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.
Cases of brain inflammation surge as U.S. measles pandemic approaches 2000
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today confirmed 31 new measles cases in a nationwide outbreak that has ...
‘You don’t understand Tolkien’: Skeptic Pope trolls tech giants about the exaggerated, risk-less benefits of AI
[T]he Tolkien nod is particularly salient given some backward interpretations of Middle-earth mythology by right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel and ...
Viewpoint: Doctors who are battling Ebola are incredulous that U.S. government is not utilizing specially designed emergency health units meant to fight virulent disease
Doctors around the country are baffled, disturbed, and in some cases aghast at the Trump administration’s plan for Americans who ...
Viewpoint—N.A.D.+: Why Gwenyth Paltrow’s heralded anti-aging supplement doesn’t work
Gwyneth Paltrow has tried it. So have Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber. ... Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or N.A.D.+, has been ...
Viewpoint: Why the hyper-promoted doping ‘enhanced games’ pseudo Olympics flopped
Testosterone, anabolic steroids, stimulants, metabolic modulators and a grabbag of peptides were just some elements of the “stacks” that these ...
Viewpoint—The end of ‘ivory tower science’: What does that even mean, and what comes next
We built American science like a skyscraper — centralized, concentrated, dependent on a single foundation. More than half of university research budgets ...
In first of more than 1300 cases, Google, Meta, and TikTok to pay $27 million to settle school district lawsuit claiming their products are dangerously addictive
A Kentucky school district reached a $27 million settlement with the owners of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. Breathitt ...
Viewpoint: Who is RFK, Jr.’s newly-appointed CDC senior counselor, Sara Brenner — Vaccine skeptic and self-proclaimed “MAHA mom”
When President Trump named a new leadership team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention two weeks ago, public ...
How Trump gutted Ebola research
As the world struggles to contain the rapidly growing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province, a ...
Magnifica Humanitas: Pope’s encyclical broadside against AI naivete and overreach
In his first encyclical, Pope Leo XIV put forth a defense of human dignity in the era of AI, delivering ...
Viewpoint: Many vaccine-suspicious conservatives and MAHA reject shots for their children by invoking ‘patient autonomy’. That’s ridiculous.
In January, Department of Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Trump’s slashed the number of routinely recommended ...
Would you go to a holistic dentist? It’s either a scam or a dentist trying to sell you unnecessary supplements.
In the controversial 2019 documentary Root Cause, the filmmaker claimed certain chronic illnesses are due to root canal treatment. Although these ...
RFK, Jr.’s delusion: Anti-depressants are not harder to quit than heroin—but that does not mean tapering off is easy
There is a legitimate clinical problem at the center of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s initiative to help Americans ...
Viewpoint: Is Trump ‘vice-signaling’ to gain the support of vape users?
In December of 2019, Mitch Zeller, who at the time ran the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, got an urgent phone call from ...
Viewpoint: Scientists recently revised downward the likelihood of catastrophic global warming. Reassured? You shouldn’t be.
Even if global warming does not exceed two degrees, it could lead to more serious consequences than expected. This is ...
Psychological inoculation: With a vaccine to prevent HIV on the horizon, misinformation is soaring. What can be done.
In a paper we published in BMJ Global Health earlier this year, we mapped the landscape of emerging concerns and ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr.’s FDA is on a screaming downward path—and why it may never recover
Whether you liked [Marty] Makary or not ..., the purge or whatever this was is not somehow going to miraculously ...
Relying on your doctor or AI miracle cure, death and debilitation? Neurologist makes the wrong choice
... Ben knew that his 75-year-old father had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type of white blood cell cancer that is ...
Nurses are the front line in challenging social media health myths
Nurses' morale is being significantly impacted by the need to "constantly" correct misinformation, according to their union. Members of the ...
MAGA’s latest ‘health obsession’? Nicotine patches promoted by ‘Zynfluencers’—including some in the Trump administration
Nicotine pouches have become a phenomenon in the past several years, gaining popularity among social-media influencers (aka, self-styled “Zynfluencers”), gamers and middle-aged ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr.’s ‘sadistic’ solution to autism, depression, and other ills looks a lot like prison camp
... [Robert F. Kennedy] has a long history of talking about people on SSRIs in dehumanizing, often racist language that ...
Colossal Bio grows chicks in 3D-printed artificial eggs. Breakthrough or copycat technology?
The baby chicks were shifting and starting to pip—or trying to hatch. But not from an egg. Instead, these chickens ...
Viewpoint— “A safe space to chat, flirt, and be intimate without sex”: Are new AI companies exploiting vulnerable asexuals?
Kor “got really addicted” to their NSFW role-playing AI chatbot last year. The 35-year-old artist from the Midwest recalls a ...
Vagus nerve wellness grift: How to build a billion dollar business. Are you listening, Kelly Ripa?
“There are billions of web impressions and social media posts on the vagus nerve,” said Dr. Kevin Tracey, a neurosurgeon ...
Hantavirus revives COVID-era conspiracies and distrust in public health
Since the first cases of hantavirus on the MV Hondius cruise ship were reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) ...
Here come the biohackers’ Enhanced Games—The Olympics for athletes doping up on steroids, hormones and peptides. What’s wrong with that?
This past week, in a city built on risk and reward, billionaire biohacker Christian Angermayer went about his wellness routine ...
Fake Ebola cure promoters already cashing in as disinformation videos flood social media
The WHO’s emergency declaration cited eight confirmed cases, 246 suspected cases, and 80 suspected deaths from the rare Bundibugyo strain, ...
