If you've ever seen the film "Super Size Me," Morgan Spurlock, the documentary's star and director, embarks on a month-long experiment to discover the adverse health effects of consuming a diet composed entirely of items from the menu at McDonald's. Spurlock decided to investigate whether or not eating only foods from McDonald's would cause him any [...]
Posted in dilemmas dilemmas!, discuss, nutrition, research, science and society
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141 Comments
Did you know that it is legal to patent a gene?
According to US law, it is. In 1980, the Supreme Court heard the case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty, which became a landmark for genetic science in terms of being able to lay claim to certain parts of the genome. While working for GE, Chakrabarty had developed a strain [...]
Posted in DNA, bioethics, dilemmas dilemmas!, discuss, genetics, science and society
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92 Comments
If you've ever had to have surgery, whether it is major or minor, you may have been prescribed a painkiller to ease the pain of the first few post-op days, when the pain is most intense. Often, these prescription painkillers are synthetic opiate derivatives such as hydrocodone, which mimics natural opiates found in plants [...]
Posted in better living through biochem, discuss, research, science and society
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88 Comments
As you probably are aware, the number of Americans who develop Type II diabetes has steadily increased over the past two decades. Many people have attributed the typical American diet to the increase, but now researchers from Lund University in Sweden are proclaiming that a poor diet isn't the only contributing factor to the [...]
Posted in bioethics, discuss, disease, research, science and society
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84 Comments
Have you ever conducted an experiment that produced results that may not have turned out the way you wanted them to? Think about the things in your experimental environment that may have contributed to your "off" results. Would you ever suspect the lab equipment you use as the source of your error?
Well, scientists [...]
Posted in better living through biochem, discuss, science and society, what do you think?
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120 Comments