According to scientists, biscuits can give you cancer. But don’t worry, research shows that sunshine can cure cancer. Hang on. Ignore previous findings that suggest it might actually cause cancer. But whatever you do, don’t shave, because that’s been shown to increase the risk of cancer, along with other everyday household products like hairspray baby powder and sausages. It’s a wonder that any of us are still alive. According to scientists, the world we live in is a death trap.

So many of my patients come to me saying how worried they are about some health scare they’ve heard about in the news. Though the claims seem to be backed up by scientific evidence, even a rough look brings up contradictions and inconsistencies. It’s easy to blame the journalists for twisting science to chase headlines. But I’ve felt that is extremely unfair. The chilling fact is that these health stories come from scientists, not journalists. In fact, a study in the British Medical Journal found that many of the exaggerations that later made it into health reports originated from a press release, Over a third of the press releases, for example, made exaggerated claims of the impact of the research for humans when in fact the study was carried out on animals. A third also made exaggerated claims of causation when in fact the study found an association only. Particularly worrying was that many of the exaggerated claims appear to have been written or at least approved by scientists themselves.

But, you could argue, aren’t journalists to blame for not going back to the original papers and checking out the claims themselves?

The fact is that journalists, like the public at large, have tended to believe what the scientists have told us. Why would we ever assume they’d lie? The very nature of their job is the search for the correct answer. The problem though is that they have funding to worry about and these days, an article hitting the front page headline making bold claims about your research is as important for securing future funding as getting it into top medical journals is. It’s also worth mentioning that every research facility or university now has a press department to do the job.

I think that this is a good reason to make understanding and interpreting a scientific paper a fundamental part of science in school. That way we encourage more people to examine the claims themselves and, hopefully, improve the public’s understanding of basic scientific principles.

Now, recent research has shown that work can increase your risk of premature death so with this in mind, I'm signing off.

China became the first country to clone a monkey using non-reproductive(非生殖的)cells, reducing the need to breed lab monkeys and paving the way for more accurate, effective and affordable animal tests for new drugs, scientists said on Thursday .

By December, the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences had created two clone macaques(猕猴) named “Zhong Zhong” and “Hua Hua” by nuclear transferring of somatic cells(体细胞) - any cell in the organism other than reproductive cells.

Tetra, a monkey born in 1999, is the world’s first cloned monkey, but it was done by using a simpler method called embryo splitting(胚胎分割), and cannot be genetically changed to suit the experimental need. Cloning a monkey using somatic cells has been a world-class challenge because it is a primate(灵长类) that shares its genetic makeup, and therefore all of its complexity, with humans.

For drug and other lab tests, scientists have to purchase monkeys from all over the world, which is costly and bad for the environment, and produces inaccurate results because each monkey might have different genes. By cloning monkey using somatic cells, we can massively cultivate large numbers of genetically identical offspring (后代)in a short amount of time, and we can even change their genes to suit our needs. This can save time, cut down experiment costs, and produce more accurate results, leading to more effective medicine.

Sun Qiang, director of the non-human primate research facility at the institute, said most of the drug trials are currently done on lab mice. However, drugs that work on mice might not work or even have severe side effects on humans because the two species are so different.

“Monkeys and humans are both primates, so they are much closely related and testing on monkeys is supposed to be as effective as testing on humans,” he said. “This is especially useful in testing drugs for neural (神经的) diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, metabolic syndrome (代谢综合症) and immune system diseases, and tumors,” he added.

“This achievement will help China lead the world research in the international science projects related to neural mapping of primate brains,” he said. “However, bio-labs from the United States, Japan, and European countries are also very capable, and they will quickly catch up with China after the monkey cloning technology is made public,” Sun added.

“This means we have to innovate continuously and work extra hard this year to stay ahead.” he said.

Wolves have a certain undeserved reputation: fierce, dangerous, good for hunting down deer and farmers’ livestock. However, wolves have a softer, more social side, one that has been embraced by a heart-warming new initiative.

In a bid to save some of Europe’s last wolves, scientists have explored the willingness of these supposedly fierce creatures to help others of their kind. Female wolves, the scientists have discovered, make excellent foster parents to wolf cubs that are not their own. The study, published in Zoo Biology, suggests that captive-bred wolf cubs(幼兽) could be placed with wild wolf families, boosting the wild population.

The gray wolf was once the world’s most widely distributed mammal, but it became extinct as a result of widespread habitat destruction and the deliberate killing of wolves suspected of preying on livestock. Fear and hatred of the wolf have since become culturally rooted, fuelled by myths, fables and stories.

       In Scandinavia, the gray wolf is endangered, the remaining population found by just five animals. As a result, European wolves are severely inbred and have little genetic variability（变异性）, making them vulnerable to threats, such as outbreaks of disease that they can’t adapt to quickly. So Inger Scharis and Mats Amundin of Linkoping University, in Sweden, started Europe’s first gray wolf-fostering program. They worked with wolves kept at seven zoos across Scandinavia. Eight wolf cubs between four and six days old were removed from their natural parents and placed with other wolf packs in other zoos. The foster mothers accepted the new cubs placed in their midst.

The welfare of the foster cubs and the wolves’ natural behavior were monitored using a system of surveillance cameras. The foster cubs had a similar growth rate as their step siblings in the recipient litter, as well as their biological siblings in the source litter. The foster cubs had a better overall survival rate, with 73% surviving until 33 weeks, than their biological siblings left behind, of which 63% survived. That rate of survival is similar to that seen in wild wolf cubs. Scientists believe that wolves can recognize their young, but this study suggests they can only do so once cubs are somewhere between three to seven weeks of age.

If captive-bred cubs can be placed with wild-living families, which already have cubs of a similar age, not only will they have a good chance of survival, but they could help dramatically increase the diversity of the wild population, say the researchers. Just like the wild wolves they would join, these foster cubs would need protection from hunting. Their arrival could help preserve the future of one of nature’s most iconic and polarizing animals.

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