Daily Human Digest
Every day, the staff of the Genetic Literacy Project scours the Web for stories on a range of human genetics issues, including gene editing, regulations and bioethics, gene therapy, epigenetics, personal genomics, evolution, ancestry and artificial intelligence. We publish excerpts of those stories and encourage our readers to visit the original publications for the complete stories.
Viewpoint: How ‘health care guru’ Joe Rogan circumvented the FDA’s skepticism on psychedelics
If you don't like Robert F. Kennedy setting national health policy, how do you feel about Joe Rogan? The question ...
Nanoplastics in drinking water: MAHA activists forge science-based bipartisan coalition
The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule that would, for the first time, formally flag microplastics and pharmaceuticals in drinking water as ...
Trump’s America First health aid cuts: Retrenchment has already hit global malaria, HIV, TB, and polio programs
A reduction in U.S. foreign aid under the "America First" policy of President Donald Trump, who took office in 2025, ...
Wellness grifter physician turned wellness influencer out as surgeon general nominee
President Donald Trump said [on April 30, 2026] he’s nominating Fox News Channel contributor and radiologist Dr. Nicole Saphier for ...
Anti-seed-oil to anti-vax pipeline: MAHA movement spreads to teen influencers
For years, the “Make America Healthy Again” movement was driven by moms. Concerned about the safety of childhood vaccines and ...
‘Alarming’: Nicotine’s wellness rebranding
Nicotine - the highly addictive substance found in tobacco and vaping products - is being promoted online as a way ...
The tech billionaires behind the immortality movement
Among the most potent archetypes of our time is the elite who seeks eternal youth, whose power is drawn from ...
Anti-vaccine activists are now the majority in RFK, Jr.’s CDC Vaccine Panel
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is giving several prominent right-wing and anti-vaccine medical groups a formal ...
Dad brains: Only women undergo bodily changes during and after childbirth? Think again.
... By the time [anthropologist Lee] Gettler looked into this field, it was already an established fact that fathers had ...
How America’s medical system encourages psychiatric overdiagnosis
Psychiatric diagnoses in the United States are rising across virtually every category, in every age group. According to the National ...
IV vitamin therapy could change your life — by killing you
An IV therapy clinic offers a vitamin cocktail administered via injection, promising hydration, energy, a strengthened immune system, and a ...
Word games: How Moderna is selling its newest vaccine without using the “v” word
... Last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services, zeroed in on mRNA, ...
Viewpoint: Health experts engage MAHA: Shared concerns, differing views on what constitutes evidence
At a national public health meeting in March, I attended a session that brought together public health professionals, physicians, and ...
Viewpoint — ‘We want to put them in trauma’: The inside story of the crusade targeting public health
In a video obtained by ProPublica in fall 2024, Russell Vought—the architect of Project 2025, and later the director of ...
Blocked arteries, kidney stones, nausea, constipation, fatigue: Long list of health problems caused by too much vitamin D
The "sunshine vitamin" may come with a dark side. Just as a lack of vitamin D can lead to health ...
With federal funding for scientific research already reeling, Trump fires the entire apolitical National Science Board
Multiple sources are reporting that the Trump administration has dismissed the entire National Science Board (NSB). The NSB advises the ...
How pediatricians are navigating America’s surge of health misinformation
Across the country, clinicians ... are contending with a sharp rise in vaccine hesitancy. They are trying to do what ...
Back to the vax — Is the measles surge testing MAHA’s vaccine rejectionism?
Measles has been spreading in the US, reaching infection levels not seen in decades .... This year, the Centers for ...
Digital junk food: Social media algorithms designed to highlight controversy not science
Imagine that you have a very social friend — Rickie — who throws a potluck dinner every year. He asks ...
Kennedy’s CDC blocks publication of study that shows vaccines reduce hospitalizations by 50%, then misrepresents why
A report showing the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccine that was previously delayed by the head of the Centers for ...
Viewpoint: ‘Make America Pregnant Again’ — Trump guts support for birth control to placate the right’s birth obsession
Decreasing the unintended pregnancy rate was a bipartisan wish. In 1969, President Richard Nixon recognized that “unwanted or untimely childbearing ...
In Zimbabwe, an almost-deadly collision between fake news and a real virus
Misinformation can affect and even derail polio vaccination campaigns, threatening the lives of children in underprotected communities. 23 March 2026 ...
Viewpoint — ‘Completely unethical’: RFK, Jr.’s medical ignorance deprives melanoma cancer-sufferers of a life-saving therapy
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn’t like our criticism of the Food and Drug Administration’s rejection of Replimune’s life-saving drug for metastatic melanoma ...
Latest fevered, right-wing conspiracy: Fox, New York Post, and kooky GOP legislators push ‘Dead Scientists’ scare
Are America’s top scientists being kidnapped or disappeared by a foreign adversary? Right-wing media are abuzz with speculation that 11 ...
Viewpoint: Truce between MAHA and mainstream science? Its embrace of ‘quackery’ and pseudoscience makes that impossible
One of the truly remarkable—and depressing—things that I’ve observed since the longtime antivax activist who is now our Secretary of ...
‘Irresponsible decision’? On mandatory military flu shots, Hegseth chooses ‘freedom’ over health
Health experts are hoping the effects of new Pentagon policy are minimal following Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directive to make ...
Viewpoint — Politicization of public health: What’s the impact of the White House strategy on children
Vaccine mandates are being lifted across the United States and American children are suffering the consequences. In , U.S. healthcare ...
