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.
USDA under pressure to liberalize regulation of human gene-therapies and gene-editing, so US doesn’t fall further behind other countries
Worries about heritable genetic modifications are subsiding and sponsors should consider the US for regulatory advice and clinical trials ...
Could another species of humans evolve? Yes, if we begin populating other planets
Along with Homo sapiens, at least eight other species of human have existed. Ultimately, just one species prevailed: Homo sapiens ...
‘Race is not a biological risk factor’: American Heart Association reassesses use of race in calculating risk of heart attacks and strokes
The cardiac-risk algorithm is an acknowledgment that, unlike sex or age, race identification in and of itself isn't a biological ...
Experimental treatment using CRISPR to dramatically lower cholesterol under scrutiny after two patients suffer heart attacks and one dies
Researchers have been able to reduce bad cholesterol in human subjects after injecting them with an experimental gene editing treatment ...
Viewpoint: ‘Risking metastasizing and spreading malignant racist ideologies’ — Social scientists attack Gates-funded initiative to bring AI to the developing world
Announcement of the launch of a new $5 million project to launch new artificial intelligence in low- income and middle- ...
Is death a singular event or a process?
Dying is in fact a process—one with no clear point demarcating the threshold across which someone cannot come back ...
Get headaches from red wine? Here’s the culprit
Is it sulfites, tannins or another culprit? Here’s what the research says about the migraines some people get with a ...
Radical advances in mind reading technology: How it’s possible to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind
How we think, feel and experience the world is a mystery, but technology may be starting to help us understand ...
House Republicans block pediatric care funding as war on gender-affirming care for transgender Americans escalates
House Republicans who waged fierce political battles over Obamacare and abortion have found a new focus: gender-affirming care ...
A green glowing monkey has been created in China. What were the scientists trying to learn?
Scientists in China have announced the birth of a primate like no other, with eyes that shined green and fingertips ...
Trust in scientists nosedives post pandemic with deeper slide among Republicans
A new Pew Research Center survey finds the share of Americans who say science has had a mostly positive effect ...
Artificial intelligence helps researchers unpack the mystery of how life on Earth began
AI is helping chemists unpick the mysteries around the origins of life and detect signs of it on other worlds ...
Why Vitamins A and E may do more harm than good
There are many important supplements that benefit people with specific deficiencies or certain health conditions; but research shows, and experts ...
Plastic paradox: ‘Dragging a net across the ocean to capture plastics may unintentionally trap the very organisms we aim to protect’
The ever-increasing problem of plastic pollution has prompted widespread efforts to combat it through innovative clean-up technologies. These advancements, however, ...
Tracing the history of evolutionary psychology all the way back to Charles Darwin
Evolutionary psychology can be traced back to Darwin's own work. Several variants have emerged on the scene over the decades ...
Can hallucinogenic mushrooms help dying patients face death? Synthetic psilocybin is put to the test
A hospital affiliated with Harvard has reopened the door on research with psychedelic drugs to see if mushrooms can help ...
CRISPR gene editing tackles yet another health scourge: High cholesterol
Study shows that gene-editing technology can be used to successfully treat a genetic disorder that increases the risk of heart ...
Viewpoint: Trials and tribulations plague the Effective Altruism movement
The multibillion-dollar Effective Altruism movement makes rich people feel good about being rich — to hell with the bad publicity ...
Playing God: Catholic ethical experts caution against ‘superhuman’ genetic future
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats: Ethicists fixate on this innovation creating “superhumans.” ...
Applying racial and social justice principles to case of Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cell lines
Human cell lines are an instrumental part of basic biomedical research and necessary for the development of vaccines and drugs ...
‘Game changing results’: Weight-loss drug Wegovy could cut heart attacks and deaths due to cardiovascular disease
Study that supports the use of Wegovy, to cut heart attacks and deaths in obesity patients with a history of ...
First CRISPR drug: UK approves Casgevy to prevent pain from sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia
The gene-editing therapy Casgevy uses Crispr to prevent debilitating pain in patients with sickle cell disease ...
Seeking an end to cosmic loneliness: Inside the quest to find out if humans are the only intelligent life in the universe
New tools, including machine learning and AI, could help scientists look past their preconceived notions of what constitutes life ...
‘Completely uncharted territory’: First whole eye transplant successful, but patient still blind
A surgical team at NYU Langone Health in New York had performed the world’s first successful whole-eye transplant in a ...
Peanut butter toothpaste? Daily dose of trace amount of nuts could help adults overcome severe allergies
Two dozen adults safely tolerated a toothpaste with trace amounts of peanut protein in an early-stage trial ...
Can psychedelics like MDMA and magic mushrooms help relieve PTSD symptoms? The Department of Veterans Affairs is determined to find out
The Department of Veterans Affairs says it's committed to studying whether psychedelics are effective treatments for PTSD ...
Ekgmowechashala mystery solved: Unique Chinese monkey-like creature was last primate to populate the Americas before humans arrived
Besides being a spelling bee stumper, Ekgmowechashala likely descended from animals in China and somehow migrated to North America ...
