About Lindzi Wessel

At the dinner table my family talks politics. A lot. I was more interested in how the brain forms, so I turned on the microscope instead of the news. (I also scoured the cognition literature in vain for strategies to tune out parental guilt.) But while studying how neurons grow using adult human stem cells, I started to explore the fraught history of stem cell research. I couldn’t believe how much our political and legal systems influence scientific advancements—and how science policies arise with so little public input. Once I began to investigate the societal relevance of research around me, I couldn’t stop. Now during family visits, I’m talking about science and democracy. A lot. As a science writer, I hope to spark many more of these conversations, one dinner table at a time.

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Author Archive | Lindzi Wessel

Under Lock and Chain Photo Credit: Pictures of Money via Flickr.

Medical advances yield ethical quagmire: Does NIH research ban protect or harm?

By Lindzi Wessel on 18 January, 2016

Lately it seems like the field of biomedical research has been incessantly presenting society with a whirlwind of game changing medical advances. Among other exciting recent developments, scientists have used 3-D printing to implant an artificial trachea in a sick infant, retinal prostheses have restored rudimentary sight to patients with degenerative vision loss, and scientists…

Has Smokey Bear’s message of forest fire prevention been taken too far? Photo credit: US Department of Agriculture via Flickr.

Rethinking Smokey

By Lindzi Wessel on 18 January, 2016

As a kid, I spent a lot of time in the woods. Every summer my parents would pack my four siblings and me into the back of our turquoise Ford Windstar and we’d set off for adventure in whatever western wilderness destination we’d chosen that year. Smokey Bear was always there to greet us as…

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Author Archive | Lindzi Wessel