May 13, 2024
(Associated Press) – The first recipient of a genetically modified pig kidney transplant has died nearly two months after he underwent the procedure, his family and the hospital that performed the surgery said Saturday. Richard “Rick” Slayman had the transplant … Read More
May 10, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – A team led by scientists from Harvard and Google has created a 3D, nanoscale-resolution map of a single cubic millimeter of the human brain. Although the map covers just a fraction of the organ—a whole brain … Read More
May 10, 2024
(Nature) – After more than four years of deliberations, US officials have released a policy that outlines how federal funding agencies and research institutions must review and oversee biological experiments that could potentially be misused or spark a pandemic. The … Read More
May 10, 2024
(STAT News) – Twenty-seven years ago today, a 3-year-old boy in Hong Kong developed a sore throat, spiked a fever, and started to cough. Six days later, he was hospitalized; six days after that, he died of acute respiratory distress … Read More
May 10, 2024
(The New Yorker) – We are increasingly trading our privacy for a sense of security. Becoming a parent showed me how tempting, and how dangerous, that exchange can be. Shortly after I became pregnant with my second child, in the … Read More
May 9, 2024
(New York Times) – Artificial intelligence is giving machines the power to generate videos, write computer code and even carry on a conversation. It is also accelerating efforts to understand the human body and fight disease. On Wednesday, Google DeepMind, … Read More
May 9, 2024
(BBC) – A UK girl born deaf can now hear unaided, after a groundbreaking gene-therapy treatment. Opal Sandy was treated shortly before her first birthday – and six months on, can hear sounds as soft as a whisper and is … Read More
May 9, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Now, more hospitals and surgery centers are demanding patients pay in advance. Advance billing helps the facilities avoid hounding patients to settle up. Yet it is distressing patients who must come up with thousands of dollars … Read More
May 9, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Neuralink encountered a problem with the implant in its first human patient, Noland Arbaugh, that reduced the amount of data it could capture from his brain, according to a blog post the company published on Wednesday. … Read More
May 9, 2024
(Slate) – Having a baby via IVF first requires creating an embryo in a Petri dish. Embryonic testing can reveal secrets like genetic disorders. That allows it to serve as a screening tool for parents who carry genes for rare … Read More
May 9, 2024
(CNN) – Numerous women have shared stories of “Ozempic babies” on social media. But the joy some experience in discovering pregnancies may come with anxiety about the unknowns, as these medicines haven’t been studied in people who are pregnant. “We … Read More
May 9, 2024
(Axios) – Biosecurity experts say AI-driven “biosurveillance” could help spot the next pandemic or biological attack. The big picture: An initial surge of concern over the threat from AI-generated superbugs and bioweapons has begun to ebb as AI’s advantages in … Read More
May 9, 2024
(Axios) – Approximately 321,566 children in the U.S. lost a parent to drug overdose in the decade between 2011 and 2021, according to a new study. Why it matters: The findings underscore the human toll of the increase in drug … Read More
May 8, 2024
(Wired) – The White House has issued new rules aimed at companies that manufacture synthetic DNA after years of warnings that a pathogen made with mail-order genetic material could accidentally or intentionally spark the next pandemic. The rules, released on … Read More
May 8, 2024
(Associated Press) – The pharma giant AstraZeneca has requested that the European authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine be pulled, according to the EU medicines regulator. In an update on the European Medicines Agency’s website Wednesday, the regulator said that the … Read More
May 8, 2024
(Reuters via Yahoo!) – Google Deepmind has unveiled the third major version of its “AlphaFold” artificial intelligence model, designed to help scientists design drugs and target disease more effectively. In 2020, the company made a significant advance in molecular biology … Read More
May 8, 2024
(Bloomberg via Yahoo!) – It’s spreading rapidly among cows. It’s also infecting skunks, mountain lions and red foxes. Yet as the highly contagious avian flu affects mammals across the US, just one human case has been reported so far. But … Read More
May 8, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – AI is getting better at recognizing its own work. OpenAI on Tuesday is launching a new tool that can detect whether an image was created using the company’s text-to-image generator, DALL-E 3. OpenAI officials said that … Read More
May 8, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – There are plenty of people like Sun who want to use AI to preserve, animate, and interact with lost loved ones as they mourn and try to heal. The market is particularly strong in China, where … Read More
May 7, 2024
(BBC) – In Canada, people with a disability can have an assisted death, provided they feel they are suffering intolerably and their condition cannot be reversed. Carr has been a vocal opponent of assisted dying for more than a decade. … Read More
May 7, 2024
(Axios) – A new report calls on all levels of government to strengthen U.S. biodefense measures and urges policymakers to codify parts of a national strategy to address an array of biological threats. Why it matters: Threats in the form … Read More
May 7, 2024
(CNN) – Alzheimer’s disease may be inherited more often than previously known, according to a new study that paints a clearer picture of a gene long known to be linked to the common form of dementia. The authors of the … Read More
May 7, 2024
(The Atlantic) – When George Schappell came out as transgender in 2007, he joined a population at the center of medical and ethical controversy. Schappell was used to this. He had been born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1961 with … Read More
May 7, 2024
(The New Yorker) – So you’re on the spectrum, or you’ve got borderline personality disorder, or you’re a sociopath: once you’re sure that’s who you are, you’ve got a personal stake in a very creaky diagnostic system. The DSM as … Read More
May 7, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – The experiment, at the University of Florida, is an attempt to create a large animal starting only from stem cells—no egg, no sperm, and no conception. A week earlier, “synthetic embryos,” artificial structures created in a … Read More
