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.
Should we edit our genes to make space travel safer?
Long-distance space travel can wreak havoc on human health. There’s radiation and microgravity to contend with, as well as the ...
5 signs of dementia besides memory loss
Memory loss is the most well-known symptom of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease. But experts say there are other warning signs ...
Anti-science conspiracy theorists and alternative medicine believers are fueling medical misinformation
Just recently, in casual conversation, someone commented ... that “they” already have a cure for cancer but are hiding it ...
Viewpoint: ‘Negative eugenics is gathering like a very dark storm—darker and more dangerous than at any time since the rise of Adolf Hitler’
An efflorescence of eugenic thinking ... is found among those who explore and develop new technologies that can alter the ...
What happens if your child has a rare disease and the drug that could treat it is too expensive?
When his infant son was diagnosed with a rare disease, a Canadian father was dismayed to discover there was no treatment ...
What separates human thinking from that of other animals and when did our uniqueness emerge?
The human mind is unlike any other. It’s the key that unlocked language, culture, abstract reasoning, long-term planning, and large-scale ...
Astronaut Frank Rubio made 5,963 circles of the Earth in more than a year of space travel. How did it effect him?
The record for a single trip into space currently stands at 437 days, but prolonged periods in orbit can alter ...
Infections can cause cancer? Yes, and here are four of them
Most cases of stomach cancer are caused by bacteria. A majority of cervical cancers, as well as some genital and ...
A single dose of psilocybin appears more effective than drugs in treating depression
A new study compares psilocybin — the active compound in magic mushrooms, with a common antidepressant medication. During 6 months ...
Wegovy and other GLP-1 drugs lowers the risk of heart attacks and strokes by 20% and could save 34,000 lives annually in the US
Clinical trial data from drugmaker Novo Nordisk showed that people using Wegovy had a 20% lower risk of a cardiac ...
Systemic racism hurts minorities in accessing human eggs and donors
"Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them," a new book by University of Alabama ...
Viewpoint: ‘Fake science’ and ‘conspiracy theories’ likely if Trump wins and appoints RFK, Jr. ‘health czar’
“I’m going to be deeply involved in helping to choose the people who can run F.D.A. and N.I.H. and C.D.C.,” ...
How Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” inspired today’s misplaced chemophobia and endangers public health
[C]hemophobia has roots in the heart of the modern environmental movement. [In] 1962, biologist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a book ...
Brain-tracking headphones can improve focus but they raise privacy concerns
Activity trackers have come a long way. No longer mere step-counters, they can monitor your heart rate, blood oxygen level, and ...
Viewpoint: What do social conservatives really believe about IVF?
[S]eemingly stung by Kamala Harris’s assertion that IVF treatments have been curtailed “under Donald Trump’s abortion bans,” the former Republican ...
In the age of gene therapy, what does ‘being cured’ mean?
Gene therapy comes with the expectation that it will “cure” an expanding number of genetic disorders. If you’ve never wondered ...
Do we need to regulate testosterone clinics?
Nowadays, men in their 40s ... are constantly being urged to get their testosterone levels checked, as private clinics and ...
Calorie dense beverages are exceeding what our bodies have evolved to handle
Humans started drinking the equivalent of very, very light beer 13,000 years ago. And we may have consumed milk from livestock as ...
Voice cracks and menstruation periods: What was maturation like for ancient teenagers
Landmark new research shows Ice Age teens from 25,000 years ago went through similar puberty stages as modern-day adolescents. In ...
Avian flu on US farms could remain forever. Here’s what that may mean for human health
Bird flu has been spreading in dairy cows in the US—and the scale of the spread is likely to be ...
Book excerpt: What’s the evolutionary role of the placenta, the only organ that humans shed completely
"Human evolution has occurred both due to, and in spite of, the placenta. Every pregnancy, unthinkingly, must navigate a careful ...
Can the delayed evolution of humans on Earth help explain why we have not been visited by aliens?
[T]he Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and life began about 4 billion years ago, yet humans—the only intelligent, technological ...
Viewpoint: ‘There is no solid evidence’: ADHD diagnoses are on the rise, but the science evidence suggests it’s probably a statistical artifact
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most commonly diagnosed neurodevelopment disorders and seems to be on the rise, in ...
COVID took a toll on teenage victims? Can we fix them?
Research has shown that the pandemic exacerbated teen mental health issues, as the lockdown severed connections between young people at the most critical ...
Why do many women develop postnatal depression? Brain scans can now help us understand
Pregnancy brain really does exist, according to one of the first detailed maps of human-brain changes before, during and after ...
Can chatbots be tailored to fight back against conspiracy theories?
[R]esearchers believe they’ve uncovered a new tool for combating false conspiracy theories: AI chatbots. Researchers from MIT Sloan and Cornell ...
The threat of biological conflict is rising. Are we prepared?
The coronavirus, [Roger Brent (professor of basic sciences), T. Greg McKelvey Jr. (adviser to the Rand think tank) and Jason ...
