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.
Viewpoint: What happens when you Silicon Valley-ify the dubious effort to breed super children?
An understandable ethics outcry greeted the June announcement of a software platform that offers aspiring parents “genetic optimization” of their embryos. Touted by ...
Reworking the brain: Experimental stimulation relieves some with decades of pain
Edward Mowery lived with excruciating pain for years: Picture being put into a hot frying pan, he said, and then someone ...
Milestone in organ transplants, as FDA approves gene-edited pig kidneys for human clinical trials
Scientists have reached a major milestone in animal-to-human transplant research as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the ...
Thinking of using AI for therapy? Here are 5 things to keep in mind
Be mindful. Be aware of the “sycophantic nature of these entities” and keep an eye on how much time you ...
With Trump’s support, RFK, Jr.’s CDC to use unverified data to claim that the Covid shots are linked to 25 child deaths
Trump health officials plan to link coronavirus vaccines to the deaths of 25 children as they consider limiting which Americans ...
DNA screening start-up claims it can screen embryos for the likelihood of age-related diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s
Prospective parents using IVF will soon be able to rank embryos using genetic and other information in the hopes of extending ...
Russia, China and the surge in dark money funding tying up European courts and regulators of critical products
The litigation funding industry is growing rapidly as unaccountable foreign money pours into our courtrooms. ... China and Russia are both ...
Trump administration claims $10 million worth of contraceptives headed to low-income countries destroyed — Belgium finds stockpile intact
The Trump administration told The New York Times ... that it had destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of birth control ...
It’s often said that humans and chimps share 99% of their DNA. That means a lot less than almost everybody believes it means
Early research suggested that human and chimp genomes are more than 98% identical. "What it means is that for each ...
US children receive 92 vaccine doses? RFK, Jr.’s vaccine math doesn’t add up
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a Senate hearing ... that children receive up to ...
RFK, Jr’s child health plan promises big with 128 ideas, with little-to-no actionable solutions or details
The Make America Healthy Again Commission, led by Kennedy, identified four potential drivers behind rising rates of chronic disease among ...
What legal rights should non-conscious AI’s have?
In Silicon Valley, there’s a small but growing field called model welfare, which is working to figure out whether AI models ...
Greece welcomed the humanoid Olympic games. Don’t worry athletes—it will be many years before they are true competitors
With jerky determination, robots played soccer, wowed children with shadow-boxing skills and shot arrows ... at the birthplace of the ...
RFK, Jr.’s report to suggest Tylenol use during pregnancy has links to autism. What does the science say?
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has in recent months teased a September announcement in which he would identify the ...
Breakthrough diabetes therapy uses CRISPR to help body make insulin again
People with type 1 diabetes must constantly rely on insulin injections or pumps, usually for the rest of their life after diagnosis ...
The contagion of Florida’s vaccine policy: What states will be next to end school vaccine mandates?
As health department directors in Dallas, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio, we have seen firsthand in our communities that viruses do ...
At Beijing ‘Axis Summit’, Putin and Xi spout misinformation about organ transplants and immortality
“These days at 70 years old you are still a child,” China’s Xi Jinping, 72, was translated as saying, according ...
CRISPR brain ‘gene editing’ could open the door to cure neurological diseases
[A] recent "spate of technological advances" could see something like brain editing become a reality. Recent breakthroughs in CRISPR-derived gene-editing ...
Viewpoint: Private companies may soon be able to de-extinct our human ancestors. It’s time to debate ethics and regulations
The recent trend for resurrecting extinct animals has made headlines globally and sparked controversy over the validity of the claims ...
A single high dose of LSD can ease anxiety and depression for months
A rigorous new study finds that a single dose of LSD can ease anxiety and depression for months. The study ...
Viewpoint: Life and death decisions: RFK, Jr.’s shady FDA “expert panels” operate in secret with no transcripts or conflict of interest reviews
Americans trust the Food and Drug Administration to make life-and-death decisions in the open. Yet in recent months, the agency ...
‘SuperAgers’: Why some people have the brains and memory capacity of people decades younger
At 85, [Sel] Yackley is a “SuperAger.” That is, someone who is 80 or older and retains the memory capacity ...
Trust issues: What happens when therapists use ChatGPT?
Declan would never have found out his therapist was using ChatGPT had it not been for a technical mishap. The ...
‘You have to treat the brain first’: Rethinking chronic pain with Sanjay Gupta
In his book, “It Doesn’t Have to Hurt,” [Sanjay] Gupta explores what the latest science tells us on how to ...
California, Washington, Oregon forge immunization alliance to safeguard vaccine access against federal undermining
The Democratic governors of Washington state, Oregon and California announced ... that they have created an alliance to establish their ...
‘It’s like a throbbing pain that becomes quite unbearable’: What happens in the brain when a limb is amputated
Like many people who've had an amputation, [Emily] Wheldon often feels pain in her phantom arm and hand. "It's like ...
The microbiome–mind connection: Can faecal transplants treat depression?
Andrew Moseson experienced severe depression for many years. ... He struggled to find relief, nothing worked. ... Then, in the ...
