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.
Mixed results: Lung from a genetically modified pig transplanted into a human
[I]n the first procedure of its kind, Chinese scientists on Monday reported transplanting a lung from a pig into a brain-dead ...
Viewpoint: Appeal to Nature Fallacy: How MAHA is stoking chemophobia
Chemophobia was born from the “appeal to nature fallacy,” said [Andrea] Love, which is “the false belief that natural substances ...
Unlike GMO food, insulin developed with the identical transgenic process is universally embraced. Here’s a primer on the drug
Most of the insulin used by people today is made by bacteria that have been genetically modified to produce insulin ...
Mazzenga’s 20-year old muscles: How a still-going-strong 92-year old sprinter wins every race she enters
By some measures, [Emma Maria Mazzenga] appears to have the cardiorespiratory fitness of someone in their 50s and her muscle’s ...
Can AI speed up the grindingly slow process of drug development?
Sooner or later, in some form, AI tools will be standard in drug discovery, suspects Derek Lowe, the medicinal chemist and ...
Viewpoint: Make America Great Again — For lethal pathogens
The year is 2035 and the world is dealing with another pandemic, only this time it’s even worse. A bird ...
Some judges are adapting AI for use in court cases though hallucination problems have not been solved
The propensity for AI systems to make mistakes and for humans to miss those mistakes has been on full display ...
Bottling stress does long term damage to memory
Keeping quiet about nagging worries often feels like the polite thing to do. However, new evidence shows that this habit ...
Viewpoint: At Marty Makary’s FDA, therapy approvals for rare diseases are hitting a wall
The FDA’s approval of new drugs has notably slowed this year. Annual novel drug approvals averaged 52 in the first ...
Viewpoint: Science is now hopelessly tribal, and the Trump administration is making it worse
Public health in America has always been divisive because it sits at the intersection of science, government authority, personal freedom ...
Vindication for He Jiankui? Seven years after the Chinese scientist’s pioneering work landed him in jail, scientists and ethicists are exploring the inevitably of gene edited babies
A Chinese scientist horrified the world in 2018 when he revealed he had secretly engineered the birth of the world's ...
Sophie’s Choice: ‘My 29-year old daughter’s AI bot helped her write her suicide note’—but didnt alert anyone about her deteriorating mental health. Can we program intervention?
Sophie’s Google searches suggest that she was obsessed with autokabalesis, which means jumping off a high place. Autodefenestration, jumping out ...
Nuclear reactor on the moon? NASA’S race to transform space travel
NASA is fast-tracking a plan to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030 under a new directive from the agency’s interim ...
Genius children: Silicon Valley billionaires are throwing money at strategies to engineer brilliant children
This isn’t science fiction. It is Silicon Valley, where interest in breeding smarter babies is peaking. Parents here are paying ...
Plants digest diesel and polyester, break down pesticides and fabric dyes, and store heavy metals in their bodies. Exploiting nature’s powers to clean up the environment
With the products of our technology now woven into remote ecosystems and our own flesh, there’s no escape from ourselves ...
Humanoid surrogate robots spark debate as China pushes reproductive frontier
A Chinese tech firm is racing to deliver what could be the world’s first “gestation robot”. The idea from Kaiwa ...
Viewpoint: Cheryl Hine’s journey from Hollywood to MAHA: Former B-list actress provides an affable front for philandering, former drug addict husband, RFK, Jr.
As an actress, the public figure Cheryl Hines was just another Hollywood liberal. But as Mrs. Bobby Kennedy, she’s a ...
‘Frankenstein bunnies’: Rabbits with antler-like tentacles are swarming through Colorado
Rabbits in northern Colorado have been spotted with bizarre, somewhat grisly horns on their face. But wildlife officials say the ...
Why AI and nuclear energy are inextricably linked
The explosive growth of the artificial intelligence industry, a boom that is still only in its infancy, is already triggering surging electricity ...
Implantable brain technology: ALS patient is first to control iPad by thought
A patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has become the first person in the world to control an iPad entirely ...
Viewpoint: The Catholic Church’s new guidelines on AI fail to account for the overlap of evolution and technology
While the Vatican acknowledges stages of technological development, it lacks a model of integrating science and religion that can adequately ...
Is sunscreen bad for your health? MAHA and social media disinformation threatens a resurgence in skin cancer
Sunscreen protects the skin by either absorbing or reflecting ultraviolet rays that can cause sunburn, premature aging and skin cancer ...
Viewpoint: Truth Social rolled out an AI Chatbot that relies mostly on rightwing misinformation purveyors
When I ask the new Truth Social AI chatbot about navigating bias in the media ecosystem, it gives what I view as pretty ...
Viewpoint: The social justice corruption of medicine
Today, social justice imperatives are deeply entrenched in the medical profession. As a close observer of such trends, I have ...
‘Scared …less’: Chemophobic ‘precautionary principle’ undermines science of food and health, and MAHA makes it worse
These days, the average American consumer … is scared $#!+less. Just about everywhere you turn there’s a health guru or ...
Why women are more prone to Alzheimer’s than men
More women get diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease than men. In developed countries, studies suggest about two-thirds of people with Alzheimer's are women. It's ...
How humans (and apes) evolved to love alcohol
Humans and some other great apes share an unusual adaptation: They can metabolize ethyl alcohol – the intoxicating ingredient in ...
