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.
Pace of reproductive technology makes health effects hard to measure
Over the past 34 years, assisted reproduction like IVF has gone from exceptional to mainstream. The procedures have changed rapidly, ...
Physician age, lack of education a major stumbling block to adopting genetics in practice
Insiders to genomics are looking around and bemoan the lack of forward progress on the clinical side of adoption. Why ...
Little Lord Kahn and the edge of genome technology
An infant born earlier this month is the first known child to have his genome sequenced before birth. As more ...
How cells stick together when it’s needed, pull apart when not
When I was nine, biology gave me my first existential crisis. If I am built out of trillions of tiny ...
Mutation rates may explain why plants can live much longer than animals
Scientists can’t offer a simple, straightforward answer to why plants can get so much older than animals. But they have ...
Mexican population has vast genetic diversity
The largest survey of Mexican genetics performed so far reveals tremendous diversity in the country. In some cases, the people ...
Nature vs. nurture: A philosophical accounting
Unfortunately, it is not easy--even in principle--to separate these issues neatly. For example, those who cling to genetic essentialism dismiss ...
Examining families that include genetic donors
There is an increasing tendency to want to explain everything human, from stress, to being gay, or having a zest ...
Female hormone exposure may drive obesity in Western men
An imbalance of female sex hormones among men in Western nations may be contributing to high levels of male obesity, ...
DNA testing may be the only part of forensic science that’s actually scientific
Forensic science -- the wizardry on display on CSI -- is often bunk. Worse, the government has known this for ...
Fungi genes may be key to higher crop yields
Ian Sanders wants to feed the world. A soft-spoken Brit, Sanders studies fungus genetics in a lab at the University ...
Jordanian stem cell law limits research to public academic institutions
In January, Jordan passed a law to control research and therapy using human stem cells derived from embryos — the ...
Sex-selective aboriton bans in US block racial groups from recieving care, new study says
Over the past five years, more than 60 sex-selection abortion bills have been introduced both at state and federal levels ...
UK health chief criticized for push to sequence all National Health users
GeneWatch UK today criticised a speech by the new NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stevens, in which he reportedly argued ...
Privacy, security concerns still not resolved in for large scale genome sequencing
Medicine will be revolutionised in the 21st century, thanks largely to our increasing understanding and collection of genetic data. Genetic ...
California prisons’ illegal sterilization of female inmates a new eugenics?
I was sterilized in 1976 when I was 23 years old. My paternalistic doctor visited me the day after la ...
US has homegrown stem cell controversy
Boston-based stem cell researcher Piero Anverza is under formal investigation after retracting prominent papers on stem cells and heart disease ...
Oxytocin may be secret hormone that fights aging
Oxytocin is best known for its role as a crucial human bonding hormone. A new study suggests it's also needed ...
Holocaust survivors studied to determine if trauma-induced mental illness can be inherited
On April 23, 1945, my father, Gershon Glausiusz, was liberated from the Nazis. He was 10 years old. Two weeks earlier, he ...
Cure for HIV? New gene-editing technique shows promise
A few lucky individuals have a mutation that makes them highly resistant to HIV. This mutation is also behind the ...
New book examines the evolution of left-handedness
The question of why some humans are left-handed — including such notable specimens as Plato, Charles Darwin, Carl Sagan, Debbie ...
Don’t lose sight of the environment’s impact on gene expression
In his book The Triple Helix, Richard Lewontin told the story of the molecular biologist and Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner, ...
Personalized vaccines treat kidney cancer
A highly personalized medical technique is allowing patients with advanced kidney cancer to live nearly three times as long as ...
Year after Myriad’s breast cancer test patent monopoly broken, data collection explodes
When the US diagnostics giant Myriad Genetics had its legal monopoly on breast-cancer gene testing eliminated one year ago, the ...
After decade of controversy, fetal stem cells reemerge as Parkison’s treatment target
A neurosurgery team will next month transplant cells from aborted human fetuses into the brain of a person with Parkinson’s ...
Writing by hand may open a conduit to human creativity. Have we evolved to write?
Studies show the cognitive and physiological uniqueness of handwriting. Did humans evolve to write? ...
Exercise is related to health microbiome, but may not cause it
Bernat Olle points to a "news" story in Medpage Today: Exercise Boosts Gut Microbiome Diversity by Kristina Fiore. Well, so ...
