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Human-Animal Hybrids Are Coming And Could Be Used To Grow Organs For Transplant

Around the world thousands of people are on organ donor waiting lists. While some of those people will receive the organ transplants they need in time, the sad reality is that many will die waiting. But controversial new research may provide a way to address this crisis. Japan has recently overturned its ban on the …

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Misrepresentation In Abstracts Found In Over Half Of Top Psychiatry Journals

adverse drug reactions data mining
'Spin', defined as exaggerating the clinical significance of a particular treatment without the statistics to back it up, is discernible in more than half of clinical trial abstracts published in top psychology and psychiatry journals, a review of relevant research has found. The findings bring concerns about the possible effect this might be having on …

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New Technologies For The Brain Require Ethical Approaches To Innovation

brain technology
Brain technologies are all the rage these days. Entrepreneurs are selling wearable devices in the open marketplace with claims of benefits to memory, attention and concentration. Neurosurgeons and psychiatrists are exploring new ways and further developing old invasive ones to intervene in the brains of people with major mental illnesses whose conditions are resistant to …

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Frankenstein: The Real Experiments That Inspired The Fictional Science

Frankenstein experiment
On January 17 1803, a young man named George Forster was hanged for murder at Newgate prison in London. After his execution, as often happened, his body was carried ceremoniously across the city to the Royal College of Surgeons, where it would be publicly dissected. What actually happened was rather more shocking than simple dissection …

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Are Crowdfunding Sites Promoting Quack Treatments For Cancer?

crowdfunding
According to reports, since 2009 at least £8 million has been raised in the UK through appeals on crowdfunding websites for cancer treatment with an alternative health element. More than 2,300 cancer-related appeals were started on the UK JustGiving website in 2016 alone. The reports warn that, although some of the funding goes to experimental …

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Unexpected Outcome From Interleukin-1α Gene-Editing

David Brough
Researchers from the University of Manchester have recently discovered an unexpected consequence of gene-editing; a particular sequence within the interleukin-1α (IL-1α) gene. The group intended to use the CRISPR/CAS9 genetic editing technique to mutate a coding sequence in mice to alter the processing of IL-1α within the cell. By altering the nuclear localisation sequence (NLS), …

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