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How life became big in two giant steps

Since the first living things appeared on the planet, the biggest among them have become increasingly bigger. Over 3.6 billion years of evolution, life's maximum size has shot up by 16 orders of magnitude - about 10 quadrillion times - from single cells to the massive sequoias of today (below right). And no matter what people say, size does matter. The largest of creatures, from the blue whale to the sauropod dinosaurs, are powerful captors of the imagination, but they are big draws for scientists too. Jonathan Payne from Stamford University is one of them, and together with a large team,…

I get email

It's the return of Andrew Rosenberg! Hello Proffesor Myers, I see that I have become somewhat of a celebrity amongst your endless supply of past-student minions on your forums. Its hard for me to reply to such a massive amount of information that was thrown back at me in the last 24 hours, but I will do my best. First of all, you replied by asking me why I came to you with questions if I was "so intelligent" myself. I simply put my high school accomplishments down, not as a way to brag, but to try and show you that I was someone with the mental capacity to listen to your replies--not…

'My work has been plagiarized. Now what?'

I received an email from reader Doug Blank (who gave me permission to share it here and to identify him by name) about a perplexing situation: Janet, I thought I'd solicit your advice. Recently, I found an instance of parts of my thesis appearing in a journal article, and of the paper being presented at a conference. In fact, further exploration revealed that it had won a best paper prize! Why don't I feel proud... I've sent the following letter to the one and only email address that I found on the journal's website, almost three weeks ago, but haven't heard anything. I tried contacting the…

The price of anti-vaccine fanaticism, part 3

Jake's hit pieces against Seed and me reminded me of something. They reminded me of just what it is that the anti-vaccine movement promotes, and the damage that I wish Jake would wake up and realize that the organization he has associated himself with causes a great deal of harm. Part of that harm derives from its antivaccine activities, which are custom-designed to discourage parents from vaccinating with unfounded fears of vaccines causing autism. However, there is another harm that the "vaccines cause autism" movement causes that is not related to the promotion of infectious disease that…

Embryonic Stem Cell Debate Over; Thousands of Researchers Now Jobless

That could easily have been the shared title of a pair of articles in today's New York Times discussing the science and political implications of two very significant stem cell papers published online yesterday. The biggest offender was Sheryl Stolberg: It has been more than six years since President Bush, in the first major televised address of his presidency, drew a stark moral line against the destruction of human embryos in medical research. Since then, he has steadfastly maintained that scientists would come up with an alternative method of developing embryonic stem cells, one that did…

Kent Hovind at St Cloud State University

After sitting through Hovind's talk, I have seen the light. I've always been awfully hard on Christianity and Christians here, despising their beliefs and making mock of their nonsensical ideas and backwards social agenda. But this evangelist really reached out and grabbed me. I now feel a great pity for them. Hovind is one of the leading lights of fundamentalist Christianity in this country; the large auditorium was packed full, and they had to put up folding seats on the stage behind him to handle the crowd. They were enthusiastic and laughing and cheering and shouting "Amen!" throughout…

The mathematics of the boiled frog

An interesting blog post came my way yesterday about The Legend of the Boiling Frog. The gist of the post was that the legend was just that: urban (or science) legend. The post apparently started out with a query to a noted biologist who studies amphibians (I originally wrote, "a noted amphibian biologist" until I realized I didn't know if were any biologists who were amphibians): "I am writing a weekly column for Die Zeit, Germany's major weekly paper, on scientific urban legends that my readers ask me about. Now you surely have heard the story of the boiling frog that is often told by…

Tom Bethell cries

Russell Seitz discovers another review of Expelled. It's by that deluded dolt, Tom Bethell, and it's a positive review. It is surely the best thing ever done on this issue, in any medium. At moments it brought tears of joy to my eyes. I have written about this controversy for over 30 years and by the movie's end I felt that those of us who have insisted that Darwinism is a sorry mess and that life surely was designed are going to prevail. Deluded much? If he were at all aware of the science of biology, he'd know that evolution is not going anywhere but deeper into explaining life on earth.…

Real Clock Tutorial: Atomic Clocks

In yesterday's post, I outlined the history of clocks starting from the essential feature of any clock, namely the "tick." I ended by saying that the best clock you can possibly make is one based off the basic laws of quantum physics, using the energy separation between two energy levels in an atom to determine a fixed frequency of light. In this case, the "tick" is the oscillation of the electromagnetic field-- whenever the electric field points "up," you count that as a "tick" of the clock. For light corresponding to the transition between the hyperfine ground states of cesium, those "ticks…

Alice's tips for (childless) long-distance commuting

As I'm transitioning away from an academic/personal life of long-distance commuting, I thought this would be a good time (or perhaps the last good time?) to share some of my tips for how to help one's marriage/partnership survive two academic careers in two cities. Of course, I only have this last year as experience with faculty life (although my husband has been a faculty member for 5). But before that, there was 4 years of my commuting as a grad student (a 3.5 hr commute), and 1.5 years of LDR (a plane trip) as an undergrad. But that was a long time ago, and I was a different person then…

Friday Banality: Minestrone for the Masses

Please allow me to assure you that with this entry, I will not be veering into regular essays on the trappings of banal domesticity. However, I think this is a damn fine minestrone. I typically make it during the cooler months of the year, so as a nod to the recent autumnal weather here in the central regions of the Gaaah-duhn State, I figured I'd toss it out here on the Refuge Buon appetito, you bonobos! This minestrone soup recipe produces something more akin to a stew rather than a mere soup. It has a rustic, robust yet nourishing and comforting quality to it, and for this reason, I often…

Expensive Medicine

In December 1992, the FDA approved a new cancer drug called Taxol. The active ingredient was paclitaxel, a toxic chemical taken from the bark of the Oregon yew tree. Hailed as a treatment for metastasized tumors - the cancer had already spread - Bristol-Meyers Squib proudly announced that the pill reduced tumor size by at least one half in 30 percent of patients. For those without hope, the pill offered a last chance. But Taxol's surprising effectiveness wasn't what made headlines. Instead, it quickly gained a reputation as the most expensive drug ever sold. Bristol-Meyers Squibb set a…

Oh, no! Bad research is killing science!

Over the last few decades, there has been a veritable explosion in the quantity of scientific journals and published papers. It's a veritable avalanche. Some of the reason for this is simply the increase in the number of scientific researchers that has occurred over the last few decades. Another reason I'd suggest is that there are now numerous whole fields of science that didn't exist 30 years ago, fields such as genomics, HIV/AIDS, angiogenesis, and various technologies that have come into their own in the last decade or so. It's not surprising that these disciplines would spawn their own…

NBC chief medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman embraces quackery

I take back all those nice things I used to say about Nancy Snyderman. There's no doubt that she "gets it" about vaccines and, for the most part, even though she does occasionally go overboard, and her understanding of the issues involved in the use of various vaccines is anything but nuanced. I used to think that she "got it" with respect to SBM, but then I saw her recent segment on "complementary" medicine on NBC News the other night. Here's part one, which aired Monday night: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy The very introduction made me groan,…

Quackademic medicine marches on, Stanford edition

One of the most pernicious changes in medicine that’s occurred over the last 25 years or so is the infiltration of what I like to refer to as “quackademic medicine.” It’s a term that was, as far as I know, coined by Dr. Robert W. Donnell in 2009 to describe the infiltration of pseudoscience and quackery into medical schools and academic medical centers under the mantle of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), now more commonly referred to as “integrative medicine. However, over the years, I’ve embraced the term to describe the “integration” of quackery and pseudoscience into…

Need to pander to your base? Attack funny-sounding science funded by the NSF!

Even though I was only in junior high and high school back in the 1970s, because I was already turning into a science geek I remember Senator William Proxmire (D-WI). In particular, I remember his Golden Fleece awards. These were "awards" designed to highlight what he saw as wasteful government spending, targeting, for instance, the use of taxpayer funds to fly over 1,000 officers to a reunion of the Tailhook Association or financing the construction of an 800- foot limestone replica of the Great Wall of China in Bedford, Indiana. Others, although they sounded on the surface to be wasteful,…

Compliments to the chef: Partnerships between school food staff, professional chefs lead to healthier eating

Building excitement around school meals with the help of guest chefs and fresh recipes could be a significant boon for school lunch programs as well as student eating habits, a new study found. Recently published in the journal Appetite, the study examined the impact of Chefs Move to Schools, an initiative of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign. With an overriding goal of encouraging schoolchildren to make healthier meal choices, Chefs Move to Schools pairs volunteer professional chefs with schools to offer cooking education to kids as well as culinary advice to school food…

We're Staying

We almost did it. We really did. We went so far as to get mortgage pre-approval, meet with a builder about the costs of repairing the barn and the house, and make an appointment to make a written offer. And we decided to stay here. There were several reasons for doing so. The first was that our offer would be contingent, and we thought there was a better than 50-50 chance that the sellers might well sell the house out from under us - that is, since we didn't per se want to sell the house, but rather to buy *this particular different house* the fact that we're in no way ready to show (my…

O Pangloss!

Can I tell you how boring I find the fine-tuning argument? Paul Davies is the latest to use it and in the NYT no less. Davies' argument depends on whether you believe his initial assertion that science fundamentally rests on faith: The problem with this neat separation into "non-overlapping magisteria," as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of…

Zika remains a serious threat. Federal funding cuts will make the problem even worse.

Last year’s emergency Zika funding is about to run out and there’s no new money in the pipeline. It’s emblematic of the kind of short-term, reactive policymaking that public health officials have been warning us about for years. Now, as we head into summer, public health again faces a dangerous, highly complex threat along with an enormous funding gap. “The Zika threat will get worse,” said Claude Jacob, chief public health officer at the Cambridge Public Health Department in Massachusetts and president of the National Association of County & City Health Officials (NACCHO). “And the…

Your next bird book: The Crossley ID Guide (Eastern Birds)

Three days ago I happen to glance out the front window of our townhouse and found myself staring at a bald eagle swooping by, presumably after picking up one of the neighborhood dogs or small children1 A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, no one was there but a package was on the stoep. And in the package was my new The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds! It was almost a Harry Potter moment. The Crossley ID Guide is a unique and special bird book. It is not exactly a pocket field guide, unless you are the Jolly Green Giant and have pockets the size of ... well,…

Revisiting the Danish Cartoon Controversy

Came across these links while surfing and I have to say I'm very disappointed in a person and an organization I've respected in the past for their indefensible position on the issue. The first is Gary Trudeau, who is taken to task by Rogier van Bakel, and rightly so, for his recent comments on the matter. He was asked the following question: What did you make of the Danish cartoon mess? I understand that you said you would never play with the image of Allah. But did you feel you should have done so out of a sense of professional solidarity, or to make a statement about freedom of speech? And…

Labs and Naivete

In addition to the argument that labs are pedagogically bad, which I don't buy, Steve Gimbel offers some more reasons to get rid of lab classes on sort of procedural grounds. There are a bunch of interrealted things here, but the argument boils down to two main points: Labs are very time-consuming, and students would be more likely to take science classes if they didn't have to knock out a whole afternoon to take the lab. Labs are very resource intensive, and faculty would offer more non-major classes if they didn't have to teach labs. I don't really find these any more compelling than the…

Strange Travels, Part 3: Science on Sunday in SoHo

My adventures in NY, continued: Sunday Morning I say the last of my farewells, and lament that I can’t see all my sciblings again before I leave. With plenty of time before my flight, I decide to go wander around New York a little bit. It turns out to be a natural choice... it almost feels as if I’ve found my own unique path in this city of five million people.. For instance, I stop near NYU to look at some paperback books displayed on a rickety card table along the sidewalk. There seems to be an unusually high number of philosophical pieces, I note, as I purchase a book on metamorphosis.…

A thank you from Don Weiss

The race for State Board of Education against John Bacon looked incredibly close until the last votes were counted. It had been a 2 point race until the last precincts reported and gave the incumbent creationist a massive lead over Don Weiss. Don Weiss has asked me to pass on these thoughts: Please let me take this opportunity to thank your readers for their tremendous support. I would be honored to help carry their dreams and desires for Kansas in the future. He also included his broader take on the Kansas elections: As you might expect, I am deeply disappointed in the outcome of the…

And yet another political roundup...

Its Not Just Palin -- Its The Message.: The brilliance of the McCain strategy and messaging is that it includes a trap for Obama. To push back on the McCain claim of "country first" and "the original mavericks who will shake up Washington" the Obama campaign's attack of "four more years of George Bush" becomes a problem. In a country that yearns for post-partisan change the Obama campaign risks sounding too partisan and like more of the same. Morning podcast with Jay Rosen (please LISTEN to the entire podcast - will make you think!): That led me to the idea that perhaps it's not Obama that…

Golden ideas

Evolgen points me to the fact that even our hosts here at Seed are spreading the "blondes are going to go extinct" hoax/meme which first cropped up 3 years ago. I also noticed that someone as informed about biology as John Wilkins was was taken in. An altered iteration of this hoax/meme that focused on redheads was also spreading last year. As Evolgen notes, this meme has been thoroughly debunked. To make it short, if you assume that blondness is a monogenic recessive trait (a gross simplification), its expression in the population will be q2, derived from Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium p2 +…

St. Louis fast food workers join forces for a living wage, right to organize

Sharon Thomas-Ellison works hard for her paychecks at Jimmy John's. On occasion when no one else is available, the 19-year-old has worked from 11 in the morning until 1 a.m. at night with just a 30-minute break — and it's okay, she says, she needs the extra income. After a long day's work on her feet, often working split shifts, the St. Louis resident goes home to the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her brother, who also works for Jimmy John's, a fast food sandwich chain that's become a billion-dollar a year enterprise with more than 1,500 stores nationwide. It's a struggle to pay the…

All kinds of stuff about guns and gun control

For starters, I've put a bunch of videos including a must see by Jon Steward and another must see by Melissa Harris-Perry HERE. Following is a veritable carnival of topical and timely posts, stories, and sites: Warning shot: Gun violence lands US lowest life expectancy among rich nations Widespread gun ownership and lax firearms controls were deemed major reasons for the US topping a list of violent deaths in wealthy nations. The study comes amid a fiery gun control debate, triggered by the fatal school shooting at Sandy Elementary. The 378-page survey by a panel of experts from the…

Peer Reviewed Research Predicted NYC Subway Flooding by #Sandy

Earlier this year a paper was published in the journal Nature in which a team of scientists looked at changes in storm surge potential under conditions of global warming, and they used the New York City area in their modeling. Combined with resent research adding to the growing body of data and studies that show increased storminess with global warming, this research suggests that the increased possibility of a hurricane causing a storm surge that would actually flood the subways in Manhattan is not only possible, but pretty likely to happen in the near future. Perhaps as soon as ....…

We Need Scientific Thinking, Not Scientific Commentary

Thursday's tempest-in-a-teapot was kicked off by an interview with Dan Vergano in which he suggests science reporting is a "ghetto:" The idea, and it comes from the redoubtable Tom Hayden, is that science reporting has largely become a secret garden walled off, and walling itself off, from the rest of the world. Instead of reporting on the scientific aspects of news stories — whether Iran really will have the bomb, whether Quantitative Easing will spark inflation, whether Peak Oil is a real concern — we write pretty entertainments about mummies, exploding stars and the sex life of ducks. All…

Tom Harkin's War on Science (or, "meet the new boss...")

Remember when President Obama said something about returning science to it's rightful place? Well, our new president has a real tough climb ahead of him. The previous administration shoved science aside for political expediency and religious ideology. Now, forces in the president's own party are trying to insert their own quasi-religious beliefs into health care reform, leaving science in a whole different place altogether. Here's the deal. Some years back, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) helped set up the National Center on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). The whole idea of…

Michael Duffy is at it again

It's only been six months since his previous wrong-headed column claiming that global warming has ended, but Michael Duffy has decided to write another one: Last month I witnessed something shocking. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was giving a talk at the University of NSW. The talk was accompanied by a slide presentation, and the most important graph showed average global temperatures. For the past decade it represented temperatures climbing sharply. As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: "We're at a stage where…

Reviewing a couple wee guides to critical thinking.

One of the first things that happens when you get a faculty mailbox in a philosophy department is that unsolicited items start appearing in it. There are the late student papers, the book catalogs, the religious tracts -- and occasionally, actual books that, it is hoped, you will like well enough that you will exhort all your students to buy them (perhaps by requiring them for your classes). Today, I'm going to give you my review of two little books that appeared in my faculty mailbox, both from The Foundation for Critical Thinking. The first is The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking…

Who Dan Dennett think he be foolin'?

I listened to Dan Dennett on the most recent Tech Nation with Moira Gunn (not online yet), and he went on about the ideas proposed in his book Breaking the Spell. Some of the ideas were interesting, though I've read more well developed versions in most of the supporting literature. Nevertheless, Dennett's schtick that those who think that religious people can't analyze their beliefs rationally are being patronizing seems really laughable to me. Most atheists I know have a hard time getting around the fact that many people who are extremely bright (no pun intended in the context of Dennett…

Bird flu: headline news

A serviceable and knowledgeable article by AP's Maria Cheng, lately of the WHO public information office, has just appeared on the wires. Readers of this site won't find much new, but what is interesting are the headlines. Yes, headlines, in the plural. Here are ten different headlines to the same article: What Ever Happened To Bird Flu? (Forbes) After pandemic fear, experts wonder: What happened to bird flu? (Houston Chronicle) After pandemic panic, experts wonder: What happened to bird flu?(Santa Barbara News-Press) Despite panic, bird flu pandemic hasn't appeared (Minneapolis Star-Tribune…

What's under the biodefense rock?

Biodefense laboratories at Texas universities operated for years without a single reported incident of laboratory acquired infection or even exposure. That is absolutely true and it sounds reassuring and it is similar to biodefense laboratores elsewhere. Don't worry. Be happy. But when it comes to claims of safety in biodefense laboratories -- multiplying like mosquitoes after the Bush administration rained dollars on their terrorist obsession -- you need to parse the statements carefully: "without a single reported incident" doesn't mean there were no incidents. It means none were reported.…

Is It a Farm Yet?

I once wrote an essay about my son Isaiah's wish for a farm. He has a farm, of course, but he also dreams of a different one, the one in his imagination. What was funny was that all the adults that saw his wish understood it so very well. Many people tell me how much they want a farm. But other people show me that farms are easier to find than you think, even if they aren't perfect. These are all real people, who I know. As i start our garden design class today, I started thinking about all the farm dreams I've known! I know a man who wanted to start a farm. So he worked and saved for…

In Search of My Rhetorical Penis

tags: gender issues, gender disparity, blogosphere, science blogs, life science blogs Image: Anemi I have been thinking more about TheScientist's recent online article, "Vote for your favorite life science blogs", where they asked this same question of seven of the "top" life science bloggers -- all of whom just so happened to be men. It reminded me of Declan Butler's Nature article that was published approximately two years ago, where he listed the "top" science blogs using some rather ambiguous standards that were inconsistently applied for defining precisely what is a science blog ..…

Pepsigate: Yes, I'm staying

For now, at least. My natural inclinations about this whole mess are probably closest in nature to either Chad Orzel's or Jason Rosenhouse's, so reading them will probably give you a pretty close idea of where I stand. Bora, not surprisingly, has collected a lot of the reaction. I also really like what Christie Wilcox has to say: Let me make it clear, though - I don't blame anyone for leaving. I don't hold it against them. While I may not have had the same visceral reaction they did, I also haven't been here that long. I haven't dealt with this kind of mismanagement and gotten fed up about…

Talk Radio … the horror, the horror

It's a good thing that Minnesota Atheists are making an effort to get on the radio. Have you ever looked at the Christian talk radio programming in your area? It's like a black hole of rampaging stupid, so awfully banal and inane that it's terrifying. I was just sent the program guide for our major Minneapolis Christian talk station — KKMS, AM980 — and it offers a rather creepy view of their perspective. There are some surprises, though. Guess what venue the big time Intelligent Design creationists use to spread their ideas? Tuesday 3:00 Hour - "The KKMS Ministry of the Month" - Dr. John…

Happy Bloggiversary, Jason Kuznicki

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the start of Positive Liberty, by Jason Kuznicki. It is an anniversary that is well worth noting and celebrating. Jason thanks me for the many links I've made to his blog over the last year, and I have tried to send people to his blog as often as possible. But there's a reason for that, and it's because Jason has written so many compelling and thoughtful posts in that time. And for that, I want to thank him. There is a really interesting passage in his post on the anniversary that I want to quote: In part, I've created a persona, which is something I…

Ranking the Unmeasurable

Today's Inside Higher Ed has a story about growing resistance to the US News rankings: In the wake of meetings this week of the Annapolis Group -- an organization of liberal arts colleges -- critics of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings are expecting a significant increase in the number of institutions where presidents pledge not to participate in the "reputational" portion of the rankings or to use scores in their own promotional materials. A majority of the approximately 80 presidents at the meeting said that they did not intend to participate in the U.S. News reputational…

The Funding Issue

Gordon Watts is mad as hell about funding cuts, and blaming petty partisan politics: As far as I can tell, here is what happened: Congress just about finishes the omnibus spending bill. [Snark: exactly how late was this!?] At the last minute Bush says he will veto it unless it comes at his number. [Snark: Presumably this is to prove that he is a fiscal conservative.] Democrats and Republicans in congress go round and round. They do not have the votes to override a veto in the end. Democrats give up and say “he wants it 22 billion cheaper? OK, we’ll do it”. [Snark: how did we not miss this…

When should an ant colony invest in reproductives?

Those of you who were into ants in the early '90s might remember SimAnt, a simulation game where you control the decisions your ants make to steer a colony to dominance over a competing species in a suburban lawn. The game is based, in part, on the optimality equations summarized in Oster & Wilson's 1978 text "Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects".  The book lays out mathematical foundations for determining the investments a colony should place in workers, queens, and males in order to optimize Darwinian fitness over a range of ecological conditions.  If you knew the equations,…

Miscellaneous Dawkinsiana

I sat down and watched both episodes of Dawkins' series, The Root of All Evil? this weekend (because I can!), and I have to say…I liked it very much. I've already commented on the first episode, and if you want to know what's in the second, Dawkins himself has an editorial that summarizes the main points: the pattern of indoctrination of children, the kneejerk rejection of honest criticism, the spreading corruption of education by dogma. It was marvelous to see it all laid out lucidly, in a tidy 50 minute spot. (Hmmm, just the right length that if I wanted to "infuse religion in student…

The reality of fact-checking at daily newspapers: George Will is no exception

Like Carl Zimmer, I can't get past the George F. Will/WaPo climate change denial scandal. Carl's latest piece delves deeper into the nature of journalism and fact-checking at the Post, and I'm going to weigh in with my observations of working at newspapers off and on for the past 22 years. First, contrary to what many non-journalists seem to believe, George F. Will is a journalist. Just because he gets to add interpretation and value judgment to the factual material that serves as his raw material doesn't mean he gets to flout the ethical parameters of the business. In other words, he is…

Air Pollution and Appendicitis

This is an odd one.  A study of 5191 adults showed an association between air pollution and attacks of acute appendicitis. href="http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/abstract/cmaj.082068v1">Effect of ambient air pollution on the incidence of appendicitis CMAJ 10.1503/cmaj.082068 Published online ahead of print October 5, 2009 Abstract Background: The pathogenesis of appendicitis is unclear. We evaluated whether exposure to air pollution was associated with an increased incidence of appendicitis. Methods: We identified 5191 adults who had been admitted to hospital with…

The Failure of Blogdom as a Source of Public Conversation

Two things happened last year when we started to get the Sunday Washington Post. One was that I tried to figure out those crossword puzzles. That's not going so well. The other is that I would read the humor column in the back of the magazine by Gene Weingarten. That's turned out better. I thus feel compelled to share what is the definitive statement on why blogging does not straightforwardly amount to the democratization of public discourse. Or, I should say, does not straightforwardly elevate the value of the public sphere. "No Comment," at this link. And pasted in full below the…

TEN YEARS AFTER DOLLY: Less Than a Third of Americans Believe Cloning Animals is Morally Acceptable; Only a Third of Americans Are Clear About the Differences Between Therapeutic and Reproductive Cloning; Less Than a Majority Support Therapeutic Cloning

Today marks the ten year anniversary of the birth of the cloned sheep Dolly, and the anniversary comes as Congress debates various bills impacting funding for embryonic stem cell research (NPR files two reports today, here and here.) Despite ten years of debate over therapeutic and reproductive cloning, Congress has yet to pass legislation providing clear guidelines for research. According to polls, the public still has reservations about animal cloning, and remains unclear about the differences between reproductive and therapeutic cloning. Though answers are susceptible to question…