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.
Sweden vs. United States: Whose COVID suppression strategy was more effective in containing the pandemic and limiting impacts on school children?
COVID-19 cases and deaths internationally have fallen to their lowest levels in four years. The data now permits a comparison ...
Brain cancer vaccine? Researchers develop shot that reprograms body to fight deadly glioblastoma
In a first-ever human clinical trial of four adult patients, an mRNA cancer vaccine developed at the University of Florida ...
Viewpoint: COVID vaccines have exceedingly rare but serious side effects. Why didn’t we listen to the people who had bad reactions?
The Covid vaccines, a triumph of science and public health, are estimated to have prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths. Yet even the best vaccines produce rare but ...
Viewpoint: ‘Real IVF industry regulation is long overdue. But consumer protection is not enough’
For the first time since the Bush-era stem cell debates, reproductive technology has taken center stage in American politics. An ...
Cement has major environmental impacts. This new process could provide plentiful, energy-efficient carbon-negative building materials
An abundant mineral called olivine can help make carbon-negative cement. This process could help tackle cement’s large carbon footprint – ...
‘There is ‘a real possibility’ that reptiles, insects, octopuses and mammals have consciousness, scientists declare
Crows, chimps and elephants: these and many other birds and mammals behave in ways that suggest they might be conscious. And the list does ...
Is AI infiltrating scientific publishing? Rise of ‘suspicious’ tell words popping up in published papers
Researchers are misusing ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots to produce scientific literature. At least, that’s a new fear that ...
What might a Neanderthal woman look like? Here’s a digitally recreated face
A new documentary has recreated the face of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal whose flattened skull was discovered and rebuilt from hundreds of bone fragments by ...
What is ‘menopause brain’? Imaging shows dramatic structural changes in midlife that can impact behavior
For decades, some doctors have told women that the brain fog, insomnia and mood swings they experience in midlife are “all ...
Some people hit 80 years old while retaining exceptional memories. What goes on in these ‘super-ager’ brains?
When it comes to aging, we tend to assume that cognition gets worse as we get older. Our thoughts may ...
Genetic arms race: The next war frontier is the capacity to dominate the human genome
Rapidly accelerating breakthroughs in our ability to change the genes of organisms are generating medically thrilling possibilities. They are also ...
Bionic eyes? Congenital blindness affects more than 2 million people. Possible gene editing solutions are within reach
As a child, Max Hodak learned to develop film in a darkroom with his late grandfather who was almost blind ...
Can a healthy lifestyle counterbalance genetic predisposition to a shorter lifespan?
A healthy lifestyle may offset the impact of genetics by more than 60% and add another five years to your ...
Fertility conundrum: UK IVF clinics have genetic health information about egg and sperm donors. Are they obliged to share this with patients?
ECS is a reproductive genomic test, used prior to conception, that can identify whether a potential parent or donor carries any ...
Viewpoint: Designing the future — ChatGPT-directed biotech breakthroughs will help us fight disease, feed the planet, generate energy, and capture carbon
Imagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics ...
Our brains are getting bigger. Could this protect us from dementia?
Human brains have been steadily growing through the decades, and that may be lowering the risk of dementia. ...
This ‘superstar’ genetic analyst cracked criminal cases and locked people up for three decades. New findings reveal she may have fudged the data
For nearly three decades, Yvonne “Missy” Woods was Colorado’s star forensic scientist, relied on by police and prosecutors to test ...
Viewpoint: ‘The average American celebrates just one healthy birthday after the age of sixty-five. Longevity evangelists argue that it doesn’t have to be this way’
Many of us have come to expect that our bodies and minds will deteriorate in our final years—that we may ...
‘Competition between species has shaped our own evolutionary tree’: Human evolution works the ‘complete opposite’ way than most other animals
Interspecies competition in ancient humans saw an evolutionary trend that is the complete opposite of almost all other vertebrates, according to a ...
Orchid babies: Is this embryo scanning fertility startup furthering eugenics or ‘protecting future people from future suffering?’
God help the babies! Or, absent God, a fertility startup called Orchid. It offers prospective parents a fantastical choice: Have ...
Viewpoint: With weight loss drug prices plummeting, ‘it’s possible to imagine a future in which almost everyone is taking some variety of GLP-1 drug’
Last year was called the year of Ozempic, though it was also a year of Ozempic backlash and Ozempic shortages, which could persist for years ...
Is aging a ‘treatable disease’? Harvard geneticist faces accusations of ‘snake oil salesman’ as expert scientists refute claims
Harvard geneticist David Sinclair, who has said his “biological age” is roughly a decade younger than his actual one, has ...
AI and CRISPR converge: Artificial intelligence generates gene editing blueprints to solve host of previously untreatable diseases
Generative A.I. technologies can write poetry and computer programs or create images of teddy bears and videos of cartoon characters that look like something from a ...
Deep water living: Top-secret story of how British researchers experimented on themselves and found the key to surviving underwater — helping make D-Day a success
Geneticists John Burdon Sanderson Haldane and Helen Spurway’s goal was to see how long she could breathe the oxygen before ...
Companies race to achieve pig kidney transplants. Who will be first to convince the world their technologies are safest?
Xenotransplantation, the futuristic sounding field of animal-to-human organ transplants, is suddenly a lot closer to reality. The first two gene-edited ...
Were Neanderthals cannibals?
At this point, there’s little doubt Neanderthals ate each other, even if the practice doesn't appear to have been widespread ...
History of brainwashing: How the race for mind control changed America forever
A war correspondent who had spent considerable time in Asia, Edward Hunter had achieved brief media stardom in 1951 after ...
