The DNA of Deadly Pathogens Is Easy to Obtain
Nikolay Chekalin/Getty Images This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In November 2016, virologist David Evans traveled to Geneva for a meeting of a World Health Organization committee on smallpox research. The deadly virus had been declared eradicated 36 years earlier; the only known live samples of smallpox…
An Explosive New Report Could Upend More than a Decade of Alzheimer’s Research. How Did This Happen?
Mother Jones illustration; Unsplash Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.More than 15 years ago, researchers at the University of Minnesota announced they had made a breakthrough: When they purified a protein from the brains of genetically modified mice and injected it into rats, it…
Don’t Be Afraid to Say “Masturbate,” and 5 Other Tips for Talking About Monkeypox
Mother Jones illustration; Center for Disease Control and Prevention Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.As far as viruses go, monkeypox has proven especially challenging to talk about. First, there’s the name, “monkeypox,” which a growing number of health experts say is misleading and derogatory.…
While All Eyes Were on Covid, HIV Researchers Were Making Progress on “The Holy Grail of Vaccines”
Mother Jones illustration; Boston Public Library/Unsplash Facts matter: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter. Support our nonprofit reporting. Subscribe to our print magazine.It’s been an unprecedented two years for science, to put it mildly. We’ve seen a new virus spread across the world, entire cities go on lockdown, a devastating 6 million deaths…
The Nightmare Politics and Sticky Science of Hacking the Climate
Getty Images This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. One way to fight climate change may be to…do more climate change. “Geoengineering” is a broad term encompassing distinct techniques for hacking the climate, split into two main groups: There’s carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which could mean sucking carbon…
A Plane of Monkeys, a Pandemic, and a Botched Deal: Inside the Science Crisis You’ve Never Heard Of
Facts matter: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter. Support our nonprofit reporting. Subscribe to our print magazine.On May 15, 2020, a US-bound cargo plane was scheduled to depart Mauritius, an island about the size of Maui that’s just east of Madagascar. There were four key things I knew about the flight: It…