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.
Music lover? It’s in your genes
A new twin study published in Nature Communications provides evidence that how much people enjoy music is partly influenced by genetic ...
What causes autism? It’s not vaccines, but a new study finds one driving factor
Just as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for an investigation into debunked claims of vaccines causing autism, a massive new study ...
Viewpoint: ’He’s wrong’—RFK, Jr. invokes pseudo-science, falsely claims single target antigen vaccines ‘never worked’
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed another unorthodox view on vaccines, with the long-time vaccine critic declaring that ...
Foreign entities are partnering with American tort forms to fund environmental lawsuits that undermine science and U.S. national security
One of the most insidious threats today is not on the battlefield, but in our courtrooms—where foreign entities are using ...
Human ‘bodyoids’: We will soon be able to manufacture brain-less human bodies to generate replacement organs
Why do we hear about medical breakthroughs in mice, but rarely see them translate into cures for human disease? ...
Viewpoint: ‘It’s going to get worse’: More than 12.6 million infants and children are highly susceptible to getting measles
The current measles outbreak, with more than 480 cases, largely in unvaccinated children, is gearing up to be the worst ...
Sahara Desert was once a lush oasis and home to a human mysterious lineage
The Sahara desert, once lush and green, during a time between 14,500 and 5,000 years ago, was also home to ...
Resurrecting dead species—Despite the hype over the dire wolf and the wooly mammoth, chorongenetics poses immense challenges
Colossal Biosciences, the biotech company behind [these] woolly mice [says the] eventual goal is to modify elephants with enough mammoth ...
Viewpoint: ‘Sending science backward’—MAGA fuels a culture war against life-saving mRNA vaccines
US health agency leadership and policymakers seem intent on undermining trust in mRNA, the technology that saved millions of lives ...
US dominance of artificial intelligence is threatened as China, France and others rush to join the AI development race
“Chinese models are catching up as far as performance to the US models,” [Vanessa Parli] adds, “but across the globe, ...
China’s Frankenstein? Controversial scientist He Jiankui who stirred a global debate by genetically modifying babies to prevent HIV disease now targets Alzheimer’s
International media has dubbed [He Jiankui] “China’s Frankenstein.” He has no academic affiliations. He declines to reveal where his funding ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr. finally conceded that the measles vaccine is ‘the most effective way to prevent its spread’—MAHA anti-vaccine activists are calling him a turncoat
For vaccine opponents, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointment as secretary of health and human services represented something close to nirvana ...
Viewpoint: ‘This is Hollywood science, not real science’ — RFK, Jr.’s ‘plan’ to let avian flu ‘run through the flock’ courts a catastrophic, global pandemic
In two recent interviews on Fox News, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downplayed concerns about H5N1 avian influenza in the U.S., raising alarm among ...
Face science: Here’s why human faces look so different from our extinct Neanderthal cousins and chimpanzees, or primate relatives
In a new study, researchers have uncovered a fundamental difference in how human faces grow compared to those of our ...
Artificial General Intelligence: The billion dollar challenge of scaling up AI to AGI that would surpass human intelligence
[A] new report ... which queried 475 AI researchers and was conducted by scientists at the Association for the Advancement ...
Viewpoint: ‘People will die’—The dramatic fallout from indiscriminate cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Thousands of federal employees at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were notified early Tuesday morning that they were subject ...
Viewpoint: Trump is MIA in his response to bird flu. Here’s what the administration needs to do, and fast
First, vaccinating poultry is critical to preventing flock outbreaks and must be a cornerstone of the nation’s avian influenza prevention ...
Viewpoint: Should we regulate or ban embryo selection based on IQ?
In mid-November 2024, the British organization Hope not Hate published its investigative research ‘Inside the Eugenics Revival’. In addition to ...
Viewpoint: Here’s a backgrounder on the anti-vaccine quack RFK, Jr. has drafted to prove vaccines cause autism
The longer President Donald Trump and his lackeys, particularly his Secretary of Health and Human Services, longtime antivax activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., ...
100 people globally use brain-computer interfaces in clinical trials. Scaling up commercially is on the horizon
Implanted BCIs [brain-computer interfaces] are electrodes put in paralyzed people’s brains so they can use imagined movements to send commands ...
Mensa brain or monkey brain: What makes us different and how did that happen?
Scientists have long tried to understand the human brain by comparing it to other primates. Researchers are still trying to ...
Bill Gates muses on the remarkable challenges AI can successfully take on over the next decade
The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the ...
Anti-RFK, Jr. rumblings are surging on Wall Street—He is ‘undermining the trusted leadership of healthcare in this country’:
Two top Wall Street analysts are calling on the White House to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the U.S ...
Global support for vaccines for poor countries and thousands of other global health initiatives poised for extinction as Trump escalates random cuts
The Trump administration intends to terminate the United States’ financial support for Gavi, the organization that has helped purchase critical ...
Viewpoint: ‘We’re trapped in an increasingly dangerous supplement hell online, all thanks to politicians. And it’s probably going to get worse’
The nutritional and dietary supplement industry has exploded in recent years, fueled partly by social media influencers and branded content ...
Neanderthals and humans first mated 50,000 years ago and their DNA may have given us an evolutionary advantage
Far from triumphantly breezing out of Africa, modern humans went extinct many times before going on to populate the world, ...
Wooly mice: A small step forward in the challenging effort to de-extinct the Pleistocene-era wooly mammoth
Scientists working to unlock the secrets of de-extinction recently announced what they say is a turning point for the movement: ...
