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.
How neurotherapy transformed a clutchless elite skater into a champion
For years, Amber Glenn was one of the top figure skaters in the U. S.—and also its most inconsistent. She ...
The miracle hype about the boundless potential of CRISPR gene editing in medicine is beginning to fade
A strange thing happened weeks before the Food and Drug Administration approved the first treatment made with CRISPR gene editing, an ...
Viewpoint: Could Trump’s rhetoric and DOGE’s indiscriminate budget axing setback American science for the next generation?
The fusillade against higher education led by [President] Trump and Vice President JD Vance — men with Ivy League degrees ...
Fluoride bans hobble rural dental health care: A slew of states are poised to follow Utah’s and RFK, Jr.’s lead and remove the health-protecting mineral to public water supplies, deepening health crisis
Fluoride [is] a naturally occurring mineral, keeps teeth strong when added to drinking water. ... Dozens of communities have decided ...
‘Truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary’—CDC’s top vaccine scientist eviscerates RFK, Jr. in forced resignation letter
Peter Marks, the top Food and Drug Administration official who oversaw vaccines, gene therapies, and the blood supply, resigned [March ...
USAID cuts gut access to lifesaving vaccinations for millions of people in the world’s poorest countries
The United States is planning to terminate more than $1 billion in funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an international ...
Viewpoint: Why more native Africans should be included in archaeological research projects across the continent
“A lot of the evidence that comes out of Africa informs us about our origins,” says [palaeoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie]. He ...
Trump, RFK, Jr. abruptly cancel $12 billion targeting measles clinics, mental health services and addiction treatments
The Department of Health and Human Services has abruptly canceled more than $12 billion in federal grants to states that ...
Viewpoint: Texas is a measles superspreader: With anti-vaccination ideology surging, the state is exporting the pandemic crisis to the rest of the US and the world
Measles, a highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, has made a resurgence in West ...
Here is an illustration of a face of the earliest modern humans to migrate from Africa to Europe
A new study published [December 12, 2024] in Nature analyzed the nuclear genomes of the thirteen specimens from Ranis [in ...
Viewpoint: Why you should read science headlines with caution
The strong correlation between flashiness and wrongness comes from several factors. First, much, if not most, scientific research is wrong. That’s why ...
To evaluate non-existent links of vaccines to autism, RFK, Jr. taps activist who faked being a doctor, published “research”—later retracted—claiming a ‘vaccine-autism’ link and administered ineffective drugs to children to “cure” autism
The Department of Health and Human Services has hired David Geier to conduct [a critical study with a goal of ...
Luxury, medicine and life itself sprout from petri dishes—and not just meats
Lab-grown diamonds offer an ethical, sustainable alternative to mined diamonds. ... Additionally, lab-grown diamonds are more affordable, typically costing 40% ...
As the Trump administration withdraws support for biotechnology innovation pushed by former president Biden, Europe is poised to seize the initiative
The U.S. administration of President Donald Trump has revoked Executive Order 14081, "Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, ...
5 actions the Trump administration could and should take (but probably won’t) to contain bird flu
First, vaccinating poultry is critical to preventing flock outbreaks and must be a cornerstone of the nation’s avian influenza prevention ...
Infant amnesia: Brain scans provide clues about why we can’t recall our earliest years
"[W]e have memories from what happened earlier today and memories from what happened earlier last week and even from a ...
Viewpoint: Weaponizing ‘informed consent’ — Here is how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is undermining support for vaccinations … and it’s going to get a lost worse
There are a lot of ostensibly “pro-vaccine” physicians out there who, because they like how RFK Jr. includes an emphasis ...
Viewpoint: Anatomy of the activist environmental group-tort lawyer alliance—latest target is a safe chemical in use for half a millennium
Claims about occupational hazards, chemicals correlated to disease, occur every week, from non-stick spatulas to flame-retardant couches, and the group ...
How did humans get so brainy? Advanced intelligence likely came from a lineage that split off for more than a millenium and then reconnected
The ancestors of all modern humans split off from a mystery population 1.5 million years ago and then reconnected with ...
With 23andMe’s bankruptcy, questions emerge about the the private genetic data of its 6.9 million customers
23andMe has faced financial hardship for years, struggling to overcome the fact that many people who went to the website ...
Viewpoint: Here’s a reminder of what life was like in RFK Jr’s.’ ‘good ol’ pre-vaccine days
In the early 1800s, some people rejected the smallpox vaccine because they didn’t trust the doctors and scientists promoting them, ...
Sociogenomics—How our environment molds genes and shapes our
The new field is called sociogenomics, a fusion of behavioral science and genetics that I have been closely involved with ...
Vaccines for cancers? It’s coming, and we’ll have COVID response-spurred mRNA vaccines to thank
Cancer vaccines weren’t a proper field of research before the pandemic. There was nothing. Apart from one exception, pretty much ...
RFK, Jr. calls the HPV vaccine ‘dangerous and defective’. He’s made millions of dollars litigating this falsehood
HPV is a virus that can live and replicate in certain cells on the surface of the skin and mucous ...
Viewpoint: Health officials and the media largely got it wrong—Once widely derided Covid lab leak theory now seems the likeliest explanation for the orgins of the pandemic
Five years after the onset of the Covid pandemic, it’s tempting to think of [the debate between lab leak versus ...
Are humans in decline and doomed for extinction? This book argues ‘yes’
Sure, there’s always the threat of global nuclear war and a massive planet-killing asteroid or cometary impact. But in his ...
Animals throughout the world show signs of being perplexed by shorter winters
Temperature plays a role in determining when bears wake from hibernation and when birds return from warmer regions. If temperatures ...
