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.
Public health advocates turn to influencers to fight online misinformation
Scroll. “Five essential questions that you must ask your surgeon prior to any operation.” Click. “Yesterday, I posted a picture ...
With X and other platforms retreating from fact-checking, can AI fill the void?
Misinformation is increasingly spread with single clicks, bots, and artificial intelligence (AI) deepfakes. AI-generated images and videos share fake treatments, ...
The Trump-trolling AI meme creator that’s taken social media by storm
Minutes after President Donald Trump announced that he would not wipe out “a whole civilization” ..., a team of self-described young ...
Swim club: Expensive male fertility supplements are all the rage
SwimClub, a new male fertility-supplement company, markets to both men and women. “You can’t out-ovulate bad sperm,” reads one ad ...
Viewpoint: CRISPR and mRNA — under attack by technology skeptics — poised to save millions of children with rare diseases
We call them rare diseases, but there is nothing rare about the suffering they cause. Some 25 million Americans, nearly ...
Viewpoint: MAGA support for the Iranian War was already fraying — Trump blew it up
From its start, the Iran war has divided prominent MAGA figures, with many supporting the president’s military push and others arguing ...
Fearing MAHA, Trump administration slows approval of safer types of PFAS and other critical chemicals
The Environmental Protection Agency is sitting on dozens of approvals for uses of “forever chemicals” at the direction of Administrator Lee Zeldin, ...
Debunking 5 myths about renewable energy
Myth #1 Renewable energy is unreliable. There will always be days when clouds cover the sun or the wind is ...
Health misinformation is exploding online — and government and health groups shoulder some of the blame
In the new study, published in JAMA Network Open, researchers scrutinized advertising revenue from 11 news sites flagged for spreading health misinformation, including ...
Release of CDC study concluding Covid vaccines dramatically cut hospitalizations blocked by RFK. Jr.
The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delayed publication of a CDC report [scheduled for ...
Bixonimania: The fake disease scam that AI swallowed whole
Bixonimania didn’t exist before 15 March 2024, when two blog posts about it appeared on the website Medium. Then, on ...
Trump claims windmills kill birds. Here are the facts.
When wind or solar energy projects apply for permits at county councils and zoning commissions across the United States, supporters ...
RFK, Jr. rewrites rules for CDC vaccine advisory panel to reinstate anti-vaccine activists, circumventing court ruling
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has approved changes to rules that govern an expert group ...
Viewpoint: ‘Exposing lies’’ or manufacturing them? RFK Jr.’s new podcast alarms health experts
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a new podcast that he says will begin “a new era of radical ...
Will the MAHA movement save the GOP this fall — or help bury it? This man may be key
Tony Lyons knows how Republicans can win the midterm elections later this year. All they need to do, as he ...
Viewpoint: Challenging anti-fracking ‘scare tactics’ and disinformation
Ohio’s environmental groups are on a losing streak. They can’t seem to get anyone in the legislature to agree with ...
Trump demands access to Africa’s rare minerals as price to fund efforts to battle AIDs
Since its inception in 2003, PEPFAR [U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief] has helped provide anti-HIV medicine to more than 20 ...
Red-light therapy: Breakthrough or junk science?
Experts warn that there is considerable hype about red-light therapy. But a growing body of legitimate science has been exploring ...
STOMP—Scientists skeptical of RFK, Jr.’s dubious crusade on microplastics
The Trump administration is going after microplastics in drinking water. A new plan to study and regulate plastic pollution was announced ...
Trump science funding cuts sending scientists abroad
[T]he Partnership for Public Service, [a] nonpartisan organization in Washington, estimated that 95,000 employees had departed federal science agencies from September 2024 ...
Google and search engines opened the door to online misinformation. AI could help address that.
The democratic nature of digital media initially inspired utopian hopes. It promised to expose the blind spots of cultural elites, ...
Viewpoint: The religion of vaccine hesitancy
One of the biggest modern American medical stories has been the rise of vaccine hesitancy. From the decline in childhood ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr.-founded Children’s Health Defense false claims long-dead belief that wireless radiation causes health problems
Dire warnings about the dangers of wireless technology have been around for as long as the technology itself, and they ...
AI with human feelings? Anthropic’s Claude edges closer
... A new study from Anthropic suggests models have digital representations of human emotions like happiness, sadness, joy, and fear, ...
Bulldozing science: As America slips, China is overtaking U.S. as superpower
The Trump administration has taken a bulldozer to science funding over the last year and change, wiping out more than 7,800 research ...
‘Tech bro hype’ vs. serious science: The inside story on Colossal’s attempt to create a real-life Jurassic Park
Can and should we resurrect animal species that have been extinct for thousands of years? Such weighty, existential questions were ...
Social media sharing: Americans are caught in a health and science ‘misinformation paradox’
The Harris Poll announced the results from a landmark survey, "Science Under Siege: The Battle Between Viral Misinformation and Shared ...
