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.
25% reduction: People genetically prone to breast cancer, diabetes and other diseases would benefit from gene screening
A simple genetic screening test has the potential to stop almost a quarter of premature preventable deaths from common diseases ...
Pong addict? You should take a shot at playing a human created lifeless blob—that gets better over time
Inspired by recent advancements in brain organoid systems, researchers have designed a simple hydrogel-electrode array that not only can “play” Pong, but ...
Should women who use hormonal IUDs be concerned about developing cancer?
A new Danish study shows that women who use hormonal IUDs may have a higher risk of developing breast cancer, ...
Why are women more likely to get long-Covid than men?
Long COVID can cause substantial economic loss and missed days of work, and it can strike women more often than ...
Just in case: If humans near extinction, a 5-D ‘memory crystal’ might revive us
Researchers have encoded the entire human genome onto a “5D memory crystal” in the off chance our species finds itself ...
‘I feel like it’s a little bit of health marketing bullshit’: Exosomes might not help you stay young but they might have other science benefits
Any cell biologist ... will tell you what exosomes really are: tiny little blobs that bud off from cells and ...
Colorado Governor Jared Polis shocks health officials, endorses DJT’s pick of RFK, Jr. as Health and Human Services director
The Democratic governor said he was “excited” by Trump’s nomination, despite Polis touting the day before the creation of the Governors ...
Obesity rates in America are plateauing but skepticism remains that it is a sustainable trend
According to the CDC, as of August 2023, 40.3 percent of U.S. adults—some 100 million people—met the clinical definition for ...
Viewpoint: Ideological anti-race scientist claims ‘American tech money is fueling a resurgence or ‘race science’
“Civilisation is going to pieces … if we don’t look out the white race will be – will be utterly ...
Inside the ‘minds’ of AI companions: Uncensored programs bring mimic human-like conversations
In September, OpenAI unveiled an ambitious new language model capable of working through challenging problems with a simulated kind of ...
Addiction: Yet another health problem Ozempic and other weight loss drugs might help address
[Dr. Steven Klein is an] addiction medicine fellow at the nonprofit Caron Treatment Centers’ residential treatment facility in Pennsylvania. He ...
A scientist’s brainy trip: How psilocybin creates an extraordinary new sense of space, time and self
In the name of science, Dr. Nico Dosenbach had scanned his own brain dozens of times. But this was the first time ...
Running and longevity: Sub-four-minute milers increase their lifespan by up to 9 years
In the mid-20th century, breaking the four-minute mile was considered an insurmountable feat. Then came Roger Bannister in 1954, who ...
Plasma exchange: What is the skinny on the suddenly-hot longevity therapy for the aging wealthy
A medical treatment used for health emergencies and autoimmune disorders is becoming the hot new wellness trend for CEOs, athletes, ...
Why we need a moonshot project for a universal flu vaccine
H5N1 bird flu is here. It’s moving from animals to people in ways not seen before. It’s spreading to new ...
‘Intelligence in a dish’: ‘Brain organoids’ grown on petri dishes show signs of developing eyes
The proto-eyes are what really disturbed me. For the past decade, medical researchers have been growing living, miniature replicas of ...
Liminal space: The brief moments between wake to sleep where your brain exists in the ‘twilight zone’
Each night as you lay down to sleep, you embark on an extraordinary journey – not through space, but through ...
Why do people who suffer from certain mental illnesses ‘hear voices’?
Auditory hallucinations are likely the result of abnormalities in two brain processes: a “broken” corollary discharge that fails to suppress ...
Viewpoint: A Trump revolution is coming to the Environmental Protection Agency. Here’s a guide to what might realistically happen
A return to the presidency by Donald Trump has raised questions about the future of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ...
In the evolutionary race, humans are running the distance
Many experts, such as professor Dan Lieberman, think that humans have evolved to be distance runners – the better to ...
Viewpoint: Vaccine opponent and conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. poised to remake US health policy in his twisted vision
The vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr. is “going to help make America healthy again”, Trump told ...
Why ‘peer review’ is no longer the gold standard for quality, objective science research
Today, I focus on the use and abuse of the peer-reviewed literature to produce tactical science which I define as: ...
Viewpoint: The alternative medicine, wellness industry con game
Alternative medicine has become a scrutiny-free wonderland for anything and everything. ... We are at a point in human history ...
‘Nature’s little alchemist: Microbes and the origin of life
A story about the origins of life in the cosmos starts at Earth’s equator, where Dian Fiantis, a professor of ...
The first neural bypass implant powered by AI has helped a patient recover from near-full-body paralysis
A New York man who was left paralyzed after a diving accident is starting to regain movement a year after ...
Swiss surgeons use a PlayStation controller to perform a remote endoscopy in Hong Kong
In a groundbreaking experiment, surgeons in Switzerland successfully performed an endoscopic procedure on a pig 5,780 miles away in Hong ...
Virtue over impact: Greens environmentalist policy likely to backfire
[There is] a particular kind of increasingly common environmental regulation: one that is short on impact but big on virtue ...
