Human Genetics Features
The GLP tackles innovations in human genetics and biotechnology. We highlight the work of our own writers, as well as that of contributors from around the Web. The GLP does not take a position on genetics-related issues; any opinions expressed belong to the authors.
Categories include:
- CRISPR and gene editing
- Gene therapy
- Stem cell research
- Genetic diseases
- Synthetic biology
- Epigenetics
- Biodrugs (pharmacogenetics)
- Personal genomics
- Ancestry and evolution
- Ethics and regulations
How do you spot a liar? (Hint: Non-verbal cues don’t matter much)
Police thought that 17-year-old Marty Tankleff seemed too calm after finding his mother stabbed to death and his father mortally bludgeoned ...
Viewpoint: ‘War against the West’: Russia powers global vaccine rejectionist movement even as it inoculates its own citizens
Anyone active on social media is aware that there is a great deal of passionate but ill-founded opposition to vaccination, ...
Message to social media ‘prophets of doom’ Drs. Whistle Blower, Anti-Vaxx and Dangerfield: No, COVID vaccines aren’t dangerous and are incredibly effective
It’s hard to ignore the wave of anti-vaccine videos circulating on social media. Curiosity makes us click, and we watch ...
Playing victim: People who claim grievances more likely to lie and cheat, but victim status comes with evolutionary benefits
Victimhood is defined in negative terms: “the condition of having been hurt, damaged, or made to suffer.” Yet humans have ...
Podcast: If you get a COVID vaccine, you’re pro-GMO; 5G conspiracies; Lab-grown humans?
All the approved COVID-19 vaccines were developed with the help of genetic engineering. If we rely this technology to end ...
Should ‘race’ be abandoned as surrogate for population differences in medical research?
Race was originally introduced in US medical curricula in 1790 by Benjamin Rush, who asserted that blackness was a particular ...
Brain fog, fatigue and depression: Solving the mystery of Long Covid and what can be done about it
COVID-19 entered my home a year ago today when my 16-year-old daughter Molly first developed the tell-tale cough. By March ...
The mRNA vaccines battling COVID-19 are revolutionizing virus fighting strategies. Here’s how
British economist Thomas Babington Macaulay challenged a thread of pessimism writing in 1830: “On what principle is it that, when ...
Podcast: Giving nature a helping hand – how humans are shaping species
Dr Kat Arney explores the impact that humans have had on the evolutionary trajectories of the species we share the ...
Which offers more protection: Vaccination or natural immunity?
According to Sen. Rand Paul – an ophthalmologist, not an infectious disease specialist – natural immunity is better. While not ...
Viewpoint: Will 5G harm you? Activist groups succeed in stirring conspiracy health risk phobias, as New York State legislature prepares to debate ‘growing evidence’ of harm
Two bills were recently introduced in the New York State legislature (in the Assembly and in the Senate) to establish ...
Why some diseases confer lifelong immunity and others do not
Some diseases, like the measles, infect us once and usually grant us immunity for life. For others, like the flu, ...
Was the devout evangelical Christian who murdered 8 people in Atlanta suffering from ‘sex addiction’?
A 21-year-old white man is alleged to have entered three different spas in the greater Atlanta area on March 16 ...
About bats and COVID: Why the Wuhan ‘lab leak’ theory shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand, and other reflections one year into the crisis
Winston Churchill famously observed that in wartime the truth must be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies. Many of my ...
Viewpoint: Heard reports that dozens of environmental chemicals found in pregnant women pose health dangers? It’s junk science, and here’s why
Tracey Woodruff, PhD, MPH, of the University of California San Francisco, frequent collaborator of anti-vaccine activist and organic industry trade ...
Viewpoint: How a God-like superintelligent AI set free in the world could destroy us
The person in the photo that sits to the left of this paragraph does not exist. It was generated using Artificial ...
Can big data fight cancer by identifying those genetically predisposed to disease?
Present-day cancer care is reactive. When an individual begins to have symptoms of cancer, a tumor has typically already formed ...
Podcast: Are you a genetic superhero? Finding the hidden powers in our genes
Geneticist Dr Kat Arney explores the science behind so-called ‘genetic superheroes’, and why you might also have hidden powers within ...
Herd immunity is the key to controlling COVID. How many people need to get the vaccine?
It has been clear for a while that, at least in the U.S., the only way out of the coronavirus ...
Vasectomies are becoming a political statement
The fate of male reproductive organs is not a traditional concern in debates about the environment. But this is the ...
The Anti-Vaxx Playbook: Exposing the 5-step anti-vaxx conversion program escalating the COVID pandemic. Its proponents include Barbara Loe Fisher, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Sherri Tenpenny
The Anti-Vaxx Playbook is based on in-depth analysis of speeches and presentations by leading digital anti-vaccine advocates at a meeting ...
Using CRISPR to fight antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’
The superbugs are winning the antibiotics wars. CRISPR could turn the tide ...
‘We humans might never have evolved’: Chance is the central narrative of human evolution
Prince Hamlet spent a lot of time pondering the nature of chance and probability in William Shakespeare’s tragedy. In the ...
Cloned ferret Elizabeth Ann and the future of conservation: The promises and perils of biotechnology
From Borneo to Britain, it’s the scientific breakthrough that captured the world’s attention. No, not the Perseverance rover landing on ...
Anxious about getting a COVID vaccine because you don’t know what’s in it? We know a lot more about it than the safety of hot dogs
“So, you’ve been eatin’ hot dogs and chicken nuggets all your life and you don’t want the vaccine ‘cuz you ...
8 advocacy organizations and websites spreading misinformation about technology, chemicals, food and environmental risk
Are you worried about the environment and the 'proliferation of unnecessary chemicals'? Concerned that CRISPR and other forms of genetic ...
Fighting the next pandemic: Antibiotic resistance
If a two-year-old child living in poverty in India or Bangladesh gets sick with a common bacterial infection, there is ...
