Interactive Features at the Children's Hospital Boston's Website. [Via Mind Hacks.]
posted by homunculus on Dec 17, 2007 - 4 comments

Drugs Banned, Many of World’s Poor Suffer in Pain "Millions of people die in pain because they cannot get morphine, which is legal for medical use in most nations." [Via TalkLeft.]
posted by homunculus on Sep 10, 2007 - 47 comments

In Games, an Insight Into the Rules of Evolution. Carl Zimmer writes about Martin Nowak (previously mentioned here), a mathematical biologist who uses games to understand how cooperation evolved. [Via MindHacks.]
posted by homunculus on Aug 11, 2007 - 4 comments

Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers. That's the good news. The bad news is that because there's no patent and it's so cheap to make, researchers may not be able to get funding from the private sector for further research since the treatment wouldn't make a profit. [Via Hullabaloo.]
posted by homunculus on Jan 18, 2007 - 122 comments

Blighted Homeland. "From 1944 to 1986, 3.9 million tons of uranium ore were dug and blasted from Navajo soil, nearly all of it for America's atomic arsenal. Navajos inhaled radioactive dust, drank contaminated water and built homes using rock from the mines and mills. Many of the dangers persist to this day." A series of articles and photo galleries examines the legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo (previously discussed here.) [Via Gristmill, BugMeNot.]
posted by homunculus on Nov 24, 2006 - 13 comments

Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer: A Review of Recent Scientific Literature (PDF). There's a summary and analysis of the report in this article. (Via the Organic Consumers Association).
posted by homunculus on Nov 13, 2005 - 5 comments

Cancer, Chemicals and History. Some of the biggest chemical companies in the US have launched a campaign to discredit two historians who have written a book about the industry's efforts to conceal links between their products and cancer. Some of the internal documents referenced in the book can be found at the Chemical Industry Archives, a site dedicated to exposing the industry's attempts to conceal the dangers of their products. [Via Disinformation.]
posted by homunculus on Jan 26, 2005 - 12 comments

Stem cells target cancer tumors. There has been some promising research with embryonic and adult stem cells in the fight against cancer. Meanwhile, California approved $3 billion for stem cell research, good news (debatably) since the 22 stem cell lines available for federally-funded research are contaminated with mouse cells and unusable for treatment in humans, but I wonder if California might end up in a federalism showdown with the new Senate over this. Maybe it will be less of an issue now that researchers have figured out how to derive stem cells from a morula, a four-day old embryo, without destroying it.
posted by homunculus on Nov 3, 2004 - 10 comments

An important breast cancer test is now unavailable in British Columbia because of the American company which holds the relevant patent. The B.C. Cancer Agency has been forced to stop the tests after legal threats by Utah-based Myriad Genetics Inc., which has a patent on two genes that can signal whether a woman may develop hereditary breast cancer. I think this is a perfect example of why patenting genes is a terrible idea. Via Slashdot.
posted by homunculus on Oct 21, 2002 - 39 comments