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.
Alien chronicles: Here’s how the Pentagon fabricated evidence and allowed rumors to fester to cover up its secret-weapons programs
A tiny Pentagon office had spent months investigating conspiracy theories about secret Washington UFO programs when it uncovered a shocking ...
Medicine vs. MAGA: Doctors and Insurers Scramble as RFK Jr. Dismantles U.S. Vaccine System
Professional medical societies, pharmacists, state health officials and vaccine manufacturers, as well as a new advocacy group, are mobilizing behind ...
AI chatbots talk dirty
AI companions like Replika are designed to engage in intimate exchanges, but people use general-purpose chatbots for sex talk too, despite ...
AI gobbles up an enormous amount of energy—but its creators won’t say how much
“People are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote in an aside in ...
Viewpoint: ‘The Trump administration’s reckless assaults on U.S. science are endangering the nation’
The Trump administration’s reckless assaults on U.S. science are endangering the nation. If allowed to continue, they will lead to ...
Viewpoint: How to engage with a vaccine skeptic
...In the United States, about 20% of parents are hesitant about vaccines — one reason for an outbreak of measles ...
‘Screen addiction’ and suicidal behavior in children and adolescents
The amount of time kids spent on social media, mobile phones and video games wasn’t associated with more internalizing symptoms ...
‘China’s Frankenstein’ He Jiankui relocates to Houston to continue his renegade approach to human embryonic gene editing
He [Jiankui] claims to be the only person in the world who has truly genetically edited embryos and had healthy ...
Viewpoint: Brace yourself–Here is how some universities prepare students to become sex therapists
What began as a simple accommodation request in a required course called Human Sexuality turned into a case study in ...
Meet Elsa: FDA embraces controversial AI bot to help evaluate drugs, medical devices and chemicals in food
FDA leaders say artificial intelligence has the potential to “radically increase efficiency” when analysing the vast volumes of data—often more ...
TikTok skin care advice for kids and teens isn’t just mostly wrong, it could damage your skin
A recent trend in video-based online content features girls as young as 7 years demonstrating multistep skin care regimens, which ...
Viewpoint: How to stop RFK, Jr.’s decimation of vaccination programs
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed secretary of Health and Human Services, some hoped that the responsibility of public ...
Swallowing risk: The hidden dangers 7 of America’s most popular supplements
Three in four Americans take at least one dietary supplement, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Many people take ...
Appreciating music: What are the evolutionary links between humans and other animals
Historically, many thought that humans were the only animals that could recognize an external beat and synchronously move to it ...
Near-death experiences: Conversations with the Creator?
They leave their bodies, witness a bright light and return forever changed. But do survivors of near-death experiences [NDEs] truly ...
A promising annual shot might provide long term protection against HIV
Every year, my colleagues and I put together a list of what we think are the top 10 breakthrough technologies ...
What is ‘therapy speak’ and why is its proliferation so dangerous?
Psychiatric diagnosis has taken on a new role in public life. Turbocharged by social media, “therapy speak” has permeated every ...
What causes ‘mind blanking’?
Researchers think that our minds are blank somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the time ... Athena Demertzi, a cognitive neuroscientist ...
‘Mutational discrimination’: Gene editing medical innovations are leaving out people with rare diseases
Stunning advances in genetic science have revealed the subtle, insidious culprits behind these brutal [rare genetic] diseases and have started ...
Viewpoint: With science and medicine under assault, more people turn to search and social media for guidance. That’s scary
[T]he authority of medical experts has crumbled under the combined weight of disillusionment and the flood of information now available ...
Viewpoint: What impact will Trump’s budget cuts have on U.S. ability to track and adapt to climate change
Over the last few months, … there’s been an explosion of news about proposed budget cuts to science in the ...
Viewpoint: High IQ vs. Low IQ—America’s legacy of eugenics
[T]he morning after a tragic midair collision in Washington, DC, between a military helicopter and an American Airlines plane, President ...
Profiling the people now guiding America’s health policy
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became health secretary, he didn’t just bring with him an unconventional and controversial approach to ...
AI activists rethink their strategy, focusing on the future of work
[Recently] the AI Now Institute, a think tank that studies the social implications of artificial intelligence, published a sweeping report ...
The disabled, the elderly and the poor: Trump administration flirts with eugenics
Trump has deployed in his administration and in his relationships with billionaires a group of the old and new eugenicists ...
Viewpoint: Time to put limits on lawyers targeting corporations for huge legal payouts
In response to several bills introduced in both the US House and Senate seeking to put limits and disclosures on ...
Biotech companies are pioneering research to use electricity to cure diseases. Here’s how
Electricity is gaining newfound traction as a potential treatment for diseases, from rheumatoid arthritis to hard-to-treat cancers including glioblastoma and ...
