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.
‘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, ...
Next phase in the weight loss revolution
For all the societal changes ushered in by GLP-1 drugs, their lofty price tags limit who can afford them. Many patients stop ...
Citing no evidence, RFK, Jr.’s newly-appointed FDA vaccine advisor spreads false information about risks of immunizations, setting the stage for lax policies and a surge in preventable diseases
The Food and Drug Administration will upend its approach to immunizations for respiratory illnesses, including flu vaccines, according to an ...
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 ...
Viewpoint: ‘Organoid intelligence’?—Ethical questions arise in using organoid human brain nuggets to study disease
As months turned to years, Dr. Arlotta’s team set a record for the oldest documented brain organoids. “We never thought ...
How the pro-life movement undermined Trump’s free IVF campaign promise
Social and religious conservatives spent more than a year lobbying first the Trump campaign and then the administration against mandating ...
Is the mind distinct from the brain, or are we nothing more than chemicals and firing neurons?
COSM 2025 included a debate between neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and well-known skeptic Michael Shermer on the question of “Are Human ...
The fear that AI machines will soon be smarter than humans is just another conspiracy theory
Every age has its believers, people with an unshakeable faith that something huge is about to happen—a before and an ...
Surprising scientists five years after the pandemic, coronavirus has not disappeared but continues to mutate and spread
"We thought SARS-CoV-2 would follow the same pattern as influenza, with a clear winter peak. But the virus has been ...
CRISPR opens the door toward treating common health threats like rising cholesterol
A CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing therapy has halved people’s cholesterol levels in a small clinical trial — raising hopes that, with further study, gene editing could ...
Kiss and tell: The 21 million-year-old history of smooching
Humans do it, monkeys do it, even polar bears do it. And now researchers have reconstructed the evolutionary origins of ...
Is animal testing still necessary? Will it be phased out?
[The] UK’s science minister announced an ambitious plan: to phase out animal testing. ... The news follows similar moves by ...
Viewpoint: Sobering and scary—An inside report on the growing size and influence of the anti-vaccine movement
From wellness influencers worried about Wi-Fi to crypto enthusiasts trading peer-to-peer coins, the CHD [Children's Health Defense] conference offered something ...
Can culture evolve through natural selection?
For well over a century, Darwin’s theory of natural selection has served as biology’s grand unifying framework, explaining how species ...
A third start-up joins the race to create ethically-acceptable CRISPR babies
A West Coast biotech entrepreneur says he’s secured $30 million to form a public-benefit company to study how to safely ...
Rewriting the human code of life: Will we be able to afford the medical advances that gene editing and AI are fast making possible?
We are now in the second great wave of the genetic revolution, not defined by reading the human code of ...
As the U.S. reverses its support for climate change solutions, China’s dominance as the renewable energy superpower spreads to the developing world
As the United States torpedoes climate action and Europe struggles to realize its green ambitions, a surprising shift is taking ...
AI-designed viruses raise fears over creating life
A group of Stanford University scientists posted a paper online in mid-September, describing a feat that could have been plucked from the ...
Are chatbots sophisticated enough to debunk conspiracy theories?
Many people believe that you can’t talk conspiracists out of their beliefs. But that’s not necessarily true. It turns out ...
Viewpoint: Science is a corporate conspiracy: The consequences of the alliance between RFK, Jr., his MAHA acolytes, and science-distorting enviro activists
A National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences paper is sounding the alarm about detectable per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in ...
