Ricki Lewis

The phrase “rewriting the textbooks” is more than a cliché to me, because that’s what I do. I revise each of my books every three years, updating the science.

I love to explain biology through cases and stories, and am disturbed when something changes – that is, when new evidence indicates that facts aren’t as they seemed.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to give up favorite stories. Worst was the case of Phineas Gage.

Phineas Gage

I used Gage’s strange tale to open a nervous system chapter in a few editions of Hole’s Human Anatomy and Physiology, up until 2010.

To continue reading go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.

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In late 2011, creation of a lab strain of of H5N1 influenza capable of spreading easily among ferrets, and presumably us, sparked heated debate about whether and when to publish scientific research that could do harm. The same could be said for gene doping.

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