Archive for the 'Biotechnology' Category
‘The Neoliberal Takeover of the Human Body’
September 8th, 2019Via: MarketWatch: Biometric mobile wallets — payment technologies using our faces, fingerprints or retinas — already exist. Notable technology companies including Apple and Amazon await a day when a critical mass of consumers is sufficiently comfortable walking into a store and paying for goods without a card or device, according to Sinnreich, author of “The […]
Amazon Tests Whole Foods Payment System that Uses Hands as ID
September 4th, 2019Via: New York Post: Forget the titanium Apple Card — Amazon’s latest payment method uses flesh and blood. The e-tailing giant’s engineers are quietly testing scanners that can identify an individual human hand as a way to ring up a store purchase, with the goal of rolling them out at its Whole Foods supermarket chain […]
Biohackers Are Pirating a Cheap Version of a Million-Dollar Gene Therapy
August 30th, 2019Via: MIT Technology Review: Citing the tremendous cost of new drugs, an international group of biohackers say they are creating a knock-off of a million-dollar gene therapy. The drug being copied is Glybera, a gene therapy that was the world’s most expensive drug when it came on the market in Europe in 2015 with a […]
China: Researchers to Grow Replacement Organs for Humans in Genetically Modified Animals
August 18th, 2019Via: Bloomberg: Recently, a Chinese startup named Qihan Biotech raised $20 million to develop replacement organs for humans. The smallish deal would hardly have rated a headline, except for the fact that the Hangzhou-based gene-editing company is aiming to grow those organs in pigs and other animals. If successful, such transplants could well transform medicine. […]
Sperm Sorting Method Could Reduce Chances of Girls Being Born, Scientists Warn
August 16th, 2019“Like most Asian nations, China has a traditional bias for sons.” Via: New Scientist: The finding that some chemicals slow down sperm that carry the X chromosome could lead to gels for home use that make a couple less likely to conceive a girl, scientists have warned. “I am concerned about the social impact of […]
China: Women Who Were Held in “Re-Education” Camps Claim They Were Sterilized
August 14th, 2019What is the Chinese government injecting into these women? As far as I know, there aren’t any injectable compounds that cause reliable and permanent sterilization of women, but that’s not from a lack of trying. What’s the true state of the art when it comes to immunocontraception? Many will recall the Kenyan tetanus/hCG imbroglio from […]
Fort Detrick Researchers Banned from Working with Anthrax, Ebola and Smallpox, “Over Fears Contaminated Waste Could Leak Out of the Facility”
August 11th, 2019Via: Independent: America’s main biological warfare lab has been ordered to stop all research into the deadliest viruses and pathogens over fears contaminated waste could leak out of the facility. Fort Detrick, in Maryland, has been the epicentre of the US Army’s bioweapons research since the beginning of the Cold War. But last month the […]
California Farmers Are Planting Solar Panels as Water Supplies Dry Up
August 2nd, 2019In Blade Runner 2049, the California Central Valley looks like this: (In case you’re wondering, the solar concentrators in the opening scene of the film were inspired by the idiotic Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, which is based on concentrated solar thermal energy.) Nestled in among the heliostat fields are protein farms: They grow some variety […]
Spanish Scientists Create Human-Monkey Chimera in China
August 1st, 2019Via: El Pais: Researchers led by Spanish scientist Juan Carlos Izpisúa have created for the first time a human-monkey hybrid in a laboratory in China – an important step towards using animals for human organ transplants, project collaborator Estrella Núñez confirmed to EL PAÍS. The team, made up of members of the Salk Institute in […]
U.S. Military Ordered to Reveal if Insects Were Used as Biological Weapon
July 17th, 2019Via: Independent: US lawmakers have voted to demand the Pentagon discloses whether it conducted experiments to “weaponise” disease-carrying ticks – and whether any such insects were let loose outside the lab. A bill passed in the House of Representatives requires the Defence Department’s inspector general to investigate whether biological warfare tests involving the tiny arachnids […]
