Most of us have an intuitive understanding of how a vaccine works: show the immune system a bit of a pathogen, or…
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post The First COVID-19 Vaccines: What’s mRNA Got To Do With It?Read more
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post Why Do Males Fare Worse With COVID-19? A Clue From Calico CatsRead more
Early on in the pandemic, a worse clinical scenario for the male of the species emerged. A study published mid-May from Italian…
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post Dr. Paul Offit Talks COVID Vaccines, With JAMA’S Howard BauchnerRead more
Science and medical writers have been under an avalanche of information for nearly a year now, as we translate technical information about…
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post Worse Than COVID? The Tasmanian Devil’s Contagious CancerRead more
It’s hard to imagine anything worse than the horrors at our hospitals right now. But in a recent JAMA webinar, Nicholas Christakis…
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post Thinking About Thanksgiving? A Reminder of What COVID-19 Can Do To A Human BodyRead more
My blog posts around Thanksgiving are predictably dull: Turkey Genetics 101, The Peaceable Genomes of Pumpkins. But 2020 is like no other…
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post Genetic Clues in the Goop of a COVID SwabRead more
The components of certain things are meant to remain mysterious. The ingredients of sausage. A burger’s slimy secret sauce. The recipe for…
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post Can Some Antibodies Worsen COVID-19? The Odd Situation of EnhancementRead more
Antibodies are supposed to be the good guys. The proteins, built of distinctive Y-shaped pieces, enter the bloodstream early in infection, pouring…
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post A Drug Trio for COVID-19: Precedents in Cystic Fibrosis, HIV/AIDS, and Hepatitis CRead more
Teaming treatments has long been a strategy to quell cancer, override mutations, and fight viruses. Will that be a winning strategy against…
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post A Conversation with CRISPR-Cas9 Inventors Charpentier and DoudnaRead more
Congrats to Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2020. The idea to edit DNA sequences and…
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post Long-Awaited Drug for Alkaptonuria (AKU), the First “Inborn Error,” On the Way to Approval in EuropeRead more
The European Medicines Agency has just recommended extending use of an existing drug, nitisinone (Orfadin), to treat alkaptonuria (AKU). AKU holds a…
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post 5 COVID-19 Updates: Cats, Kids, Seniors, Blood, and an Old VaccineRead more
Times have been strange for us all, weird indeed for science journalists. The initial manageable flow of news alerts to the media…
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post A Cloned Przewalski’s Horse Evokes Memories of the Catskill Game FarmRead more
On August 6, the first cloned Przewalski’s horse was born in Texas. Kurt began with a cell nucleus from another of his…