Allergan Inc., the maker of wrinkle-smoothing Botox, has agreed to pay $600 million to settle a years long federal investigation into its marketing of the top-selling, botulin-based drug. (GazetteXtra)

Over the past few years, pharmaceutical research has become more commercialized and market-driven. For two bioethicists, that raises questions about the quality of the data in drug trials, and the safety of the participants in those trials. (Minnesota Public Radio)

When the geneticist Francis Collins was named director of the National Institutes of Health, last summer, he became the public face of American science and the keeper of the world’s deepest biomedical-research-funding purse. He was praised by President Obama and waved through the Senate confirmation process without objection. There also came a peer review of a sort that he’d never experienced, conducted in the press and in Internet science forums. Collins read in the Times that many of his colleagues in the scientific community believed that he suffered from “dementia.” Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, questioned the appointment on the ground that Collins was “an advocate of profoundly anti-scientific beliefs.” P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota at Morris, complained, “I don’t want American science to be represented by a clown.” (The New Yorker)

Concern has been growing in the academic literature and popular media about the licensing, introduction and adoption of surgical devices before full effectiveness and safety evidence is available to inform clinical practice. Our research will seek empirical survey evidence about the roles, responsibilities, and information and policy needs of the key stakeholders in the introduction into clinical practice of new surgical devices for pelvic floor surgery, in terms of the underlying ethical principles involved in the economic decision-making process, using the example of pelvic floor procedures. (BMC)

The 20th century broke open both the atom and the human genome. Physics deftly imposed mathematical order on the upwelling of particles. Now, in the 21st century, systems biology aims to fit equations to living matter, creating mathematical models that promise new insight into disease and cures. But, after a decade of effort and growth in computing power, models of cells and organs remain crude. Researchers are retreating from complexity towards simpler systems. And, perversely, ever-expanding data are making models more complicated instead of accurate. To an extent, systems biology, rather than climbing upwards to sparkling mathematical vistas, is stuck in a mire of its own deepening details. (Ars Technica)

Scientists at Cambridge University have used stem cell technology to convert skin from patients with metabolic diseases into liver cells. (Financial Times)

Rapid advances in bioscience are raising alarms among terrorism experts that amateur scientists will soon be able to gin up deadly pathogens for nefarious uses. (Wall Street Journal)

By simply switching on three critical genes, researchers have coaxed mouse skin cells into becoming heart muscle cells — without their first reverting back to an embryonic, stem-cell-like state. (Nature News)

If we are to believe transhumanists, people who bill themselves as champions of superlongevity and artificial human enhancement, 2045 should be a very good year. (The Boston Globe)

Six months since it launched, the world’s first factory for making professional-quality biological DNA ‘parts’ is beginning to stock its shelves. (Nature News)

A voyage through the human body is no longer mere fantasy. Tiny devices may soon perform surgery, administer drugs and help diagnose disease. (Scientific American)

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues convened last week for its first meeting. The commission—created by executive order with the “goal of identifying and promoting policies and practices that ensure scientific research, healthcare delivery, and technological innovation are conducted in an ethically responsible manner”—was tasked by President Barack Obama to study first the implications of synthetic biology. The president’s request came on the heels of J. Craig Venter’s announcement that his lab had successfully created a single-cell organism with a genome synthesized entirely from scratch. (Science Progress)

What does the future look like? We essentially rely on science fiction thrillers to give us a taste of what lies ahead for humanity: Avatar; Iron Man; I, Robot; Surrogates; Star Wars; and I am Legend. But these films only give us part of the picture both in terms of the science and the social implications. They also never explain how we’ll get from here to there, making the future tantalizing but also implausible.Big Think

The afternoon sunlight streams through the large, picture window framing the San Francisco Peaks over Paul Keim’s shoulder. As director of NAU’s Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics, Keim sits in a seemingly peaceful and serene office, an odd juxtaposition for a man protected behind three levels of security. (Newswise)

Federal scientists disagreed sharply Tuesday about whether the diabetes drug Avandia is unsafe and should be removed from the market. The conflicting analyses were presented during the opening day of a two-day meeting of scientific advisers that the Food and Drug Administration convened in Gaithersburg to evaluate the diabetes drug. (Washington Post)

Nature Biotechnology (Volume 28, Issue 7, July 2010) is now available by subscription only.

Articles Include:

• “Genetic Testing Clamp Down” by Malorye Allison
• “Industrial Biotech to Boom?” by Daniel Grushkin
• “Sequencing Firms vie for Diagnostics Market, Tiptoe Round Patents” by Michael Eisenstein
• “Recent Patent Applications in Stem Cells”

The impetus for the meeting was a May report in Science in which researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute synthesized the genome of a bacterium, added it to another bacterial cell, and got the cell to replicate using the new DNA. The startling feat prompted President Barack Obama to ask his newly formed bioethics commission to examine the implications of the Venter study and other kinds of synthetic biology, such as creating biological circuits by putting components together in a cell. Obama asked for a report in just 6 months. (ScienceInsider)

Wallach is a pioneer in the nascent field of robot ethics and has captured the imaginations of futurists with his theories on artificial moral agents and computational ethics. In fact, he designed the world’s first course on the subject at Yale, and he published a book last year entitled, Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong. (ZDNet)

Mei Leng Yew’s father has spent most of his adult life in Britain, but he still believes that blood doning is a high risk activity. (Guardian)

Stanford’s Drew Endy is an engineer’s biologist. He doesn’t like to wonder at the messy world of evolved systems; he likes to create new tools for building organisms that do stuff for humans. (The Atlantic)

The most comprehensive health study in the UK has reached its goal of enrolling 500,000 adults. UK Biobank volunteers have undergone medical checks, answered health and lifestyle questions and given genetic samples, to be stored for decades. (BBC News)