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Denialism’s Dark Day

November 2nd, 2009 | Posted in Blog | No Comments
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The process may be painful, and at times even deadly, but denialism actually can be defeated. It happened last week South Africa, which was once the world’s unrivaled capitol of AIDS Denialism. In a speech that sent AIDS jubilant activists into the streets to celebrate, President Jacob Zuma said: “We must accept that we need to work harder, and with renewed focus, to implement the strategy that we have developed together … knowledge will help us to confront denialism and the stigma attached to the epidemic.”  Read more »

Fight the Flu, Not the Medicine

October 31st, 2009 | Posted in Blog | 5 Comments
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To accompany the launch of my book,   Denialism, I have decided to join the rest of the cyber world, and start a blog. I intend to write about issues like public health, genetics, and global food policy, which have always preoccupied me. And maybe also about other important topics, such as bicycles and the Yankees. Since H1N1 is on everyone¹s mind, let's start with that. Read more »

The Fear Factor

October 5th, 2009 | Posted in The New Yorker, Articles | No Comments
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View the PDF On April 21st, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that two children in Southern California had developed a “febrile respiratory illness” caused by a flu virus that had never before been recognized in humans. The C.D.C. referred to the infection, in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report , as a swine-flu virus, because some of its genes matched genes found in pigs. It was a deeply unfortunate—and largely misleading—choice of words.

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A Life of Its Own

September 28th, 2009 | Posted in The New Yorker, Articles | No Comments
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Download a PDF Where will synthetic biology lead us?
by Michael Specter

The first time Jay Keasling remembers hearing the word “artemisinin, ” about a decade ago, he had no idea what it meant. “Not a clue, ” Keasling, a professor of biochemical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, recalled. Although artemisinin has become the world’s most important malaria medicine, Keasling wasn’t an expert on infectious diseases. But he happened to be in the process of creating a new discipline, synthetic biology, which—by combining elements of engineering, chemistry, computer science, and molecular biology—seeks to assemble the biological tools necessary to redesign the living world. Read more »

Big Foot

February 28th, 2008 | Posted in The New Yorker, Articles | No Comments
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Download the PDF In measuring carbon emissions, it's easy to confuse morality and science.
by Michael Specter

A little more than a year ago, Sir Terry Leahy, who is the chief executive of the Tesco chain of supermarkets, Britain’s largest retailer, delivered a speech to a group called the Forum for the Future, about the implications of climate change. Leahy had never before addressed the issue in public, but his remarks left little doubt that he recognized the magnitude of the problem. “I am not a scientist,” he said. “But I listen when the scientists say that, if we fail to mitigate climate change, the environmental, social, and economic consequences will be stark and severe. . . . There comes a moment when it is clear what you must do. I am determined that Tesco should be a leader in helping to create a low-carbon economy. Read more »

Darwin’s Surprise

December 3rd, 2007 | Posted in The New Yorker, Articles | No Comments
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Download the PDF Why are evolutionary biologists bringing back extinct deadly viruses?
by Michael Specter

Thierry Heidmann’s office, adjacent to the laboratory he runs at the Institut Gustave Roussy, on the southern edge of Paris, could pass for a museum of genetic catastrophe. Files devoted to the world’s most horrifying infectious diseases fill the cabinets and line the shelves. There are thick folders for smallpox, Ebola virus, and various forms of influenza. Read more »

Damn Spam

August 6th, 2007 | Posted in The New Yorker, Articles | No Comments
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New Yorker Staff Writer Covering Science, Technology, and Public Health Issues; Author.

Michael Specter has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998. His most recent book, “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives,”  was published on October 29, 2009.  Specter writes often about science, technology, and public health. Since joining the magazine, he has written several articles about the global AIDS epidemic, as well as about avian influenza, malaria, and the world’s diminishing freshwater resources, synthetic biology and the debate over the meaning of our carbon footprint. He has also published many Profiles, of subjects including Lance Armstrong, the ethicist Peter Singer, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, Manolo Blahnik, and Miuccia Prada.

Specter came to The New Yorker from the New York Times, where he had been a roving foreign correspondent based in Rome. From 1995 to 1998, Specter served as the Times Moscow bureau chief. He came to the Times from the Washington Post, where, from 1985 to 1991, he covered local news, before becoming the Post’s national science reporter and, later, the newspaper’s New York bureau chief. In 1996 he won the Overseas Press Club’s Citation for Excellence for his reporting from Chechnya. He has

has twice received the Global Health Council’s annual Excellence in Media Award, first for his 2001 article about AIDS, “India’s Plague,” and secondly for his 2004 article “The Devastation,” about the ethics of testing H.I.V. vaccines in Africa. He also received the 2002 AAAS Science Journalism Award, for his  article, “Rethinking the Brain,”  about the scientific basis of how we learn.

He lives in New York.

Download the PDF The losing war on junk e-mail.
by Michael Specter

In the spring of 1978, an energetic marketing man named Gary Thuerk wanted to let people in the technology world know that his company, the Digital Equipment Corporation, was about to introduce a powerful new computer system. DEC operated out of an old wool mill in Maynard, Massachusetts, and was well known on the East Coast, but Thuerk hoped to reach the technological community in California as well. Read more »

Branson’s Luck

May 14th, 2007 | Posted in The New Yorker, Articles | No Comments
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Download the PDF The business world’s high roller is betting everything on biofuels.
by Michael Specter

Richard Branson likes to pretend that business is his hobby; he sees himself as a modern version of a nineteenth-century British adventurer—Phileas T. Fogg, unbound. Rather than travelling around the world in eighty days, however, he appears to be trying to find eighty ways to do it. In 1986, Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group of companies, crossed the Atlantic in the fastest time ever recorded, on his boat the Virgin Atlantic Challenger II. Read more »

Letter from Moscow – Kremlin Inc.

January 29th, 2007 | Posted in The New Yorker, Articles | No Comments
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Download PDFWhy are Vladimir Putin's opponents dying?
by Michael Specter

Saturday, October 7th, was a marathon of disheartening tasks for Anna Politkovskaya. Two weeks earlier, her father, a retired diplomat, had died of a heart attack as he emerged from the Moscow Metro while on his way to visit Politkovskaya's mother, Raisa Mazepa, in the hospital. She had just been diagnosed with cancer and was too weak even to attend her husband's funeral. "Your father will forgive me, because he knows that I have always loved him," she told Anna and her sister, Elena Kudimova, the day he was buried. A week later, she underwent surgery, and since then Anna and Elena had been taking turns helping her cope with her grief. Read more »

A Reporter at Large – The Last Drop

October 23rd, 2006 | Posted in The New Yorker, Articles | No Comments
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Download the PDF Confronting the possibility of a global catastrophe.
by Michael Specter

Most mornings, the line begins to form at dawn: scores of silent women with babies strapped to their backs, buckets balanced on their heads, and in each hand a bright-blue plastic jug. On good days, they will wait less than an hour before a water tanker rumbles across the rutted dirt path that passes for a road in Kesum Purbahari, a slum on the southern edge of New Delhi. Read more »