TS Picks: July 15, 2015

PIXABAY, PUBLICDOMAINPICTURES

Selections from The Scientist’s reading list:
 

• After having blood drawn for the purpose of identifying potential abnormalities in the fetal genome, some women are receiving unexpected results—the tests are picking up signs of cancer in their own DNA. In a study published in JAMA this week (July 14), scientists from Tufts Medical Center in Boston and their colleagues reported that in a cohort of more than 125,000 women who elected fetal aneuploidy screening, 10 were later found to have cancer. “We need to do a better job up front to communicate with patients that we might find out something about their own health as well,” study coauthor Diana Bianchi of Tufts Medical Center told MIT Technology Review.
   
• J. Paul Muizelaar, the former chief of the University of California, Davis, neurosurgery department who resigned in 2013 after being banned from human preclinical research, is...