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.
Vaccine skepticism is a growing global problem
Vaccination is one of the most successful global health interventions in history, eradicating or eliminating some of the deadliest diseases ...
Viewpoint — Digital freedom: How AI could undermine Chinese communism
... Even China’s heavily censored chatbots have proved difficult to contain within the party’s ideological boundaries. American frontier models, running ...
10,000 scientists gone: Trump’s cuts create an unprecedented brain drain
Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank ...
Fish oil supplements for brain injuries probably don’t work
A first-of-its-kind study led by the Medical University of South Carolina raises questions about the value of fish oil supplements ...
Congressional Republicans pushing false claims that over-the-counter birth control pills are unsafe
Imagine that you're pregnant, a few weeks in, and you decide you want an abortion. You walk into a retail ...
Reality check: Why we can’t trust anything online — and no one knows how to fix it
A zero digital footprint used to signal authenticity. Now, it can signal the opposite. The absence of a trail no ...
Gurus of woo: 9 health influencer superstars
Some work full time as scientists and physicians .... Others have no relevant credentials to speak of, and frequently disseminate ...
Viewpoint — AI doomsday projections: Will social media save us or make the panic worse?
The effort to seed content about the dangers of AI across the internet comes as the technology’s growing influence has ...
Despite disease surges, poll shows Kennedy-driven disinformation has left most Americans skeptical of vaccines
Results from the March poll of 3,851 U.S. adults conducted by Public First show that a plurality of Americans question ...
Does free will exist? Why you may have no choice but to read this article
The concept of free will seems straightforward, but it doesn’t have a universally accepted definition. One intuitive notion is that ...
Name Tag: Meta’s spooky AI facial recognition smart glasses sets off privacy alarm bells
More than 70 civil liberties, domestic violence, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+, labor, and immigrant advocacy organizations are demanding that Meta abandon plans ...
6 ways to address digital misinformation
Effectively addressing misinformation requires a coherent, evidence‑based decision‑making framework that is broadly based on reliance on credible data and independent ...
Fluoride lowers intelligence? First-ever widescale water supply study debunks Kennedy’s scare claim
Tests of intelligence and brain function showed the same results whether or not people drank fluoridated water growing up, a ...
Public health advocates turn to influencers to fight online misinformation
Scroll. “Five essential questions that you must ask your surgeon prior to any operation.” Click. “Yesterday, I posted a picture ...
With X and other platforms retreating from fact-checking, can AI fill the void?
Misinformation is increasingly spread with single clicks, bots, and artificial intelligence (AI) deepfakes. AI-generated images and videos share fake treatments, ...
The Trump-trolling AI meme creator that’s taken social media by storm
Minutes after President Donald Trump announced that he would not wipe out “a whole civilization” ..., a team of self-described young ...
Viewpoint: CRISPR and mRNA — under attack by technology skeptics — poised to save millions of children with rare diseases
We call them rare diseases, but there is nothing rare about the suffering they cause. Some 25 million Americans, nearly ...
Swim club: Expensive male fertility supplements are all the rage
SwimClub, a new male fertility-supplement company, markets to both men and women. “You can’t out-ovulate bad sperm,” reads one ad ...
Viewpoint: MAGA support for the Iranian War was already fraying — Trump blew it up
From its start, the Iran war has divided prominent MAGA figures, with many supporting the president’s military push and others arguing ...
Fearing MAHA, Trump administration slows approval of safer types of PFAS and other critical chemicals
The Environmental Protection Agency is sitting on dozens of approvals for uses of “forever chemicals” at the direction of Administrator Lee Zeldin, ...
Debunking 5 myths about renewable energy
Myth #1 Renewable energy is unreliable. There will always be days when clouds cover the sun or the wind is ...
Health misinformation is exploding online — and government and health groups shoulder some of the blame
In the new study, published in JAMA Network Open, researchers scrutinized advertising revenue from 11 news sites flagged for spreading health misinformation, including ...
Release of CDC study concluding Covid vaccines dramatically cut hospitalizations blocked by RFK. Jr.
The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delayed publication of a CDC report [scheduled for ...
Bixonimania: The fake disease scam that AI swallowed whole
Bixonimania didn’t exist before 15 March 2024, when two blog posts about it appeared on the website Medium. Then, on ...
Trump claims windmills kill birds. Here are the facts.
When wind or solar energy projects apply for permits at county councils and zoning commissions across the United States, supporters ...
RFK, Jr. rewrites rules for CDC vaccine advisory panel to reinstate anti-vaccine activists, circumventing court ruling
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has approved changes to rules that govern an expert group ...
Viewpoint: ‘Exposing lies’’ or manufacturing them? RFK Jr.’s new podcast alarms health experts
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a new podcast that he says will begin “a new era of radical ...
