Author: Garrett Wachoski-Dark
Approximately 35 million people are currently infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) – nearly the entire population of Canada! If left untreated most infected individuals would die to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) related illnesses. To date more than 20 million lives have been claimed by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. These statistics are menacing but how did they become so? After all, did Margaret Heckler, US Health and Human Services Secretary in the 1980’s, not promise a cure within only 2 years? The problem is that HIV is quite different from most viruses we are used to.
Read MoreAuthor: Taylor Goldsmith
It’s been on the news and has probably crossed your Facebook timeline under the guise of a couple different names. The terms genetic engineering and genome editing have been tossed around many times in the past in regard to cloning and GMOs (link), but if you see these terms in the media today they are most likely referring to one particular thing- CRISPR. Doing a quick Google search of CRISPR pulls approximately 200,000 results, with some search headings going as far as to call it “a game-changing genetic engineering technique”.
Read MoreAuthor: Nancy Shie, B.Sc.
A staggering half of the Canadian population will develop cancer at some point in their lives. This year, in 2017, over 200 000 new cases of cancer were diagnosed in Canada, and about 80 000 people died from cancer-related illness. Cancer is a word heard more and more frequently with our growing lifespan, thanks to 21st-century healthcare, but cancer itself isn’t a disease that we can wholly cure with our technology just yet.
Read MoreAuthor: Danielle Grant
Lupus is a disease with notable pop culture recognition thanks to the American television series “House, M.D.” where it is often suggested as a probable illness plaguing the show’s patients until the suggestion is typically shut down because “it’s never lupus”. When a friend of mine was diagnosed with lupus she recalls phoning a loved one only to be met with a joke utilizing the same House tagline, “but it’s never lupus”. An ill-timed joke aside, this highlights a frustration for many lupus patients, not many Canadians are aware of what lupus actually is. October is lupus awareness month, offering the opportunity to start a dialogue about this autoimmune disease often called The Disease with a Thousand Faces.
Read MoreAuthor: Carly Pontifex
What are GMOs? Are they really safe for my family to eat? Unless you have formal training in biological sciences, these are questions that might have kept you up at night. Are scientists playing God? Do they know what they’re doing? How do they know that there won’t be some terrible unintended consequences to their inscrutable science experiments? Maybe it’s our fault, the scientists, for not making it clear to you what is fact and what is fiction, and we can’t blame you. In this world of misinformation, it’s hard to know the difference between fiction and reality. Here I am, a concerned scientist, and I want to help you understand GMOs. As a disclaimer, this article was written with absolutely no conflicts of interests to report. I have never been contacted by any GMO corporation, nor have I been swayed to write this article by the agricultural industry. I just want you to know the truth.
Read MoreAuthor: Vienna M Doenni, M. Sc.
Before the rabies vaccine was invented people were so scared of the horrible disease progression that they would end their own lives upon getting bit by a rabies-infected animal. Here we will discuss how can one get infected with the virus, who is at risk and what the rabies virus will do to an infected person or pet.
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