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.
Threat from drug resistant ‘superbugs’ is growing
Drug-resistant infections pose a growing threat to public health. We're not prepared to meet it. That's because the development pipeline ...
Sex differences in responding to baby scent: Males more aggressive, women the opposite
Imagine there was an odorless substance that made men less aggressive when they inhaled it but had the opposite effect ...
WHO says Pfizer vaccine anecdotally linked to tinnitus hearing loss
The World Health Organization is examining rare reports of hearing loss and other auditory issues following Covid-19 vaccinations. In a ...
Parents in the US spend $1 billion a year on melatonin gummies as a childhood sleep aid — but are they safe?
Throughout history, parents have searched for the secret to a smoother bedtime: sleeping together, sleeping apart, the “Ferber method” war ...
Diagnosing Huntington’s disease, muscular dystrophy and fragile X syndrome? New DNA test can cut diagnosis time from decades to days
A new DNA test, developed by researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney and collaborators from Australia, ...
Looking to reduce pain? Try a dose of nostalgia
The next time you feel aches or soreness, you might consider skipping the pain reliever and reaching instead for an ...
Is a new COVID surge cycle beginning?
At this very moment, the United States, as a whole, remains in its legit pandemic lull. Coronavirus case counts and ...
10% of infertile men have faulty sperm. 3D-printed testicle tissue may address that
Much of the woes and struggles of starting a family center around women and their fertility issues. But for a ...
How do the ‘communication cables’ of the brain work?
The brain controls everything we do, from fundamental processes like breathing and blinking, to more advanced actions like dancing or ...
US expands vaccination program for migrants crossing US-Mexico border
The Biden administration is expanding efforts to vaccinate migrants in U.S. custody against the coronavirus as border authorities prepare for ...
Do artificial sweeteners fuel cancer? New data reignite the debate
A new study has reawakened a decades-old debate over the safety of artificial sweeteners, suggesting a small association can be ...
Hope for thousands of people with ALS: Brain implant helps paralyzed man communicate
A fully paralyzed patient with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, has regained his ability to communicate via a new brain ...
Here’s the story of Barbara Ann Richards, a pioneer for the trans movement — in the 1940s
On July 1, 1941, a 29-year-old interior decorator walked into a Los Angeles courthouse and filed a request that vanishingly ...
Precision medicine is reshaping the debate over ‘race’
Precision medicine is an emerging field with immense potential for better understanding of diseases and improved treatment outcomes. Its focus: ...
Seeking out the genetic roots of migraine
Research suggests that genes account for up to 60% of a person’s risk of having the condition. Almost one-third of ...
Is high cholesterol a red alarm? It’s time to reassess the meaning of blood lipid levels
We’ve all been born under the stigma of cholesterol. From the day you were born, the cholesterol in your food ...
Investigation: DNA ancestry search uncovers fertility fraud. What happens next?
Traci Portugal, who is in her 40s, lives in Washington State and runs the website DonorDeceived.org, which catalogs and tracks ...
Infographic: Fox vs MSNBC vs CNN — How media preferences shaped the COVID culture war
The key factor determining how Americans have handled COVID-19 — more than race, education or even political affiliation — is ...
Bombshell study challenges conventional wisdom that brain scans can reveal behavior
In 2019, neuroscientist Scott Marek was asked to contribute a paper to a journal that focuses on child development. Previous ...
Coping with loss: Should grieving for a loved one longer than a year be considered a mental illness?
After more than a decade of argument, psychiatry’s most powerful body in the United States added a new disorder this ...
Out of Africa but not into Europe: Modern humans took a rocky path while settling the continent
Modern humans made several failed attempts to settle in Europe before eventually taking over the continent. This is the stark ...
Infographic: Are genetically modified pigs the future of organ transplants?
So how close are we to using pigs for a limitless supply of organs to solve the global shortage? Using ...
Revolt builds against dodgy psych journal which published paper claiming masturbation and gay sex reflect mental illness
Several psychiatry researchers have been unsuccessfully seeking distance from a dodgy journal with which they’re affiliated – and which has ...
Bioinformatics bonanza: The curious case of shrunken 2600-year old brain
Neurologist Axel Petzold was listening to the radio, nursing a hangover from the previous night’s lab party, when he first ...
Can science explain love?
Love defies a neat definition because it is a mix of the objective and the subjective, of the biological and ...
‘Why are there still apes?’ Trump-endorsed Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s ignorant statements about human evolution
Donald Trump’s and Mitch McConnell’s candidate for the U.S. Senate from Georgia, football legend Herschel Walker, doesn’t have much of ...
From cloning to de-extinction: Scientists encounter limits on using CRISPR to resurrect animal species
With the advent of gene-editing technology such as CRISPR, scientists have shifted from cloning to genetic engineering as the most ...
