There is an economic and political battle taking place in America over the labeling of genetically modified (GM) foods. In 2015, 19 US states considered GM food labeling legislation and three States, Connecticut, Maine and Vermont have passed mandatory GM labeling laws.

The US House on July 23 passed the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling bill (HR 1599), which will move to the Senate and, if passed, will prohibit both state-level legislation regarding GM labels and the labeling of products that contain GM ingredients.

Proponents of HR 1599 argue that GM labels will act as a warning. Another reason people oppose labeling is that they say scientific evidence has shown GM foods are safe.

Last month a team of doctors and scientists made the case to regulators at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to consider approving anti-aging drugs as a new pharmaceutical class.

Such a designation would treat aging as disease rather than a natural process, potentially opening the door to government funding for anti-aging drug trials.

Scientific research sometimes requires the use of animals. It’s a fact. And as long as that is the case, we need to do everything in our power to minimize the distress for laboratory animals.

This is not just for the sake of the animals, but also for the sake of science itself. We know that the quality of life of an animal can actually affect its physiology and, thereby, the research data.

But unfortunately, the standards of animal care vary greatly across countries and even across research institutes. The time has come to overhaul this system and replace it with globally enforced rules.

What if I told you that half of the studies published in scientific journals today – the ones upon which news coverage of medical advances is often based – won’t hold up under scrutiny? You might say I had gone mad. No one would ever tolerate that kind of waste in a field as important – and expensive, to the tune of roughly US$30 billion in federal spending per year – as biomedical research, right? After all, this is the crucial work that hunts for explanations for diseases so they can better be treated or even cured.

The rate of Australians dying from cancer is on a steady, downhill trajectory, thanks to powerful advances made in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the disease. New data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows a promising outlook for those diagnosed with cancer.

Deaths from all cancers combined fell from 199 per 100,000 people in 1968, to 167 per 100,000 in 2012 - a decline of 2.6 deaths per 100,000 people per year.

“This confirms that we are steadily making improvements in most cancers, in terms of survival,” said Professor Timothy Hughes, Cancer Theme Leader at SAHMRI.

“And it’s coming from better prevention, better screening and better therapy.”

Could it be that genetic differences can affect how well children perform in exams? Our research suggests that this may well be the case and that individual differences between children are, to a large extent, due to the inherited genetic differences between them that predisposes them to do well academically, whatever the subject.

We also found that there is shared genetic influence across a range of subjects, even after controlling the exam results for general intelligence.