By Aleeza Hashmi
- On Monday, the world was introduced to the future of food: the “first hamburger made out of meat that had been grown from scratch in a laboratory.” Despite the astronomical cost of €250,000 ($330,000) for the patty, it does provide a precedent for eco-friendly meat consumption.
- The Indian government faces fierce scrutiny after rejecting the patents on the widely-used breast cancer drug Herceptin, produced by Roche Holding AG. India’s patent office said “Roche failed to follow the correct procedures, made incorrect filings,” and its agents not appear at hearings on the patents related to Herceptin.
- When Henrietta Lacks passed away from cervical cancer at the age of 31 more than sixty years ago, her doctors removed some of her tumor cells to be used for research. Since then, the cells, nicknamed “HeLa” cells, have been used in over 74,000 studies. The Lacks family, however, was never involved in any of the decisions regarding the research. On Wednesday, the National Institutes of Health announced that an agreement has finally been reached with the Lacks family to “grant them control over how the genome is used.”
- According to scientists at Cardiff and Cambridge universities, the emotional behavior of adults could be influenced by the deprivation of certain hormones while developing in the womb. Their research suggests that the restriction of the hormone Insulin-like growth factor-2 may cause adults to be at a greater risk for anxiety and poor mental health.
- A study from the University of Texas at Arlington published in the August issue of the Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Science suggests that the behavior of Americans who feel or behave negatively toward undocumented Latino immigrants is not simply predicated on strong in-group identification. Rather, negative attitudes towards immigrants are more likely among those with both a strong in-group identification and strong group-level narcissism, defined as “an inflated image of one’s group based on feelings of superiority, entitlement and the need for constant attention and praise at the collective level.”