HEALTH AND SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS

March 28, 2018 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

• Dr. Robert Redfield appointed CDC director (CNN)
• After Harvey, unpublicized chemical spills come to light (CS Monitor)
• How social media can reveal overlooked drug reactions (NPR)

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

• Monsanto backs new company based on gene editing, not GMOs (Reuters)
• Stephen Hawking to join Newton, Darwin in final resting place (Reuters)
• Apple goes to Hollywood. Will its story have a happy ending? (New York Times)
• How DNA can be used to store computer data (BBC)

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

HEALTH

Dr. Robert Redfield appointed CDC director (CNN)

…Redfield is an infectious disease specialist with a focus on HIV and AIDS and is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He served on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS under George W. Bush…The Center for Science in the Public Interest released a statement urging the administration against naming him to the post, claiming a lack of experience in leading a public health agency, a history of scientific misconduct and support for HIV/AIDS policies that are opposed by most public health experts.

After Harvey, unpublicized chemical spills come to light (CS Monitor)

More than 100 chemical releases took place in Houston during or immediately after hurricane Harvey and most were never made public. Now, some locals are seeking to piece together the full picture of the storm's impact. 

How social media can reveal overlooked drug reactions (NPR)

When patients connect online, they often share information that reveals how treatments work in the real world.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Monsanto backs new company based on gene editing, not GMOs (Reuters)

…The collaboration accelerates a race among agricultural scientists and companies worldwide to develop new seeds for crops using gene editing, a process they say can produce non-GMO farm products that do not contain foreign DNA from a different species.  Unlike traditional GMOs, in which a gene is added from another organism, gene-editing works like the find-and-replace function on a word processor. It finds a gene and then makes changes by amending or deleting it.

Stephen Hawking to join Newton, Darwin in final resting place (Reuters)

British physicist Stephen Hawking is to take his place among some of the greatest scientists in history when his ashes are interred inside Westminster Abbey, close to the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

Apple goes to Hollywood. Will its story have a happy ending? (New York Times)

Apple’s new venture has taken the company far from its Silicon Valley comfort zone and thrust it into alien territory: Hollywood…Apple’s plans to make itself into a big player in the entertainment industry are now coming into focus. In recent months, the company has outspent Facebook and YouTube — two other tech companies that have also taken steps into original programming — as well as the traditional TV studios.

How DNA can be used to store computer data (BBC)

British scientists think DNA could be used to solve a global problem - where to store all our data.