A year-long search by Princeton University involving three committees of scholars and 19 outside experts from disparate disciplines has resulted in a unanimous decision to appoint Peter Singer - a world famous animal rights activist - to the chair in bioethics at the University's Center for Human Values. The appointment has caused...
Most leadership traits are heritable, according to a study published in the journal Twin Research. A group of researchers headed by Professor Andrew Johnson of the University of Western Ontario, in Canada, found in their study of almost 250 pairs of twins that identical twins were more likely to reach...
New research published in the journal Nature has increased scientists' understanding of how mutations in the presenilin gene increases the risk of developing inherited, early-onset Alzheimer's disease. About 40% of people with this inherited form of Alzheimer's have a mutation in the presenilin genes which predisposes them to the accumulation...
Glaxo Wellcome appears to have abandoned plans to merge with the US drugs giant Bristol Myers Squibb. Sources claim that informal meetings had taken place, but merger negotiations broke down at the end of last year and are unlikely to be resumed. However, it is thought that Glaxo is looking...
Developments in the use of gene therapy to treat muscular dystrophy and haemophilia have been reported in the past week. A team of scientists at the Salk Institute in California announced in the American journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that a form of haemophilia in mice had...
A mother who gave birth to another woman's child after a mix-up at a New York fertility clinic has decided to hand the baby back to its biological parents. Donna Fasano gave birth three months ago to twin boys - one white and one black - after her fertility...
Dolly the cloned sheep has given birth to three lambs at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh. Dolly's first pregnancy resulted in just one lamb born in April last year. All the lambs were conceived naturally and all have the same father, a Welsh mountain ram called David. Dr Harry Griffin...
A report published last Monday shows that many people are unaware of medical advances that can treat or prevent inherited genetic diseases. Action Research, the medical charity that commissioned the Mori research, said that as a result, more than half of the surveyed group said they would avoid having children...
At a conference in London last week, Dr Anne McLaren of the Wellcome CRC Institute in Cambridge (UK) said that the first application of cloning techniques in cell therapy was likely to be for bone marrow grafts for children suffering from leukaemia. She predicted that this might be possible in...
An increasingly popular fertility treatment used in cases of male infertility could lead to a slight increase in genetic abnormalities in resulting offspring. It may also affect the cellular machinery inside sperm cells during fertilisation, according to a study of the technique in animals. However, experts say the results are...
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