Genetic Engineering For All: The Last Great Frontier of Human Freedom

Genetic Engineering For All: The Last Great Frontier of Human Freedom

Josiah Zayner in his home lab.

(Courtesy Zayner)


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Josiah Zayner
Dr. Josiah Zayner is a biohacker and CEO who is constantly pushing the boundaries of science outside traditional environments including human genetic engineering. After his Ph.D., he worked at NASA's Synthetic Biology program, genetically engineering bacteria to help terraform Mars. He left NASA to found The ODIN, a company that makes genetic engineering available to consumers at home. His work has been featured in Time, Scientific American, Le Monde, Businessweek, The Guardian and NPR, among many others. He enjoys whiskey and Red Bull, sometimes together.
A vaccine for ovarian cancer is now in development

Theupcoming vaccine is changing the way we look at treating one of the country’s deadliest cancers.

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Last week, researchers at the University of Oxford announced that they have received funding to create a brand new way of preventing ovarian cancer: A vaccine. The vaccine, known as OvarianVax, will teach the immune system to recognize and destroy mutated cells—one of the earliest indicators of ovarian cancer.


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Sarah Watts

Sarah Watts is a health and science writer based in Chicago.

How sharing, hearing, and remembering positive stories can help shape our brains for the better

Across cultures and through millennia, human beings have always told stories. Whether it’s a group of boy scouts around a campfire sharing ghost stories or the paleolithic Cro-Magnons etching pictures of bison on cave walls, researchers believe that storytelling has been universal to human beings since the development of language.

But storytelling was more than just a way for our ancestors to pass the time. Researchers believe that storytelling served an important evolutionary purpose, helping humans learn empathy, share important information (such as where predators were or what berries were safe to eat), as well as strengthen social bonds. Quite literally, storytelling has made it possible for the human race to survive.

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Sarah Watts

Sarah Watts is a health and science writer based in Chicago.