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.
Dump BMI? Where fat is stored in the body may matter more than how much there is overall
At first glance, a BMI chart seems pretty straightforward. But researchers are discovering that where fat is stored in the ...
Key to ocean life, coral reefs are disappearing on the way to extinction. Should we mobilize gene editing to save a threatened species?
Coral reefs are fundamental to the health of our oceans. They cover less than 1% of the Earth’s ocean, but ...
Skin cells can now be used to fertilize eggs
Human eggs made from a volunteer’s skin DNA were fertilized in the lab on September 30, 2025, and some grew ...
Dystopian future? Should the wealthy be able to use AI to hardwire physical or cognitive advantages into their genomes
It is quite possible that the most immediate threat AI poses to humanity is not that its superhuman intelligence will ...
Male Gen Zers’ rejection of reason: ‘Science can slide into conspiracy-tinged mazes rooted in misinformation’
After 30 years as a researcher, science communicator and university science teacher, I’ve been unsettled by what appears to be ...
A liver extracted from a genetically modified pig transplanted into a 71-year-old man
Surgeons in China have for the first time transplanted a section of liver extracted from a genetically modified pig into ...
How badly will a long government shutdown impact science?
Threats of federal shutdowns have become routine in the past decade, but this closure could be different: US President Donald Trump’s administration ...
Infertility breakthrough: AI can identify the fastest swimming sperm and then a robot plants it into the embryo
In-vitro fertilization has produced more than 13 million babies since its inception in the late 1970s, but it remains a highly manual ...
Book review: When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows—Stephen on ‘common knowledge’
Common knowledge is something everyone knows that everyone knows. He saw it. She saw it. He knows that she saw ...
‘Gene-edited sheep’ are a hot commodity on the black market
The way the federal agents swarmed Jack Schubarth’s ranch in Montana on a late-spring day in 2021, it seemed they ...
As the length of winters continues to get shorter, it screws around with animal instincts and many get confused
"In Norway, we know very well that winters are getting shorter. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute has been collecting measurements across ...
Determining your ‘biological age’: Helpful information or longevity scam
You get older every day. But how old are your cells and organs, really? ... Biological age and chronological age ...
How the brain gets thirsty before the body even notices
To understand thirst in mammals, think of it less as the body stating a fact to the brain—“I need water”—and ...
“Y” do women outlive men?
Women tend to live longer than men. There are traditional explanations: Men smoke more. They drink more. They tend to ...
Why do so many rightwing leaders question the science supporting climate change?
"Climate policy and climate research are under heavy attack from the Trump administration," Håkon Sælen recently said at the Cicero ...
Robot wars: Here’s why the simmering feud between Musk and Zuckerberg could move from orange to red
When Mark Zuckerberg walked on stage ... with those chunky black AI glasses, some viewed a possible future rival for the Apple iPhone. Others, however, ...
What’s the difference between human intelligence and AI? Not very much
The term artificial intelligence renders the sense that what computers do is either inferior to or at least apart from ...
Nearly 30 minutes. That’s the new world record for holding one’s breath under water. Here is how he did it
Vitomir Maričić is one of the world's best freedivers. And this summer he set a new world record: He held ...
Strength, power, and high-intensity training: How much do creatine supplements help
It's arguably one of the world's most researched supplements. Thousands of studies have been carried out over the past few ...
Are there such things as ‘ancestral bloodlines’? Not when you examine the DNA
Human history is rife with contentions about the purity (and superiority) of the bloodlines of one group over another and ...
What critical drugs are next on RFK, Jr.’s hitlist?
For years, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has railed against a number of medications and therapeutics claiming without scientific consensus or ...
Anti-vaccination advocates romanticize over a safe pre-shot past that never existed
The past does contain its share of treasures, and it can be hard to accept that a world so rife ...
Trump’s wacky science: He’s now blaming mothers for autism
The Trump administration’s targeting of women’s behavior as the basis for autism evokes the disgraceful mid-20th-century era of so-called refrigerator mothers, ...
The super wealthy are convinced (at least very hopeful) that they can defy death
It’s easy to roll our eyes at people like Xi and Putin who wish for immortality, and to dismiss their ...
‘It doubles the time of origin of the human species’: How digital technology is rewriting the origin of humanity
An ancient skull, warped and damaged by the ravages of time and degradation, may have just altered our understanding of ...
Walmart redundancy: As the world’s largest private retailer embraces AI to stay competitive, its workforce will stop growing for the first time in its history
“It’s very clear that AI is going to change literally every job,” Chief Executive Doug McMillon said this week in one of ...
Viewpoint: Isreal, Hamas and the hollowing out of the word “Genocide”
These days the term genocide casually trips off the tongue of anti-Israeli protestors. But moral entrepreneurs supporting a variety of ...
