Biotech

Will farm animals always suffer?Economic growth gives us cleaner air, healthier rivers, and safer workplaces. Happier animals could be next.Every disease is a policy failureFew people know how much medicine has progressed in their lifetimes. Fewer know how much faster it could be progressing.The ultimate horseSelective breeding has pushed horses to the limits of biology. But at what cost?Epidurals are a miracle technologyChildbirth may be the most painful thing a person can experience, but we have the technology to numb the pain.Why we should vaccinate wild animalsVaccinating wild animals can protect human health, and spare animals from extinction and suffering.The blood cancer that became solvableMultiple myeloma is brutal. We may finally have a cure, but American regulatory inertia means that it was discovered abroad.How bacteria solved the mystery of inheritanceIn the 1940s, scientists made a discovery now fundamental to biology: genes are encoded in DNA. The story involves bacteria, dead mice, and a kitchen cream separator.The slippery protein problemA disease that was once a death sentence is increasingly treatable.We’re freezing our eggs; maybe you should tooScience has largely solved the problem of reproductive ageing for women, but they have to prepare while they’re young.MicrobubblesIt’s incredibly hard to deliver drugs to the right organ, especially to reach the brain. Tiny gas-filled spheres that burst on command could change that.Meet your greensHow a single unappetizing shrub became dozens of different vegetables.The perks of being a mole ratThe secrets to extending human lifespans might lie in the animals that can already live for centuries.The golden age of vaccine developmentThe first vaccine was a lucky accident. Now we can design new vaccines in weeks, atom by atom.The evolution of bacteriaGenerations of microbes evolve in hours, not millennia. By speeding up Darwin’s clock, scientists have watched evolution happen in real time, and it’s changed how we understand natural selection.Nature’s laboratoryMillions of years of evolution have given us genomes that are like giant datasets for drug development. Finally, we are learning how to study them.The three-thousand-year journey of colchicineFor centuries it was a poison. Then colchicine rewrote treatment for gout, heart disease, and later, the debate over drug exclusivity.The first non-opioid painkillerFor nearly two centuries, pain relief meant effective but addictive opioids. Scientists have finally made something better.The algorithm will see you nowRadiology combines digital images, clear benchmarks, and repeatable tasks. But replacing humans with AI is harder than it seems.How to make an antibodyAntibody therapies are four of the world’s ten best selling drugs. If they were cheaper, they could prevent millions of deaths from rabies, malaria, and dengue.The death rays that guard lifeWe disinfect water before we drink it. Germicidal ultraviolet could make airborne disease as rare as those carried by water. The secret fast track for animal drugsAnimal drugs are approved much faster than human drugs. Perhaps we could adopt the same model for humans without compromising on safety.The end of leadLead has been all but eliminated in most of the developed world. Doing the same for the rest of the world might not be difficult. Brain-computer interfacesBrain implants are letting people move, speak, and interact with machines using only their thoughts. The first FDA approvals may arrive within five years.Fertility on demandMany women face a choice between career advancement or motherhood. But emerging fertility technologies could allow women to have it all.Animals as chemical factoriesHorses bled for antivenom, crabs drained for endotoxin tests, and silkworms boiled for silk. Science can now replace these practices with synthetic alternatives — but we need to find ways to scale them.How big data created the modern dairy cowWhat do cryogenics, butterfat tests, and genetic data have in common? They’re some of the reasons behind the world’s most productive dairy cows. Here’s how it all started.The ultra-selfish geneWe now have the power to genetically modify entire species by inserting certain genes into them with brute force. Doing this to malaria-carrying mosquitoes could allow us to wipe out humanity’s most deadly killer.How to start an advance market commitmentAdvance Market Commitments allow us to buy technology from the future to support its development: vaccines, carbon capture technology, and even spacecraft. Here’s how you can start your own.Compensating compassionToo few people donate their organs, dead or alive. How can we make it easier to donate, but avoid the abuses that some fear from cash payments?Life in the time of ZikaI was deliberately infected with Zika to test a vaccine. Human challenge trials like my one could save millions of lives by developing prophylactics more quickly.The future of silkSilk is stronger than steel or kevlar. We are already using it to transport vaccines without cold chains and make automatically dissolving stitches. What else could it be used for?The promise of SGLT2 inhibitorsSGLT2, a protein in the kidney, takes glucose out of the urine and puts it in the blood. Blocking this reduces diabetes, heart disease, and kidney disease – but we’re not exactly sure why.Why we didn’t get a malaria vaccine soonerHundreds of thousands of people die from malaria each year, but it took 141 years to develop a vaccine for it. Advance market commitments could speed things up next time.Every grain of riceAs climate change threatens crop yields, we need a second Green Revolution – one that, this time, is driven by genetic engineering.The story of VaccinateCANobody had a plan to get vaccines out of freezers and into Americans’ arms – except VaccinateCA. Its CEO tells the story of how a small team brought order to a chaotic rollout.Pandemic prevention as fire-fightingFire has almost disappeared as a cause of death in the developed world. A similar approach could do the same for infectious diseases.Advancing antivenomSnakebites kill between 80,000 and 140,000 people every year. Better antivenom should be a high priority – thankfully new technology can help.Age of the bacteriophageBacteriophages – viruses that infect bacterial cells – were almost forgotten in the age of antibiotics. Now as bacterial resistance grows, they may return to help us in our hour of need.Womb for improvementPregnancy can be arduous, painful and for some women impossible. New technology may allow more women to have children, and save the lives of more prematurely born infants. How do we get there?The future of weight lossWe have eradicated smallpox, cured many bacterial diseases, and invented a vaccine for Covid-19 within the year. But for a very long time we haven’t had a single good treatment for obesity. The great reinforcerAlongside all the successes of science in the Covid era, the pandemic has also sparked an outbreak of viral misinformation and sloppy research, revealing the glaring flaws in our scientific system.The evolution of psychiatryModern psychiatry appears to be at a standstill, wanting for better treatment and a substantive theoretical framework. Evolutionary theory has the potential to reinvigorate the field.Epidemic disease and the stateWestern democracies appear to have floundered in their responses to Covid-19. Is there a relationship between health and freedom, and can it be unraveled?The story of Viktor ZhdanovAlthough Viktor Zhdanov’s name is little known today, he spearheaded one of the greatest projects in history. Who was he and what did he do?