Any group that intends to sell laboratory meat will need to build bioreactors – factories that can grow cells under pristine conditions. Bioreactors aren’t new; beer and yeast are made using similar methods. – Michael Specter
If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees. – Michael Specter
We’re all in denial from time to time. We all see things that are too painful to really deal with. But this has consequences, and the consequences of not vaccinating your children are not only just that those children are exposed to illnesses; it’s that everyone else they go to school with and they hang around with are, too. – Michael Specter
The most blatant forms of denialism are rarely malevolent; they combine decency, a fear of change, and the misguided desire to do good – for our health, our families, and the world. That is why so many physicians dismiss the idea that a patient’s race can, and often should, be used as a tool for better diagnoses and treatment. – Michael Specter
There has never been a verified scientific report that chelation therapy, a gluten-free diet, or anything else can cure autism. – Michael Specter
It is not possible to assert publicly that Monsanto is anything other than venal without being accused of being a sellout, a fraud, or worse. – Michael Specter
Meat supplies a variety of nutrients – among them iron, zinc, and Vitamin B12 – that are not readily found in plants. We can survive without it; millions of vegetarians choose to do so, and billions of others have that choice imposed upon them by poverty. – Michael Specter
All the food we eat, whether Brussels sprouts or pork bellies, has been modified by mankind. Genetic engineering is only one particularly powerful way to do what we have been doing for eleven thousand years. – Michael Specter
The numbers matter: underreporting of Lyme disease obscures the true burden of the illnesses, on individuals as well as on health-care systems. It also makes it harder to convince Congress to fund research. – Michael Specter
By themselves, genetically engineered crops will not end hunger or improve health or bolster the economies of struggling countries. They won’t save the sight of millions or fortify their bones. But they will certainly help. – Michael Specter
Lyme disease is the most commonly reported tick-borne illness in the United States, and the incidence is growing rapidly. In 2009, the C.D.C. reported thirty-eight thousand cases, three times more than in 1991. Most researchers agree that the true number of infections is five to ten times higher. – Michael Specter
The passengers in our microbiome contain at least four million genes, and they work constantly on our behalf: they manufacture vitamins and patrol our guts to prevent infections; they help to form and bolster our immune systems, and digest food. – Michael Specter
I moved from Moscow to Rome with my family and two bicycles in 1998, and spent a lot of that year- and the next – obsessed, I am sorry to admit, with the bicycles. Italy, after all, was a place where thousands of middle-aged men felt perfectly comfortable spending many hours a week in brightly colored spandex. – Michael Specter
For decades, Barbara Walters has been described as a broadcast pioneer – and with good reason. In 1974, Walters became the first female host of the ‘Today’ show. In 1976, she became the first woman to serve as a network-news anchor. In 1984, she moderated the first presidential debate between Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan. – Michael Specter
Consumers deserve the right to know what’s in their food – and obviously, most people want that choice. It’s hard to see how more knowledge about the products we eat every day can hurt us. – Michael Specter
Someone told me that they didn’t want to take a flu shot because they didn’t want to put a foreign substance in their body. What do they think they do at dinner every night? – Michael Specter
All the food we eat – every grain of rice and kernel of corn – has been genetically modified. None of it was here before mankind learned to cultivate crops. The question isn’t whether our food has been modified, but how. – Michael Specter
The history of agriculture is the history of humans breeding seeds and animals to produce traits we want in our crops and livestock. – Michael Specter
We are inhabited by as many as ten thousand bacterial species; these cells outnumber those which we consider our own by ten to one, and weigh, all told, about three pounds – the same as our brain. – Michael Specter
The best way to deal with climate change has been obvious for years: cut greenhouse-gas emissions severely. We haven’t done that. In 2010, for example, carbon emissions rose by six per cent – the largest such increase on record. – Michael Specter