Near to an abandoned Mayan temple in the steamy jungles of Guatemala, camouflaged beneath a matrix of overgrown vine and lianas, nestles a small medical clinic catering to the needs of, at most, a handful of patients. A private facility, not marked on any known map, the clinic is an important link in the supply […]
15
Aug
Aug
When you hear the phrase ‘designer babies,’ what springs most readily to mind? It’s an emotionally, socially, and politically loaded term that’s come to represent much of what’s ethically questionable in genetic research. Perhaps we might think of the movie Gattaca (that we referenced last week) in which genetics equal destiny. Or the 2003 German […]
01
Aug
Aug
Against a neutral blue background, the young man in a pressed, button-down shirt and polka dotted tie smiles the hesitant smile of the new hire. Blue eyes matching his suit blazer and blond hair slicked to one side, Scott Johnson’s fresh-faced, preppy college look belied the strength of his ambition and his drive to succeed. […]
17
Jul
Jul
In 1941, John Gillespie Magee, Jr., a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force, was killed in a mid-air collision over the bucholic hamlet of Roxholme, England. Practicing maneuvers in his Spitfire VZ-H, an aircraft he’d flown in engagement with the German Luftwaffe just four weeks earlier, Magee was just 19 years old when […]
30
May
May
Almost two years ago, we wrote a short article on the FDA regulation of a nascent industry, one that has the FDA sounding the alarm regarding contamination from carcinogens and the vaporizing of metal nanoparticles. Despite our concerns – and those of the FDA – this industry is still around, growing, and has set its […]
23
May
May
In the Worlds Fair Exposition of 1893, one young entrepreneur, Clark Stanley, stood before an excited crowd of onlookers and plunged his hand into a sack of live rattlesnakes. Pulling out an unfortunate herpetological victim, he sliced it open and, in a technique that was about as far from aseptic processing and devoid of microbial […]
09
May
May
It’s an open secret that scientists tend to have a love-hate relationship with fiction. Not all fiction – less so the bodice-rippers or cozy thrillers that spill off the bookstore shelves – but one specific genre: science fiction. Sometimes known more prosaically as speculative fiction, this category of literature encompasses utopian/dystopian works, supernatural/superhero tropes, and […]
25
Apr
Apr
Reproduction used to be simple. Boy meets girl. Egg meets sperm. Nine months, one baby shower, and a whole lot of trips to Buy Buy Baby later, a new addition arrives to much billing and cooing by the proud grandparents. Oh those halcyon days. Today, the landscape is so much more nuanced as advances in […]
11
Apr
Apr
We have a riddle for you: what is both ancient and futuristic, biodegradable and naturally sustainable, is delicately engineered in a cleanroom with a tensile strength five times that of steel, is a simple formulation but has applications in materials science, medicine, and reforestation? Need some more clues? It is edible, reintegrating into the human […]
Bio-Technology
How Reprocessed Duodenoscopes Represent a Challenge in Biomedical Contamination Control.
21
Mar
Mar
Update: Now also featured on Cleanroom Technology According to science writer Mary Roach in her eye-opening and entertaining book Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, early anatomists had an almost child-like curiosity with the inner workings of the human body. Engaging with it as cartographers of an unexplored continent they staked their claims to its […]
