 13 years old by a life-saving bone marrow transplant for
Explore your Longevity with UbbLE
Two Swedish biostatisticians drawing data from the UK Biobank have created a test accessible online for estimating your “age” and chances of surviving the next five years. It’s published in The Lancet medical journal. I couldn’t wait to try it!
Make Meat Special
Feeling carnivorous or vegetarian, or somewhere in-between? Is it okay to be carnivorous? Is it natural (whatever that means)? I asked these questions when I was a teenager, like many other people who love animals. For a while I half-heartedly
GM Human Eggs Have Arrived
We heard confirmation last week of rumors that scientists at Sun Yat-sen University in southern China were trying to change the DNA of freshly-fertilized human eggs. This “first” in science was greeted with horror, hand-wringing, and a storm of criticism.
The Soda File
“Which boy can tell me about sodium?” “Please, sir.” One of the little crawlers in the front row of the class shot his arm up, revealing a neatly-ironed white sleeve. “It’s salt, sir.” “WRONG!” the teacher roared. He thumped his
Who knows about Fructose?
Was it a sweet or sexy temptation? The apple that Eve plucked from the tree was sweeter than honey, or to be perfectly accurate it had relatively more of the sweeter stuff than in honey. Apples contain more fructose than