Public views on Science and Research

On July 9th, the Pew Research Center for People & the Press, in collaboration with the Americans Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) released its findings (full report) regarding the public perception of science. In this post I will reflect on some of the interesting aspects of the report. To give some context, the [...]

From Mouse to Monkey to Humans: The Story of Rituximab

Modern advances in science have meant that our models of diseases have vastly improved. Be that in a dish in the laboratory, a computer simulation or through using a transgenic mouse, there have been developments across the biomedical field that have given us a greater understanding of diseases and how our bodies work.
This increase in [...]

New York Times mentions role of animals in research

A recent New York Times article looked at a former banker, Mary Ann Baik, who left her job and retrained as an animal healthcare technician. Within this article another lab animal technician, Kevin Phelps, talked about his thoughts on his career – importantly he took care to mention the role of animal research in medicine.
Kevin [...]

From Science Fiction to Science Fact

The ability to regrow limbs lost through accident or the action of their nemesis is a power usually thought of as belonging only to comic-book heroes, but in nature the ability to regenerate tissues and even whole limbs is surprisingly widespread across the plant and animal kingdoms. While in the womb mammals such as humans [...]

Promote Advocacy – Support a Hayre Fellow

In March 2008 I travelled to the US as the inaugural Michael D. Hayre Fellow in Public Outreach. Through this opportunity I founded Speaking of Research and worked to improve the public’s understanding in public outreach. This year the new Hayre Fellow(s) will be able to try their hand at making a difference both nationally [...]

Can we protect the brain against tumor metastasis?

Brain metastasis that affect at least 20% of cancer patients are a serious problem for doctors seeking to treat cancer and kill thousands of patients every year, being particularly difficult to treat because many anti-cancer drugs cannot cross the blood-brain barrier and because surgery to remove the tumor can often be difficult and risky.  Patients [...]

The Monkey of the Baskervilles

If you watched the news or picked up a newspaper yesterday you’ll already be aware that scientists in Japan have created genetically modified (GM) marmoset monkeys that pass the transgene, in this case one that encodes the marker GFP protein that glows under UV light, to their offspring. Severel media outlest including the Huffington Post [...]

Synergy

A claim frequently made by animal rights activists is that by paying for animal research charities and other funding bodies are diverting money from other areas such as clinical research. However the reality is that clinical and animal scientists work together to understand what is going wrong in disease and to illuminate previously unknown aspects [...]