These miraculous discoveries present us with countless dilemmas and are far outpacing our abilities to grasp and address their ethical, legal and social implications. We need more public and professional education and attention to how it is affecting our lives and how it should affect our lives.

If you could transfer your mind into a body that needs no sleep, suffers no pain, is made entirely of replaceable parts, and might allow you to live forever, would you? Add to the bargain a vastly improved IQ and the ability to retain everything you learn. It's the promise of mind uploading -- the transfer of a human mind into a computer -- and it may be feasible during the lifetime of today's teens. The implications are profound, and reach into every aspect of who we are and what we are capable of.

Reductionism has its limitations. Is a human being -- one who bristles at injustice, weeps at Pachelbel's Canon, loves her children, is awestruck by beauty, and craves chocolate -- simply the product of Pavlov's conditioned reflexes to stimuli?

President Obama will soon declare a second "decade of the brain." The project is a good idea, but don't hold your breath that it will lead to any quick clinical breakthroughs or deep insights into human consciousness.

When one thinks of patents, one generally thinks of mechanical contraptions, the products of a creative genius, such as Thomas Edison. Rarely does one think of human genes. Alas, since 1982 the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted patents on human genes.

Creating a drug to target just one regulator may have little impact. But the more we understand the regulatory networks involved in health and disease, the more chance we have of identifying the key vulnerable pinch points in our organ systems.

Did you know you owe your teeth to a 15th Century emperor? This week marks significant strides in history for dental care, but that's not all. The...

The scientific charge to read a human genome started gaining traction 25 years ago. Now it may be time to think about writing one.

NEW YORK -- A biotechnology company announced it has developed a machine to decode an individual's DNA in a day for $1,000, a long-sought price goal f...