Maybe I’m wrong, but I tend to think that people are attracted to biological research because of an interest in nature and the noble desire to make the world a better place.

Those ideals are often stripped away in the realities and demands of working life - it turns out that it’s not so easy for one person to save the world, and you have to be more interested in Nature than nature to be successful. But I’ve always found it a bit paradoxical that from those eco-aware origins, we end up working in labs that generate vast amounts of waste and consume a lot of power.

Of course, much of this waste and consumption is unavoidable but there are a lot of ways that we can reduce the environmental impact of our labs by improving our practices. Here are 12 ways to start with: Read more »

Please read and pass this life-saving information on to your friends.

A chemical that all of us use in the lab has turned out to be highly dangerous. It is an asphyxiant, can cause severe burns and is a contributor to the greenhouse effect. Medical organizations all over the world confirm it to be responsible for killing thousand of people, of all ages, every year.

Although there is no confirmed causative effect, there is also evidence to suggest that it is involved in the formation of cancer and has been found in excised tumors of EVERY kind. Read more »

The hysteria among molecular biologists about our old friend ethidium bromide has long been an irritation to me. Researchers are rightly wary of this potential carcinogen. More recently this wariness has been whipped up into a witch hunt by companies touting “safer” alternatives and disposal methods. While I don’t for a minute think that we should all throw our gloves away and bathe in the stuff, I think that it’s time for an informed reality check about the dangers, and the myths about ethidium bromide. Read more »