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.
What critical drugs are next on RFK, Jr.’s hitlist?
For years, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has railed against a number of medications and therapeutics claiming without scientific consensus or ...
Trump’s wacky science: He’s now blaming mothers for autism
The Trump administration’s targeting of women’s behavior as the basis for autism evokes the disgraceful mid-20th-century era of so-called refrigerator mothers, ...
The super wealthy are convinced (at least very hopeful) that they can defy death
It’s easy to roll our eyes at people like Xi and Putin who wish for immortality, and to dismiss their ...
Anti-vaccination advocates romanticize over a safe pre-shot past that never existed
The past does contain its share of treasures, and it can be hard to accept that a world so rife ...
Walmart redundancy: As the world’s largest private retailer embraces AI to stay competitive, its workforce will stop growing for the first time in its history
“It’s very clear that AI is going to change literally every job,” Chief Executive Doug McMillon said this week in one of ...
Viewpoint: Isreal, Hamas and the hollowing out of the word “Genocide”
These days the term genocide casually trips off the tongue of anti-Israeli protestors. But moral entrepreneurs supporting a variety of ...
‘It doubles the time of origin of the human species’: How digital technology is rewriting the origin of humanity
An ancient skull, warped and damaged by the ravages of time and degradation, may have just altered our understanding of ...
Viewpoint: Trump’s big bet: Vaccine skepticism and Tylenol scare will cast as a defender of MAGA parents
The vaccine skepticism espoused by Trump and Kennedy is out of step with the views of many Americans and carries political risks, ...
‘We showed her every single horror movie we could find’ but nothing scared her. Why?
One famous Urbach-Wieth patient, known as SM, has been the subject of scientific studies at the University of Iowa in ...
The laughing reflex: Giggling, endorphins and evolution
“Is laughter contagious? Well, actually, all emotions are contagious,” Dr Sandi Mann, chartered member of the British Psychological Society .... “We ...
The history of vaccine hesitancy, from smallpox to COVID-19
Vaccine policy made national headlines last week when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine guidance committee met and ...
Human carelessness and climate change are killing millions of animals. Gene editing could save them. Should we use it?
It wasn’t our intention that humanity would become the planet’s greatest evolutionary force; yet the fact that we are confronts us ...
A therapeutic psychedelic without the hallucinatory trip? With the help of AI, it’s in the works
While there's growing evidence that psychedelic drugs can effectively treat severe mental health conditions, especially in cases where traditional treatments have failed, they ...
New evidence underscores that autism stretches back to our early hominid existence and is likely linked to neurons responsible for high intelligence
[As] debates over modern medicine dominate the headlines, new research suggests the roots of autism’s high prevalence in humans may ...
What’s the genetic secret to living past 110?
There's no escaping the unrelenting passage of time, but supercentenarians who live to see their 110th birthday have a peculiar ...
Viewpoint: Johnson and Johnson’s Tylenol crisis #2: How RFK, Jr. deceived the company and health experts
Tylenol set the gold standard for corporate crisis management in 1982 after people died from taking its pain medication that ...
Why are millennials getting cancer and other serious diseases earlier than prior generations?
The rise in early-onset cancers has drawn a growing number of scientists into a shared investigation: not into the inherited ...
Could leucovorin be the magic bullet to treat autism?
The medication is called leucovorin. It’s also known as folinic acid; like folic acid, it’s a form of folate, a ...
RFK’s anti-vaccine agenda has created state-by-state disparities across America in vaccine access
In the country’s most conservative states, lawmakers have fallen in line with recommendations from federal agencies and have limited access ...
What is leucovorin, the drug RFK, Jr. and Dr. Oz claim could arrest autism?
In a Sept. 22 press conference, the Trump Administration introduced what it says is an “exciting treatment” for autism: leucovorin, ...
Can devout Muslims or Jews receive organ transplants from genetically-altered pigs?
Now biotech companies are raising genetically altered pigs to transplant their organs into patients whose own kidneys have failed. Experts in the ...
Are human’s 5 senses the optimal number to interpret the world or might evolution provide better tools over time?
Animal senses—including sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell—are a masterwork of evolution, enabling an untold number of species to navigate the ...
New AI tool can predict each person’s risk for more than 1,000 diseases
Scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence tool that can predict your personal risk of more than 1,000 diseases, and ...
Biotechnology is pushing the limits of beauty products
From fungi-derived ingredients to lab-grown collagen stimulators, biotechnology is rewriting the rules of what beauty products can achieve. At its core, ...
Viewpoint: ‘An entire ecosystem of antiscience has taken hold and turned deadly’
The ideologically-motivated assault on science threatens us all. Climate change is generating devastating heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods and superstorms. ...
Autism link debunked: Scientists challenge Trump and RFK, Jr. claim that pregnant women with high fevers should not take acetaminophen (aka paracetamol and Tylenol)
Scientists comment on reports that the Trump Administration will link paracetamol (Tylenol) use to autism in children. Prof Ian Douglas, ...
RFK, Jr. vs. the vaccine health establishment. Who’s right?
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has had a busy few months. He fired the director of ...
