Search Results for: spock

What Would Spock Say About Grouchy ‘Practical Ethics’ Piece on Human Genetic Modification?

kirk-spock-pilot_1

Over at Practical Ethics they are calling for an almost Spock-like, emotion-free, and logical approach to the topic of heritable human genetic modification. Sounds good in principle, right? Well, unfortunately it fails in execution in their essay. The authors of “Editing the germline – a time for reason, not emotion” seem to include Chris Gyngell, Tom …

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About that Captain Kirk ‘stem cell treatment’

Captain-Kirk-McCoy

When we mix celebrities like William Shatner who played Captain Kirk on the original Star Trek series with stem cells, things usually end badly.  For this reason when I read that Shatner had gotten a supposed stem cell treatment, I saw it as bad news. Like the arrival of a Borg ship. Just one problem …

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Robots versus scientists

NIH Grant Review Robot

Robots versus scientists? Over the centuries, humans have sometimes had a fear of replacement, whether it is by another human as exemplified in Dostoevsky’s classic short story The Double (or other literature on doubles/doppelgängers) or by machines, most notably robots. Could we be replaced by robots, artificial intelligence (AI), or cyborgs? In some ways, robots …

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In a pickle over STAP stem cells: main reasons for skepticism

in-a-pickle

If you take an ordinary cucumber and soak it in a mild acid solution of vinegar for a few weeks you get a pickle, which is where we find STAP stem cells. Recently, some scientists reported in Nature that if you take ordinary cells and soak them in a mild acid solution for 30 minutes, …

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The case for required Bio 101 courses for politicians: Rep. Todd Akin

UPDATED I think all politicians, before taking office, and every 5 years after taking office, should be required to take a basic biology class. Why? A clear understanding of biological processes is becoming more and more important in politics these days. At the same time we are seeing an increasing number of politicians making critical …

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Updated: Do Vulcans Get Prostate Cancer and get surgery for it?

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It’s been a big couple months of headlines in the news for prostate cancer. I’m a prostate cancer survivor and cancer biologist so I spend probably more than my share of time thinking about prostate cancer and from a number of angles. A few days ago I got a test result suggesting I’m still in long-term …

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