August 12, 2024
(New York Times) – The psychedelic treatment, for PTSD, was rejected last week by government regulators. The journal Psychopharmacology has retracted three papers about MDMA-assisted therapy based on what the publication said was unethical conduct at one of the study … Read More
August 12, 2024
(MedPage Today) – The FDA declined to approve midomafetamine (MDMA) capsules for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), calling for another trial to evaluate the drug’s efficacy and safety, developer Lykos Therapeutics announced on Friday. Lykos said the agency determined that the … Read More
August 9, 2024
(Nature) – An age ‘clock’ based on some 200 proteins found in the blood can predict a person’s risk of developing 18 chronic illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. The clock’s accuracy raises the prospect of developing … Read More
August 9, 2024
The New England Journal of Medicine (vol. 390, no. 23, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
August 7, 2024
(Aeon) – When providers and researchers are able-bodied while patients are disabled, the chasm in lived experience, motivation and immersion in every last nuance of a condition can often be vast. In medicine, the traditional model for researching disabilities repeats … Read More
August 5, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Participants in studies of the psychedelic, which is up for U.S. approval, tell WSJ they felt pressure to report positive outcomes. Studies being used to decide whether the U.S. should authorize an ecstasy-based drug for traumatized … Read More
August 5, 2024
(Reuters) – Neuralink has successfully implanted in a second patient its device designed to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone, according to the startup’s owner Elon Musk. Neuralink is in the process of testing … Read More
August 5, 2024
(The New Yorker) – A mysterious neurological condition makes faces look grotesque—and sheds new light on the inner workings of the brain. In May, 2021, Duchaine interviewed Werbeloff via Zoom. Had Werbeloff suffered any traumatic brain injuries? (No.) Did he … Read More
July 31, 2024
(New York Times) – Kevin Hall, a senior investigator at the N.I.H. who is leading the trial, said that there is a “mountain of epidemiological data” linking ultraprocessed foods to poor health — including 32 health concerns like heart disease, … Read More
July 31, 2024
The Journal of Medicine & Philosophy (vol. 49, no. 4, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
July 30, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Medical tests using small amounts of blood are being rolled out, achieving what the Silicon Valley startup couldn’t The rise and fall of Theranos—the Silicon Valley startup that promised to revolutionize blood testing but ended dissolved, … Read More
July 26, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – He Jiankui, the Chinese biophysicist whose controversial 2018 experiment led to the birth of three gene-edited children, says he’s returned to work on the concept of altering the DNA of people at conception, but with a … Read More
July 25, 2024
(Undark) – Few experts dispute that long Covid can be debilitating, or that it warrants careful study. But in interviews with Undark, a number of experts said that it is misleading to frame long Covid as an increasing threat. The … Read More
July 24, 2024
(New York Times) – Progress in the quest to help progeria patients suggests that gene editing techniques may help treat other ultrarare conditions. A cure for an ultrarare disease, progeria, could be on the horizon. The disease speeds up aging … Read More
July 22, 2024
(Associated Press) – Wide-eyed piglets rushing to check out the visitors to their unusual barn just might represent the future of organ transplantation – and there’s no rolling around in the mud here. The first gene-edited pig organs ever transplanted … Read More
July 22, 2024
Research Ethics (vol. 20, no. 3, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
July 19, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – If we’re going to protect ourselves from genetic discrimination, we first have to figure out what it is. Unfortunately, no one has a good handle on how widespread it is, says Yann Joly, director of the … Read More
July 19, 2024
BMC Medical Ethics has new articles available online. Articles include:
July 18, 2024
(BBC) – A drug has increased the lifespans of laboratory animals by nearly 25%, in a discovery scientists hope can slow human ageing too. The treated mice were known as “supermodel grannies” in the lab because of their youthful appearance. … Read More
July 17, 2024
(New York Times) – The kaleidoscopic whirl of colors they recorded is essentially a heat map of brain changes, with the red, orange and yellow hues reflecting a significant departure from normal activity patterns. The blues and greens reflect normal … Read More
July 17, 2024
(Medical Xpress) – Two whole adult human hearts, one healthy and one diseased, have been imaged in unprecedented detail by researchers from UCL and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), providing an invaluable resource for better understanding cardiovascular disease. The … Read More
July 11, 2024
(Wired) – In a livestreamed update on X, Elon Musk and Neuralink executives gave an update on the company’s next study participant—and its next-generation brain implant. A second person will soon receive Neuralink’s experimental brain implant, according to Elon Musk, … Read More
July 9, 2024
(Undark) – One person’s DNA became the centerpiece of a genetic sequence used by biologists the world over. Did he agree to that? To piece the story together, Undark reviewed more than 100 emails, letters, and other digital documents housed … Read More
July 9, 2024
(GEN) – Porteus is a scientific co-founder of CRISPR Therapeutics, the company that launched the exa-cel CRISPR trial that culminated in the approval of Casgevy in December 2023. With the latest companies he has co-founded—first Graphite Bio, now Kamau Therapeutics— … Read More
July 4, 2024
(New York Times) – Researchers at the University of Tokyo published findings on a method of attaching artificial skin to robot faces to protect machinery and mimic human expressiveness. Engineers in Japan are trying to get robots to imitate that … Read More
