Molecular biologist John Fagan made nationwide headlines the week before Thanksgiving when he said thanks--but no thanks--to the National Institutes of Health, returning a grant of nearly $614,000. Fagan, a professor of molecular biology at Maharishi International University (MIU) in Fairfield, Iowa, returned the grant--for research on two genes that are blueprints for cytochromes P450, involved in carcinogen and toxin metabolism--to protest genetic engineering, a field he believes is progressing too rapidly and without consideration of its harmful implications. Fagan, who got his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1977 and was a research fellow at NIH before he joined MIU in 1991, brought a measure of respect to the institution, the site of 1994 Ig Nobel Prize-winning research concluding that meditators caused a decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C. Losing the funding is "a big hit" for the school, acknowledges Fagan, who is redirecting his work toward cancer prevention ...
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Molecular biologist John Fagan made nationwide headlines the week before Thanksgiving when he said thanks--but no thanks--to the National Institutes of Health, returning a grant of nearly $614,000. Fagan, a professor of molecular biology at Maharishi International University (MIU) in Fairfield, Iowa, returned the grant--for research on two genes that are blueprints for cytochromes P450, involved in carcinogen and toxin metabolism-
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