News stories by Amanda Wilson*

If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear a case on gene patents, observers say the resulting face-off - between a large genetics testing company and a vocal coalition of breast cancer patient advocates — will have a massive impact because of what is at stake: valuable information about the human genome.

When Jaydee Hanson, then-bioethics director for the United Methodist Church, spoke out publicly against gene patents over 15 years ago, some in the biotech industry compared his stance to the Catholic Church's persecution of Galileo, the 15th century astronomer who discovered the moons of Jupiter.

A new report on global hunger pinpoints factors at the heart of spikes in food prices it says are exacerbating the unfolding food crisis in the Horn of Africa.

The appalling experiments carried out by U.S. doctors in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948 using 1,300 human subjects who were infected with sexually transmitted diseases highlighted the inadequacy of controls and safeguards in clinical testing in this Central American country — still a major problem today, according to experts.