Last week, President Bush signed into law the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which will protect individuals from employer and insurance discrimination based on the results of high-tech gene tests. Fighting discrimination is a good idea, but the lack of opposition to GINA points to some potentially serious problems.
GINA passed the Senate unanimously and [...]

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If you didn’t get a chance to clone your cat before Genetic Savings & Clone shut down, you now have a chance to clone your Dog. New company, BioArts, is having Woo Suk Wang of Seoul, South Korea perform the clonings. Yes, he’s the guy who was discredited after he falsely claimed to [...]

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The NYT reports that Dr. Andrew Schwartz, professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh, and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University have managed to get monkeys to control a robotic arm with their thoughts in order to put food in their mouths. This is not a new feat, but according to the Times, [...]

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This op-ed by James A. Bianco, president and CEO of Cell Therapeutics, makes a lot of sense. He says: “What’s missing from the debate is the public policy encouragement to produce more “smart” medicine.”
I agree. All too often, anti-aging activists simply turn to the idea that the solution is more money. [...]

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This news story from the NYT is good news for John McCain.

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That’s a lot of 6’s, but this author argues that despite passing the 6 billion mark, population is not a problem. He writes, “the world’s population will soon peak, and then plummet downward at an ever-increasing rate. Many countries have already fallen below replacement-rate fertility, with more to follow.”

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At last week’s UCLA Technology & Aging Conference, representatives from Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Toyota and other big-name firms discussed how technology is reshaping lifestyles for older individuals. However, important policy implications directly connected to these new tools went unspoken.
RFID (radio frequency identification) tags that can monitor the status of older individuals, face-recognition video systems that [...]

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This is an interesting column by David Brooks (NYT registration required). He argues that because of the current scientific revolution, a cultural effect will take place in religious circles, but not the one you expect. Everyone expects to see the God vs Atheism debate, but he says it will more likely be the [...]

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From the UK Times: “THE British doctor who pioneered test-tube babies has forecast that within decades stem-cell technology will make it possible to grow replacements for virtually any part of the human body.
Robert Edwards, 82, said the emerging field of regenerative medicine would enable a patient’s own cells to be used to build hearts, livers [...]

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Here is an interesting post from my friend Auren Hoffman on Coke’s inability to do math.

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Here’s an interesting article in the SF Chronicle about medical tourism. According to the article, ” No official statistics are kept on how many Americans travel overseas for medical care, but one estimate places the number at 150,000 in 2006.” Hip replacement in India, anyone?

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Last week, GlaxoSmithKline announced it will buy Sirtris Pharmaceuticals for US$720 million, giving weight to the claim that antiaging biotech firms can be a good bet. This is good news for Americans, given that a recent Harvard-affiliated study showed that some parts of the country have seen declines in expected longevity.
Sirtris, located in Cambridge, Mass., [...]

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