biology: recent publications

All articles where biology is mentioned

The revised and expanded paperback edition of my newest book, Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, co-authored with the brilliant scientist Alina Chan, is now available to purchase in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. It was a privilege to help Alina write Viral, and a privilege to create this updated version with her.

Alina Chan Usa Britain state Indiana city Wuhan Laos liking biology origin-of-covid

Why did scientists suppress the lab-leak theory?

My article for Spiked:In August 2007 there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth virus on a farm in Surrey. It was a few miles from the world’s leading reference laboratory for identifying outbreaks of foot and mouth.

Usa Britain city Wuhan China Coronavirus biology Science

It’s a danger to the world that the precise origin of Covid-19 remains a mystery

My article for the Telegraph:It is almost exactly two years since the pandemic began. According to an official document seen by the South China Morning Post, the first retrospectively diagnosed case of Covid in Wuhan was on November 17 2019, while genetic analysis points to a similar date, November 18.

city Wuhan China Coronavirus biology origin-of-covid

My Latest Book, Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, Is Now Available

new newsletter or follow me on Facebook and Twitter, you may not have heard: My new book Viral The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, co-authored with the young and brilliant scientist Alina Chan, published this day last week and is now available to purchase.Less than a week before that, Alina and I met in person for the first time, which you can watch on my YouTube channel.We explore both natural spillover and lab leak possibilities in depth—and share which we determined, over the course of writing it, to be more likely.It was a challenging, frustrating, intriguing journey.Here are some of the places you can pick it up...The Covid-19 pandemic has killed at least five million people and counting.

Alina Chan Coronavirus biology Books

The Covid lab leak theory just got even stronger

My article for Spectator:Two years in, there is no doubt the Covid pandemic began in the Chinese city of Wuhan. But there is also little doubt that the bat carrying the progenitor of the virus lived somewhere else.Central to the mystery of Covid’s origin is how a virus normally found in horseshoe bats in caves in the far south of China or south-east Asia turned up in a city a thousand miles north.

France city Wuhan China Japan Thailand Laos Cambodia city Vientiane, Laos Coronavirus Spectator biology

How to rev up the UK's innovation engine

My blog for the Radix think tank:I was pleased to speak at the recent Radix Big Tent Meet the Leaders session about innovation, a topic that is close to my heart and one of great importance.Innovation is the source of all prosperity. It is the reason countries get rich in the first place and so the more you have of it the better.

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We're wasting our big Brexit gene-editing opportunity

My article, for The Telegraph:The Government wants to unleash innovation. If it were to be presented with a magic wand that could by 2040 feed millions more people, avoid tens of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and improve biodiversity on hundreds of thousands of hectares, while benefiting the economy and reducing the footprint of farming, it would surely grab it.That is exactly what Crispr and other gene editing technologies promise for agriculture, based on what they are doing elsewhere.

gmos telegraph biology

Playing the wild card

My article for The Critic:Near Fukushima, ten years after the nuclear accident that followed the tsunami, wild boar have colonised the suburbs. Near Chernobyl, bison and wolves wander abandoned streets.

Near Fukushima people the-critic biology

Put the animal sentience bill out of its misery

My article for the Times:Like a lobster in boiling water, a parliamentary bill on animal sentience is being tortured in the House of Lords. The problem is political rather than ethical.

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Environmentalists have got it wrong – we're not facing an insect apocalypse

My article for the Telegraph:On Twitter this week an unfortunate hiker showed a short video of the midges swarming in their tens of thousands over his backpack and his arms in the Scottish Highlands. It was itchy just to watch.

New York Scotland telegraph biology Insects

Pleasures of sex and berries

a few hundred years in cities at most. Before that, they spent a million years or more on what was essentially a perpetual camping trip, most of it in Africa.

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Why have so many of our recent viruses come from bats?

My article from The Spectator:

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