A favorite theme of science fiction (the entire The Matrix franchise is based on it) as well as discussions among “philosophers of mind”: what would happen if a brain could …
Stem cells
Stem cells are the primary type of cells that are created after fertilization, and in the course of organic development they differentiate to create the various organs. For biotechnologists, the …
On/off
“One thing we know, that we know nothing.” This should be the motto of biotechnologists, if – as “scientists” – they were honest towards the populations that fund them. But …
Artificial mice
No, however, from what you thought! Biomedical engineers from Duke University in North Carolina announced via a paper in Nature that they created (for the first time) functional human muscle …
Diagnosis of pocket
The passenger lost consciousness on the airplane during the flight. To his good fortune, his fellow traveler was Eric Topol. Topol is a cardiologist—but he didn’t perform chest compressions. He …
Genetic improvement
Those interested in reflecting on the “ethical risks” of the 3rd and 4th industrial / technological revolutions (and there are many such people, “experts” or not) should go ahead: it …
The scientific epic
Anyone who thinks (or will come to think in the future) that the innovative recipe for genetic editing called Crispr/Cas-9 (see Cyborg 8: genetic cut-and-sew) is a pure product of …
DNA sequencer
It may look like a large photocopier, but it’s not. According to its specifications, Illumina’s HiSeq X machine can produce the complete sequence of 16 human genomes in every 3-day …
3D printers
The generations that grew up in the 20th century were trained to use specific symbolic representations in encoding the world. Among these, the images of “construction” and “building” had a …
genetic cut-and-paste: the great deception
Think of a cinematic film. You identify a specific sequence of frames that you want to replace. If you have a film reel, you go and cut the celluloid, and …
genetic predisposition; no, thank you!
Are we our genes? A large part of the so-called “scientific community” continues to support this view, albeit using statistical tricks. DNA is our “book of life,” written with just …
Ephemeral genes
It is one of those scientific procedures that (with our limited minds) we would hardly consider truly “scientific”: first (some claim) they found the genes for A or B, and …