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.
‘Like an atom bomb’: Under RFK Jr.’s broken leadership, handpicked vaccine skeptic tapped to oversee the FDA’s drug office
On [December 3, 2005], Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg was tapped as acting director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation ...
What diseases lurk in your DNA? AI has many new answers
Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a novel artificial intelligence tool that not only ...
Alert to Donald Trump: Tanning bed users at higher risk for skin cancer
Hop onto TikTok and you'll find lots of videos of young people — mostly women — fake baking under the ...
Viewpoint: The U.S. has entered a dark period in public health, thank you Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
We expect [medical] breakthroughs to occur on a regular basis, and 2025 delivered; successful trials of gene therapies for diseases ...
Trouble getting pregnant: AI is the energizer bunny way to supercharge sperm
Doctors at Columbia University's fertility centre ... have developed an imaging technology, Sperm Tracking and Recovery (STAR), which they believe ...
Outside the boundaries of modern science? Gene editing opens the door to treat rare diseases
Fyodor Urnov, the scientific director of UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), showed me a list of rare diseases and ...
Evolutionary quirk or survival instict? Why are we ticklish?
Only humans and our close relatives are known to engage in tickling behaviour, suggesting that it may have evolved in ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr. and the vaccine denial movement is undermining trust between doctors and patients
Over the past few years, the rise of anti-science and anti-vaccine rhetoric has fundamentally changed the relationship between clinicians and ...
‘Terrible distortion of facts’: Anti-vax lawyer’s heb B testimony perfectly illustrates playbook to subvert science and litigate fear
Attorney Aaron Siri, JD, who has worked as legal counsel for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., ...
New York Times says it will not be intimidated into reporting about Trump’s faltering health
The New York Times, attacked by President Donald Trump for reporting about his physical condition, said on [December 9, 2025] that ...
RFK, Jr. poised to marginalize effective RSV therapies after vaccine opponents question efficacy of safety data based on no new data
U.S. health regulators informed senior executives at Merck, Sanofi and AstraZeneca ... that their approved protective RSV treatments for infants ...
Viewpoint: Once the global center of science-based medicine, the CDC now regularly lies and peddles junk science
... On November 19, 2025, the CDC updated its webpage about one of the central antivax claims dating back to ...
Speculation on how our brains may have evolved to invent the idea of gods
Recent archaeological and neurobiological evidence suggests that as the human brain evolved, specific cognitive abilities appeared that paralleled the invention ...
‘We must absolutely ignore them’: Medical experts rebuke Kennedy’s CDC after ‘hand-picked’ panel upends hepatitis B vaccine guidance
A CDC vaccine advisory panel's decision to stop recommending universal hepatitis B vaccination for newborns has sparked a split between federal advisors ...
Mismatch of bodies and brains: Humans were not built for our industrialized present; our evolutionary future looks grim
In a recent research paper co-authored with Daniel Longman, ... [evolutionary anthropologist Colin Shaw] argues that the extensive environmental shifts of the Anthropocene ...
Can we ‘recharge’ our cells to rewind the aging clock? Scientists think so
Think of cells as the biological answer to battery-powered electronics. Mitochondria are the batteries that supply them with enough energy to keep going. ...
Volcanic eruptions brought the Black Death plague to Europe
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in ...
Grim reality of global far-right/MAHA/RFK, Jr. vaccine rejectionism: Child mortality reverses course and is now on the rise
For the first time in 25 years, child mortality rates for preventable diseases are projected to increase, after having declined ...
AquaWomb offers a life support system for precarious, premature babies. Not everyone thinks that’s a great idea
In the US, more than 10,000 infants are born each year within ... precarious boundaries. Premature birth remains the nation’s second-leading cause of infant ...
Near-death experiences: What happens in the brain when you edge toward the cliff of death?
At the Daily Mail ..., Wiliam Hunter [reported] on a recent study of 48 near-death experiences: Some participants described seeing heavenly beings, while one even said they ...
Dumb transhumanist idea? Elon Musk and other technology superstars want to upload their brains to AI computers
Michael Hendricks, a professor of neurobiology at McGill, said: “Rich people who are fascinated with these dumb transhumanist ideas” are ...
Viewpoint: Win for politicized junk science—Vaccine crisis escalates as RFK, Jr.’s hand-picked cronies gut life-saving hepatitis B shot recommendation
Recent weeks have brought good news about vaccines, with studies indicating that flu vaccination reduces heart disease, shingles vaccines can prevent ...
Are climate activists targeting dogs and their owners?
I’ve been a vegetarian for over a decade. ... It’s a lifestyle choice I made because I wanted to reduce ...
Amber alert: Can GLP-1 drugs safely and effectively address everything from expanding waistlines to fading libido to memory loss? Hold your horses
In a presidency marked by destructive health decisions, President Donald Trump’s proposal to lower prices for popular weight-loss drugs, known broadly ...
Viewpoint: Life inside the anti-vaccine ecosystem is even scarier than you can imagine
Peter Hildebrand choked back tears as he told the crowd about his daughter, Daisy. She was 8 years old when ...
‘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, ...
