This touches on yesterday’s post about designer babies.

The tools to design are being crafted faster than anyone could imagine.

New research has linked high levels of testosterone in amniotic fluid, the liquid the bathes the fetus, to autism.

Sarah Boseley, health editor at the Guardian, said how it could be used as a pre-natal test for autism in an interview today.

It’s well worth 2:38 of your time. Boseley also squeezes in a few interesting subtleties that could be missed by such a test.

Dr. Elizabeth Simpson is leading a project that is developing tools that will improve gene therapy and help treat brain disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

The Pleiades Promoter Project is based at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics in Vancouver.

I had the chance to speak to Beth about the project. Have a listen or download the first Science Perspectives podcast:

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Asthma is a chronic disease that is on the rise in Canada. Often, it starts in childhood.

There’s something about the first few years of life. What happens in those years seems to have a big effect on the development of asthma.

Maybe it’s the crib the baby slept in. Maybe it’s the exposure it had to animals. Maybe it’s the interaction of these environments with a baby’s genetic make-up. We just don’t know.

Dr. Malcom R. Sears, professor of medicine at McMaster University, is leading a study that looks at how genes and the environment affect the development of asthma in childhood. His research project, the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development study, will follow 5,000 children from when they’re inside the womb to their fifth birthday.

Dr. Sears’ hypothesis is that a child’s environment will affect how well their lungs work as adults.

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Alan Cassels, co-author of Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All into Patients entertained and informed the audience at the Science Journalism Conference by reciting the following example of poetic journalism.

Who says you can’t write poetry about science?

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