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.
Why are humans one of the few species in which fathers play an ongoing role in child-rearing?
Male mountain gorillas don’t seem to know or care which young are theirs. But nearly all males tolerate the company ...
Some stress-related factors in aging appear reversible
A new study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons is the first to offer quantitative ...
Viewpoint: Misleading rhetoric fuels belief that our genetic code is a deterministic ‘instruction book’ – but it’s far more interesting than that
[G]enes aren’t quite what we thought (in fact, there’s no consensus about what they even are). Yet plenty remain happy ...
How AI could confer ‘digital immortality’
Researchers and entrepreneurs are starting to ponder how artificial intelligence could create versions of people after their deaths—not only as ...
Saving the world — or possibly destroying it? What does the future of CRISPR genetic engineering portend?
In the past 70 years, we have uncovered the structure of DNA, the blueprint of life, built machines to read ...
Can AI brain-computer interfaces replace depression pills?
Sometimes antidepressants stop working after prolonged use and for many people they don’t work at all... With such gloomy prospects, it ...
How women are recruited into the international human egg trade business
Young women are recruited into the global egg trade through shrewd emotional marketing techniques and a skillful manipulation of their ...
Neuroscience of free thinking: Political correctness, free speech and the biological functions of the brain
What if a person’s stance on free speech—her willingness to tolerate opinions she doesn’t like—is linked to her brain function, ...
Why humans evolved to be the thirstiest of all mammals
To understand how water has influenced the course of human evolution, we need to page back to a pivotal chapter ...
Magic mushroom health promise: Psilocybin’s antidepressant brain-rewiring capabilities come into focus
Psilocybin, a psychedelic compound that can be derived from over 200 species of mushroom, can remodel connections in the mouse ...
Complimentary cognition: How humans evolved solution-focused brains and our unique ability to adapt
The period preceding the emergence of behaviorally modern humans was characterized by dramatic climatic and environmental variability - it is ...
Setting ethical limits on human gene editing after fall of 14-day barrier
Quick, accurate and easy-to-use, CRISPR-Cas9 has made genomic editing more efficient—but at the same time has made human germline editing ...
Bionic bird? Meet Mia, rescued from certain death by a plug-and-play prosthetic foot
[Researcher Oskar Aszmann has given] Mia, a bearded vulture, a new foot. This is the first time a prosthetic of ...
Podcast: The evolution of lying
What is truth? How has it evolved? And what is its impact anyway? Evolutionary science shows that subtle social manipulation ...
Disorienting brain changes that occur during menopause are often only temporary
In one of the first studies to take an in-depth look at brain changes in healthy women before and after ...
Genome sequencing every British baby at birth? UK public shows cautious support for early screening program
While some genetic testing is available before birth, it is currently only offered in newborns in certain cases… But proponents ...
Eugenics reparations: California poised to pay up to $25,000 to people who were deemed ‘unfit to have children’ and sterilized
California is poised to approve reparations of up to $25,000 to some of the thousands of people — some as ...
Fan of soda? Association found between colon cancer and sugary drinks, though no direct links identified
[A] new study, published in the medical journal Gut, examined the link between colorectal cancer and sweet drinks in 94,464 ...
$1500 a month? Breakthrough obesity injection Wegovy (semaglutide) approved by the FDA — but high costs and limited insurance coverage likely to limit adoption
When a promising new drug to treat obesity was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for sale in the ...
A brain helmet that can unlock the secrets of aging, concussions, meditation and metaphysical experiences? It’s now available and only cost $110 million to develop
“To make progress on all the fronts that we need to as a society, we have to bring the brain ...
WHO restates opposition to gene-editing live human embryos but endorses other forms of genome modification
[July 12,] a World Health Organization advisory committee called on the world’s largest public health authority to stand by the ...
COVID lockdowns have prompted more women to freeze their eggs, but success rates remain vanishingly low
According to UK fertility regulator the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the number of women freezing their eggs or ...
WHO proposes global registry and whistle-blowing mechanism to curb unethical and unsafe human gene editing abuses
The World Health Organization issued new recommendations [July 12] on human genome editing, calling for a global registry to track ...
Why the famous ‘march of human evolution’ illustration is so misleading
It's the diagram of evolution we're all familiar with – starting with an ape figure which slowly turns into an ...
Neuroscience of emotions: what we ‘see’ — smiles, frowns, puckered brows — are actually social constructs that your brain has learned from infancy
If you show pictures of actors portraying [common] emotions to people in all corners of the earth, they pretty reliably ...
The exabyte data solution? How we can store all of the world’s data in microscopic silica particles placed in DNA
On Earth right now, there are about 10 trillion gigabytes of digital data, and every day, humans produce emails, photos, ...
Did the global pandemic trigger a worldwide mental health crisis? Here’s why those fears never played out
As clinical scientists and research psychologists have pointed out, the coronavirus pandemic has created many conditions that might lead to ...
