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.
How accurate are the ‘ethnicity estimates’ claimed by DNA genealogy companies?
Since 2012, more than 18 million people have mailed their spit-filled vials to [Ancestry DNA], which analyzes the genetic material ...
‘Gigantic leaps forward’ What’s happened in the 21 years since a teenager died undergoing gene therapy, stalling emergence of this biomedical breakthrough?
In 1999, [teenager] Jesse [Gelsinger] received a dose of the ornithine transcarbamylase gene, engineered into a recombinant adenovirus, at the ...
CRISPR has brought pig-to-human organ transplants to the cusp of reality
In a study published [September 21] in the Nature Biomedical Engineering journal, the researchers said they used CRISPR–Cas9 and a combination of other ...
Science paradox: How the response to the pandemic has been infected by bias, overconfidence and politics
[W]hen people started falling ill last winter with a respiratory illness, some scientists guessed that a novel coronavirus was responsible ...
America’s sordid history of forced sterilization
On September 14, advocacy groups filed a complaint that accused the Irwin County Detention Center, which houses immigrants for federal Immigration and ...
German measles likely jumped from bats to humans, much like COVID, raising concerns about future virus outbreaks
An estimated 100,000 newborns are affected by the [rubella virus] annually, mostly in Africa, the western Pacific, and the eastern ...
Gynandromorph: Spectacular bird found with male plumage on one side and female on the other
Split down the middle, with one side flaunting yellow 'wing pits', and the other side rocking a pink underwing, researchers ...
There are a lot of psychopaths amongst us… and some of them are gifts to society
As a happily married family man and a successful neuroscientist at the University of California-Irvine, [James] Fallon didn't exactly fit ...
If we could resurrect dinosaurs using gene editing, could they survive with our current plants and climate?
[Imagine that] tucked away inside a lab on a remote island, scientists have quietly grown baby dinosaurs. Now the second ...
Dogs don’t seem to care much about human faces, counterintuitive study finds
Dogs’ brains aren’t especially impressed by faces, either those of other dogs, or of people, a new study suggests. People’s brains ...
These kinds of personality types are most likely to embrace conspiracy theories
[P]eople who are self-important, narcissistic, anxious, depressed, or impulsive are slightly more likely to cling to a conspiracy theory than ...
Viewpoint: Trump’s inflammatory appeals triggered support for him in 2016. Here’s why scientists think it won’t happen again
In the 2016 election, undecided voters were influenced by the brain’s fear-driven impulses—more simply, gut instinct—once they arrived inside the ...
It might soon be possible to shape your own dreams
The technology engineer — and self-proclaimed wannabe cyborg — [Tomás Vega] has been developing a device with other researchers at the MIT Media ...
Video and Infographic: Pandemic response has sent trust in science soaring after years of faltering
The global pandemic has renewed trust in science. Our annual research shows that appreciation for science and trust in scientists ...
Some birds are quite smart but do they really ‘think like humans’?
[B]road claims for animal intelligence that go well beyond problem-solving abilities are often questionable. Consider, for example, the mirror test ...
CBD is hyped as a ‘miracle cure’ for just about everything. Here is the reality
So, is CBD a miracle cure? Despite its promise, if you’re someone who hopes to read that science proves CBD ...
Not quite total recall: How limits on what humans can remember is helping us ‘teach’ AI
An artificial neural network learns by adjusting synaptic weights—how strongly one artificial neuron connects to another—which in turn leads to ...
Vaccines contain GMOs that will harm you? Debunking anti-biotechnology/anti-vaccine nonsense
There is no scientifically plausible reason to accept the hypothesis that either DNA in vaccines or the DNA in GMO foods are ...
Why intermittent fasting often doesn’t work
Many followers of the [intermittent fasting] diet, which has been popularized in best-selling diet books and touted by celebrities, routinely ...
