Emilie du Chatelet died after child birth in 1749 at the age of 43. She
knew the dangers of a late pregnancy. No anti-biotics to control
infection; nothing to control uterine bleeding. Doctors did not bother
to wash their hands or instruments. But she stoically accepted her
probable fate. She’d always worked long...
DNA IS universal to all living things - bacteria, fungus, plant or
animal. Using ’cut and paste’ techniques, it is possible (sometimes) to
transfer a desirable feature from one organism’s DNA into another
organism, or an undesirable feature could be replaced.
Cecilia Payne, working in the 1920s, was the first person to show how
the mechanics of Einstein’s energy conversion formula (e = mc2
) applied beyond our planet - that the process we now call nuclear
fusion powered not only our Sun but also the billions of stars in the
It is exactly 50 years since one of the greatest scientific
breakthroughs of the twentieth century - the working out of the
structure of the DNA molecule . This represented the culmination of
fifty years research in the fields of physics, chemistry and biology, a
milestone on the road started by Darwin’s...
SOUTH AFRICA 24 April 2002. A giant faced a dying man in court. The
giant told the man that he could not have the lifesaving drugs he needed
because it had profits to protect. The giant was GlaxoSmithKline (GSK),
the second biggest pharmaceutical company in the world.