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: RFK, Jr. and the vaccine denial movement is undermining trust between doctors and patients
Over the past few years, the rise of anti-science and anti-vaccine rhetoric has fundamentally changed the relationship between clinicians and ...
‘Terrible distortion of facts’: Anti-vax lawyer’s heb B testimony perfectly illustrates playbook to subvert science and litigate fear
Attorney Aaron Siri, JD, who has worked as legal counsel for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., ...
RFK, Jr. poised to marginalize effective RSV therapies after vaccine opponents question efficacy of safety data based on no new data
U.S. health regulators informed senior executives at Merck, Sanofi and AstraZeneca ... that their approved protective RSV treatments for infants ...
Viewpoint: Once the global center of science-based medicine, the CDC now regularly lies and peddles junk science
... On November 19, 2025, the CDC updated its webpage about one of the central antivax claims dating back to ...
New York Times says it will not be intimidated into reporting about Trump’s faltering health
The New York Times, attacked by President Donald Trump for reporting about his physical condition, said on [December 9, 2025] that ...
‘We must absolutely ignore them’: Medical experts rebuke Kennedy’s CDC after ‘hand-picked’ panel upends hepatitis B vaccine guidance
A CDC vaccine advisory panel's decision to stop recommending universal hepatitis B vaccination for newborns has sparked a split between federal advisors ...
Mismatch of bodies and brains: Humans were not built for our industrialized present; our evolutionary future looks grim
In a recent research paper co-authored with Daniel Longman, ... [evolutionary anthropologist Colin Shaw] argues that the extensive environmental shifts of the Anthropocene ...
Speculation on how our brains may have evolved to invent the idea of gods
Recent archaeological and neurobiological evidence suggests that as the human brain evolved, specific cognitive abilities appeared that paralleled the invention ...
Can we ‘recharge’ our cells to rewind the aging clock? Scientists think so
Think of cells as the biological answer to battery-powered electronics. Mitochondria are the batteries that supply them with enough energy to keep going. ...
Volcanic eruptions brought the Black Death plague to Europe
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in ...
Grim reality of global far-right/MAHA/RFK, Jr. vaccine rejectionism: Child mortality reverses course and is now on the rise
For the first time in 25 years, child mortality rates for preventable diseases are projected to increase, after having declined ...
AquaWomb offers a life support system for precarious, premature babies. Not everyone thinks that’s a great idea
In the US, more than 10,000 infants are born each year within ... precarious boundaries. Premature birth remains the nation’s second-leading cause of infant ...
Near-death experiences: What happens in the brain when you edge toward the cliff of death?
At the Daily Mail ..., Wiliam Hunter [reported] on a recent study of 48 near-death experiences: Some participants described seeing heavenly beings, while one even said they ...
Dumb transhumanist idea? Elon Musk and other technology superstars want to upload their brains to AI computers
Michael Hendricks, a professor of neurobiology at McGill, said: “Rich people who are fascinated with these dumb transhumanist ideas” are ...
Are climate activists targeting dogs and their owners?
I’ve been a vegetarian for over a decade. ... It’s a lifestyle choice I made because I wanted to reduce ...
Amber alert: Can GLP-1 drugs safely and effectively address everything from expanding waistlines to fading libido to memory loss? Hold your horses
In a presidency marked by destructive health decisions, President Donald Trump’s proposal to lower prices for popular weight-loss drugs, known broadly ...
Viewpoint: Win for politicized junk science—Vaccine crisis escalates as RFK, Jr.’s hand-picked cronies gut life-saving hepatitis B shot recommendation
Recent weeks have brought good news about vaccines, with studies indicating that flu vaccination reduces heart disease, shingles vaccines can prevent ...
Viewpoint: Life inside the anti-vaccine ecosystem is even scarier than you can imagine
Peter Hildebrand choked back tears as he told the crowd about his daughter, Daisy. She was 8 years old when ...
‘We will witness a radically redrawn coast line’: Sea levels poised to run 15 feet or more over the rest of this century
In May 2014, NASA announced at a press conference that a portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appeared to have reached ...
Trump’s erratic attacks on foreigners and gutting of basic research spurs many scientists to look to other countries as more suitable destinations for relocation
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine warned last year that the U.S. lacks a “whole-of-government talent strategy” for science, technology, ...
Battle over yttrium: China’s rare earth metal advantages will only get worse
The alarm hasn't yet reached the general public, but tension is beginning to build in the corridors of the aerospace industry, ...
‘Miracle’ GLP-1 weight loss drugs could complicate some pregnancies
The more we learn about GLP-1 agonists, the more miraculous they seem to be. What can’t they do?! you might ...
Viewpoint: ‘Gold standard science’ farce: RFK Jr.’s pledge dangerously mocks U.S. healthcare and endangers medicine globally
The message is hammered over and over, in news conferences, hearings and executive orders: President Donald Trump and his health ...
We are on the verge of engineering embryos immune from hereditary diseases—and a couple has already volunteered to provide their fertilized egg for a test run
Herasight, which formally launched this summer with backing from influential Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Draper Associates, is charging $50,000 for ...
Viewpoint: The U.S. is now banning some immigrants with health disabilities. Liberal critics call it disgraceful eugenics
Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed visa officers to consider obesity and other chronic health conditions, such as heart disease, cancer and ...
While AI revolutionizes the world, the human brain rots
The most high-profile study this year about A.I.’s effects on the brain came out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ...
Rod Kissmee claims ‘‘I have very strong sperm!’: Welcome to the wild west world of social media sperm selling
A man going by the name “Rod Kissme” claims to have “very strong sperm”. It may seem like an eccentric ...
