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.
‘No more dudes in dresses’: Pentagon implementing Defense Secretary Hegseth’s directive to purge 1,000 transgender military
The Pentagon will immediately begin moving as many as 1,000 openly identifying transgender service members out of the military and ...
Repairing a broken code of life: In CRISPR breakthrough, rewriting the misspelling of infant’s DNA cures him of rare liver disease
In a historic medical breakthrough, a child diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder has been successfully treated with a customized ...
Viewpoint: Screening embryos for diseases—slippery slope and the advantages of being rich
[D]espite [Noor] Siddiqui’s efforts to cast herself as a modern-day Jonas Salk, [Orchid Health genetic screening services are] not a ...
$500 million universal flu vaccine: Moonshot-like project proposes to use 50-year old technology that likely won’t work
Dubbed Generation Gold Standard, the project is aimed at creating a flu shot that doesn't have to be updated every ...
South Korea’s Haenyeo—Did these legendary women evolve to dive?
An island 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula is home to a unique and ...
Why and where cancer rates are climbing in younger adults while overall cancer rates decline
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have completed a comprehensive analysis of cancer statistics for different age groups ...
CRISPR chaos: Court ruling reignites patent war, could upend who is credited with the breakthrough
[T]he US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier will get another chance ...
Bizarre but typical: RFK, Jr. takes his grandchildren swimming in sewage and feces filled creek—and brags about it
The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has revealed that he went swimming with his children in a Washington ...
‘It’s harder to get off antidepressants than heroin’: RFK. Jr.’s exaggerates but SSRI’s are not risk free
The medical community has reacted with alarm to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s claim that his family members have had ...
Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that only people born female are female. Now there’s relief, anger, confusion, and lawsuits
When Britain’s Supreme Court made its landmark ruling last month that only biological women are women, some people said it helped ...
FDA regulatory maze: China has replaced the U.S. as the global hub for biotech drug development
Five years ago, U.S. pharmaceutical companies didn’t license any new drugs from China. By 2024, one-third of their new compounds were coming ...
AI tool can assess a person’s health by analyzing a photograph
Scientists have developed an A.I. tool that they say can help assess a patient’s health — and potentially guide their ...
Treating genetic disorders before birth: Prenatal and newborn genetic screening is surging
Advances in modern medicine allow us to treat fetuses and newborn babies for genetic or inherited diseases. Recent studies have ...
Nuclear energy renaissance: China leapfrogs the U.S. and other reticent western countries
China has once again beat everyone else to a clean energy milestone—its new nuclear reactor is reportedly one of the ...
Viewpoint: ‘Manufacturing in region for region”—How raising tariffs could help reduce climate instability
[P]resident Trump’s trade war might accelerate environmental progress. That may sound counterintuitive. The Trump administration is no champion of green ...
“Total crackpot” and “talks to trees”: Trump picks ‘functional medicine’ advocate for Surgeon General
President Trump’s selection of Dr. Casey Means, a Stanford-educated wellness specialist and book author, as his next surgeon general [has] ...
Viewpoint: Aborted fetus debris in malaria vaccines? RFK, Jr.’s latest fabrication
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a bizarre new “explanation” for the deadly measles outbreak sweeping western Texas. According to public health experts, the ...
In a courtroom first, AI brings a road rage victim back to life to confront his murderer. What happened?
For two years, Stacey Wales kept a running list of everything she would say at the sentencing hearing for the ...
How might humans evolve if we colonized Mars
[H]ow will our fragile Earth-borne bodies react if we were to live on another planet like Mars? ... Even if ...
Viewpoint: Sociogenomics—Challenging the ethics of IQ-based gene selection
[A] US start-up that offers eugenic embryo selection. Heliospect Genomics aims to enable wealthy couples to select the “most intelligent” ...
‘Massive breakthrough’: In breakthrough microsurgery, surgeons use an abdomen blood vessel to reconstruct breasts
A patient who had pioneering breast reconstruction surgery said she took part ‘for all the women who will come after ...
Florida becomes 2nd state to ban fluoride in drinking water with 4 other states mulling legislation
Florida has become the latest state to restrict fluoride additives in public drinking water, after Governor Ron DeSantis signed the ...
RFK, Jr.’s MAHA ‘chronic disease epidemic’ tsunami sweeps across America
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again movement, which focuses on ending what President Donald Trump's health secretary calls the “chronic disease epidemic,” ...
Gene therapy offers hope for people with rare, exorbitantly-expensive-to-treat diseases
[S]tunning advances in genetic science have revealed the subtle, insidious culprits behind [rare genetic] diseases and have started paving the ...
Viewpoint: Is drinking water harmful? Activist paper demonstrates how science can be twisted to open the door to tort claims
The drinking water treatment process is designed to remove harmful pathogens that are prevalent in nature, but a new study ...
Most mammals are hairy. Why not humans?
Humans are members of a weirdly exclusive club of mostly naked mammals, sharing that honorable distinction with the likes of ...
Girls physically mature years earlier than boys. Does that mean they develop faster cognitively, too?
“It has long been known that girls reach puberty earlier than boys, that they become physically mature earlier. However, we ...
