News & Comment

Timeline of events...a brief look at the headlines from the past month

Attacks against researchers by animal rights extremists have steadily increased in recent years. More than 70 such attacks occured in 2006 alone, according to data collected by the Foundation for Biomedical Research, a Washington, DC–based nonprofit that aims to serve as the voice of scientific reason in the ongoing debate that surrounds animal research. Frankie Trull currently heads the foundation, which she established in 1981. She explains to Nature Medicine why she has devoted her career to improving the public understanding of the essential role of lab animals in medical research and discovery.

Timeline of events...a brief look at the headlines from the past month

These days, if you want to have your entire genome sequenced, you need to spend about a million dollars and wait for months. But the Archon X Prize for Genomics—an international competition for speedy gene mapping—might change this by giving companies a huge incentive to develop better DNA sequencing technologies. The $10 million prize, first announced in late 2006, was donated by Stewart Blusson, a philanthropist and mining multimillionaire. Marc Hodosh, senior director of the Archon X Prize, explains why genomics was chosen for an X Prize and predicts what lies ahead for the field.