Professor Kerryn Phelps was the president of the Australian Medical Association when she was prescribed a drug that nearly killed her. The drug in question is Yaz or Yasmin - a contraceptive pill that hit the market in 2008 promising to clear up acne and reduce monthly symptoms. Australians were blissfully unaware of the thousands of women in the US who had reported severe side effects from Yaz and Yasmin. The side effects included heart attacks, strokes, blindness and deadly blood clots.

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During today’s first session of the Second International Vatican Adult Stem Cell Conference, scientists, doctors and patients had an opportunity to share not only the advances in adult stem cell research, but also the potential it has to transform modern day health care.

Scientists are ready to plunder the ovaries of aborted babies for eggs to use in IVF treatment. Experiments have taken the process almost to completion, it emerged yesterday.

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Bill Gates is a man used to thinking big and accomplishing his goals. So his emergence as a leading voice in the global campaign to eradicate polio makes a lot of sense. What it doesn't quite fit with is his idea that, sick or healthy, there should be fewer people in certain parts of the world.

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More than a half century ago, the British literary critic and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis warned that science could be twisted in order to attack religion, undermine ethics, and limit human freedom. In a recent collection of essays, The Magician's Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism, a number of scholars explore Lewis's prophetic warnings about the abuse of science.

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Scientists in Britain on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage. A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they said.

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Science can and should help determine sound public policy on matters that involve basic human rights.

All things come from and tend towards Nothing. The Big Bang Theory supports the former claim: The dense, hot, rapidly expanding singularity that was our universe some 13.75 billion years ago contained within itself all space, time, matter and energy. “Before” it existed, nothing existed. All things come from Nothing.

Many people believe that faith and reason, or religion and science, are locked in an irreconcilable war of attrition against one another. One must choose to be a person of learning, science, and reason, or choose to embrace religion, dogma, and faith alone. On this view, the Church opposes science, and if one embraces science, then one ought to reject the Church.

Dialogue and cooperation between faith and science are urgently needed for building a culture that respects people and the planet, Pope Benedict XVI told his own science academy.

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