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.
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 ...
Greenpeace USA faces possible dissolution after losing $667 million defamation suit for orchestrating ‘unlawful’ demonstrations against a North Dakota pipeline project
Energy Transfer filed the colossal lawsuit in 2019, accusing Greenpeace of providing resources, including supplies, intel and training, to encourage ...
RFK, Jr. claims that the measles vaccine ‘causes deaths every year’. He’s wrong, that’s activist propaganda
Parsing every claim about the measles vaccine that [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] has made would take a long time, so ...
Could reprogramming our genes stop the aging process?
Cellular reprogramming is now hailed by its supporters as the most promising scientific approach to improving human healthspans and lifespans. Proponents ...
Missing teeth? A drug that that spurs regrowth shows promise
Teeth ... are not bones. Although they’re made of some of the same stuff and are the hardest material in ...
Guided by RFK Jr.’s scientifically illiterate advice, many Texas families with measles-infected children avoid going to the doctor, sometimes until it’s too late
Struggling to contain a raging measles epidemic in West Texas, public health officials increasingly worry that residents are relying on ...
The brain scans its surroundings in a steady rhythm and only turns off during deep sleep
The brain is not only concerned with where we are right now. It also explores places we haven't been yet ...
Viewpoint: Fact checking controversial eight claims by Dr. Oz — Health science often left behind
Over 13 seasons of “The Dr. Oz Show,” from 2009 to 2022, [Mehmet Oz] told viewers what to eat, how ...
Honing in on the difference between chronological and biological age
Medical researchers in Chicago are studying the difference between a person's chronological age — how many years they've lived — ...
