January 13, 2022
Heather Zeiger
Posts by Heather Zeiger:
October 4, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: November 2020
October 4, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: October 2020
October 4, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: September 2020
October 4, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: August 2020
October 1, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: July 2020
October 1, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: June 2020
October 1, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: May 2020
September 30, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: April 2020
September 30, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: March 2020
September 24, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: February 2020
July 27, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline: January 2020
July 27, 2021
COVID-19 Timeline of Events
February 26, 2018
Embryoids: Explanations and Ethical Issues
Last spring, MIT Technology Review reported on a University of Michigan team’s discovery that they had made an embryo-like entity from human embryonic stem cells. The team was trying to make organoids—small three-dimensional clusters of cells grown in the lab … Read More
August 10, 2017
Haploid Stem Cells
Scientists have found a way to isolate human haploid embryonic stem cells. What are these cells, and do they avoid some of the ethical issues surrounding human embryonic stem cells? Several press releases have reported on the isolation of a … Read More
February 21, 2017
Zika Timeline of Events
Even though the Zika virus did not make national headlines until November 2015 when Brazil declared a national emergency after reporting an abnormally high number of cases of babies born with microcephaly or Guillain-Barré syndrome, the virus was actually first … Read More
May 4, 2015
On-Call Ethics Consultants in Human-Subject Research
Framing the Issue: Private Consultants and IRBs There are some ethical issues that fall outside the purview of an Institutional Review Board (IRB). In October 2014, a Nature article described an example of clinical trial investigators who discovered incriminating information … Read More
October 14, 2014
Ebola Timeline
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest Ebola outbreak in history. It can be traced back to a boy who died of Ebola in December; he lived in Guéckédou in southeastern Guinea, which is surrounded by Sierra Leone … Read More
September 19, 2014
STAP Stem Cells: Come and Gone
Last January two articles appeared in Nature announcing a new technique for making pluripotent stem cells from mouse cells. This technique is different from the methods used by Nobel Prize winners, Shinya Yamanako and John Gordon. Their methods required turning … Read More
April 14, 2014
Gene Editing Technology
What Is Gene Editing? People sometimes express concerns over gene therapy, which is genetic engineering for therapeutic purposes, but what they are really concerned about is gene editing. Genetic engineering is a relatively straightforward procedure in the laboratory, and is … Read More
March 5, 2014
Synthetic Biology and Venter’s Life at the Speed of Light
Craig Venter’s book Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life describes the completion of the first functioning organism with a completely synthetic genome and places this accomplishment within the context of … Read More
February 17, 2014
New Guidelines on Prescribing Statins
Note: This post is meant for educational purposes only. Please consult your doctor for decisions regarding medication. The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology recently changed the guidelines for prescribing statins, drugs used to lower blood … Read More
February 7, 2014
Defining Death
Typically, in these posts my goal is to discuss the science behind a certain technique to help us understand the ethical issues surrounding the technique. With the recent case of Jahi MacMath, the thirteen-year-old girl who was declared brain dead … Read More
November 18, 2013
Mighty Mitochondria and Reproductive Technology
Mitochondria have made the news recently. Moves toward three-parent IVF have been motivated by mitochondrial issues, and new IVF embryo screening methods assess the health of the embryos’ mitochondria to select the embryo that is more likely to implant. Both … Read More
November 6, 2013
Genetics in the News
It seems like every week there is a new genetics story in the news. Angelina Jolie made the headlines last summer with her decision to have a double mastectomy, which was based on her family history and BRAC genetic tests. … Read More
