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.
A viral social media meme claims that Moderna has confirmed its mRNA COVID vaccine causes cancer. No, and here’s a fact check
Claim: Moderna confirms mRNA COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer! People are sharing an article (archive) by The Expose (formerly The Daily ...
Will eye and face transplants become more common? First recipient is making a strong recovery
In June of 2021 Aaron James experienced a terrible accident while working as an electrical lineman. The 46-year-old military veteran ...
What are the key factors to look out for when monitoring cognitive decline? Here’s 4
Knowing how key cognitive functions could change in people diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease can make a significant difference to patients and ...
Love your Apple watch? Wearable activity trackers show promise in detecting early signals of COVID, strokes and other diseases
Fitbit, Apple Watch or Oura ring, wearable technology is in high demand among the health conscious. But beyond measuring heart rates and blood ...
Human’s ability to digest carbs evolved as we went from hunter-gatherers to farmers
Scientists have long suspected that humans’ ability to digest starch may have increased after our ancestors transitioned from a hunter-gatherer ...
Mail order and foreign buyers beware: Criminal organizations are circulating potentially lethal fake Ozempic
In December [2023], Drew, a 36-year-old man from San Antonio, Texas, drove more than 250 miles to Mexico to buy ...
AI-guided personalized brain stimulators in development to pinpoint control depression and chronic pain from Parkinson’s
Recent experiments have begun individualizing brain stimulation for depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and chronic pain. While much more research is ...
Backward evolution? Brain impairment? Scientists probe guesses on why the Türkish family Ulas walks on all fours
The Ulas family, in southern Türkiye, is like no other. For the last two decades, some of its members have ...
Live, transparent mice? Pioneering technique could soon open the door to viewing how human organs work
When a dye called tartrazine is added to food, it creates a bright yellow hue often associated with lemon-flavored candy ...
‘We have this hubris as humans that we can control our technology’: Numerous extinct species could be revived before the end of this decade
Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based biotechnology and genetic engineering company, plans to bring back three iconic extinct species: the dodo (Raphus ...
Biopiracy? Are pharmaceutical companies stealing the genetic information in the developing world’s flora and fauna?
Low-income countries – where much of the world’s biodiversity remains – hope it could funnel billions into conserving the rainforests, ...
Fluoride in our water lowers IQ? Activists misrepresent problematic study in viral posts across social media
The National Toxicology Program (NTP), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has released a comprehensive study titled ...
AI-supported surveillance system maps the Aedes aegypti mosquito swarms in targeted disease control project
Satellite and street view images provide basis for more precise evaluation of the environmental conditions that favor the presence of ...
Word’s first AI sex toy has roots in practices of the earliest humans: ‘This is not your normal masturbation’
[A] man from Madrid who is trying out a male sex toy for the first time. He took the latest ...
Can Ozempic and other GLP-1 weight loss drugs make you suicidal
Is it even biologically plausible that Ozempic could lead to suicide? I think it is, actually. First off, we know ...
Shattered stereotypes: Half of people over 70 stay cognitively sharp
“The belief about old people is that they’re all kind of the same, they’re doddering, and that aging is this ...
5% of the population claim near-death experiences: Psychedelics may be a way to understand what happens in our brain
One person felt a sensation of “slowly floating into the air” as images flashed around. Another recalled “the most profound ...
Free will and the brain: Challenges to long-standing belief that that addiction is a disease
For decades, medical science has classified addiction as a chronic brain disease, but the concept has always been something of ...
The fossils that evolution forgot: Lungfish DNA 30-times bigger than ours
We already knew that the genomes of lungfish are huge, but how gigantic they really are and what can be ...
Gene editing babies: For a few hundred dollars in chemicals, you could install these changes in an embryo in ten minutes
If anyone did create an edited baby, it would raise moral and ethical issues, among the profoundest of which, [Jennifer ...
Robots enabled to detect human touch in a new way — mimicking pressure on your knuckles
Even the most capable robots aren’t great at sensing human touch; you typically need a computer science degree or at ...
‘We live at a time where cultural evolution can be very, very, very rapid, but our biological evolution seems relatively stunted.’
In modern times, our lives have changed tremendously by gaining control over nature. The advent of vaccines, antibiotics, antivirals, and ...
‘Million dollar question’: Can advancements in ‘AI science’ create ‘AI scientists’
As amazing as today’s AI programs can be, they are limited by their need to consume human-generated training data. If ...
Anatomically modern humans may not have originated in Africa’s Rift Valley
The story of our species begins in Africa, although our ability to tell that story is based on patchy evidence ...
Sexual sensation: How the brain manages sensuality
Sexual sensation is absolutely central to both our shared human experience and our individual quirks and kinks. It’s exactly the ...
How genetically-engineered black flies could help tackle global environmental challenges
In the battle against pollution, a team from Macquarie University is turning to an unexpected ally: genetically engineered black soldier ...
Europe’s bioindustry 4.0: ‘The upside of biotechnology is that it can offer a cleaner alternative to traditional chemical manufacturing’
Biotechnology, which uses living organisms to create different products or processes, remains important in today’s production of food and drink ...
