Britain's House of Lords voted 280 to 48 to permit the use of three-person IVF - mitochondrial donation to prevent incurable mitochondrial diseases, which afflict around 4,000 children per year - on a case-by-case basis. On February 3rd, the UK House of Commons had already approved the exception to existing law.
It's Academy Awards time, which means the science community is aflame with debates about whether Hollywood elites are racist, sexist, bigoted or not liberal enough...okay, no one in science actually debates any of that the way Hollywood does, but we do get to think about how science did in film in 2014.
Science is big in culture these days - everyone loves it. You can't watch a blurb about a superhero movie where a character jumps out of a building and into a helicopter because the helicopter turns on its side without someone making the movie claiming they are grounded in science.
In 2013, the US FDA got tired of being stonewalled when it came to seeing proof of Google-backed 23andMe marketing claims regarding BRCA-related genetic risk and drug response, along with marketing blurbs that they can make it possible to “take steps toward mitigating serious diseases” such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, and breast cancer.
Northern British Columbia's First Nation leaders repeatedly rejected the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines from Alberta and so oil companies are shipping more oil by rail, which requires no new approval, and is inherently more environmentally risky than the pipeline they said was too risky.
If you are more familiar with U.S. scientization of politics, it is like the Obama administration ignoring Yucca mountain science reports so that nuclear waste can remain in over 100 different locations of suspect quality: A win for environmental activists who wanted to flex their muscles but a loss for everyone else.
Would you like some Campylobacter
or E. Coli today? Raw milk in 26 U.S. states is now the best place to get it, since most readers of Science 2.0 are not going to have the opportunity to buy chicken from a street vendor in China.