It permeates everyday life. Yet the understanding of advances in biomedical science is limited at best. Few people make the connection that biomedical science is medicine and that biomedical scientists are working today for the medicine of tomorrow. Our weekly five-hundred word newspaper column and two-minute radio show provide insights into a broad range of biomedical science topics. Medical Discovery News is dedicated to explaining discoveries in biomedical research and their promise for the future of medicine.
Each release is designed to stimulate listeners to think, question and appreciate how science affects their health as well as that of the rest of the world. We also delve into significant biomedical discoveries and portray how science (or the lack of it) has impacted health throughout history.
Let’s start with a quiz! What do the water flea, the marbled crayfish and the boa constrictor have in common? No, they’re not merely the nicknames of your daughter’s high school boyfriends. All these animals can produce offspring without a fertilized egg!
This asexual reproduction, called parthenogenesis, comes from the Greek meaning "virgin birth". We’re discovering that more species are capable of this than we ever knew... More »
They’re slimy, squiggly, and they eat dead tissue. But they’re not some creature from a horror movie - I’m talking about maggots. Maggots – as in the worm-like larvae of flies? Why are we talking about them? Because they’re good medicine!
They were approved as a prescriptive therapy in 2004 and have been used to cleanse wounds for thousands of years. Surgeons in Napoleon’s army noticed soldiers whose wounds were infected with maggots were more likely to survive... More »
