{"id":512464,"date":"2026-06-22T10:56:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T10:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/512464\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T10:56:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T10:56:20","slug":"the-science-and-health-breakthroughs-shaping-a-new-american-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/512464\/","title":{"rendered":"The Science and Health Breakthroughs Shaping a New American Era"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-testid=\"paragraph-element\" class=\"rich-text mb-6 font-graphik text-body-large text-black-coffee focus-visible:outline focus-visible:outline-black-coffee focus-visible:outline-2 focus-visible:outline-offset-2 focus-visible:shadow-focus-color text-left\">Selected by Rebecca Skloot<br \/>Behind every medical advance\u2014vaccines, IVF, gene editing, GLP-1s\u2014you\u2019ll find animal research, the hidden thread linking all of modern medicine. And behind animal research, you\u2019ll find two polarized extremes who\u2019ve been arguing for a century. (Shocking, I know.) One side says it\u2019s all waste and abuse; the other, it\u2019s all essential and well regulated. I\u2019ve spent 15 years researching a book about this and interviewing thousands of people. The truth lies in a vast nuanced middle. Media reports claim new technologies (organoids, organs-on-chips) can finally replace animals in research. They can and should replace more than they do, but replacing most is still far from reality. People in the middle say overhyping this technology risks backlash that could slow the field. It also pulls attention (and funding) away from improving animal welfare for those who remain in research. Two scientists, William Russell and Rex Burch, saw this moment coming in 1959, when they proposed a framework for addressing the polarization: The 3Rs. Replace animals wherever possible; reduce their numbers; refine how they\u2019re treated, because better welfare means better science. \u201cDesirable as replacement is,\u201d they wrote, \u201cit would be a mistake to put all our humanitarian eggs in this basket alone.\u201d\u00a0<br \/>Skloot is a science writer and the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Selected by Rebecca SklootBehind every medical advance\u2014vaccines, IVF, gene editing, GLP-1s\u2014you\u2019ll find animal research, the hidden thread linking&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60,218914,82],"class_list":["post-512464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-our-america","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}