Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
You really, really shouldn’t give your DNA to genomics companies like 23andMe or Ancestry. As the recent arrest of the Golden State Killer reminded us, these genetic databases are a goldmine for law enforcement. Catching serial killers isn’t bad, of course, but problems start to arise when, say, these genetic databases are used to target…
Home DNA test results from the 5 million customers of 23andMe will now be used by drug giant GlaxoSmithKline to design new drugs, the two companies announced Wednesday. It’s the biggest partnership yet aimed at leveraging the increasingly popular home genetic testing market, in which customers pay for mail-in saliva tests that are analyzed by…
A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate…
Donald Trump put a climate change denier as the head of the EPA. He pulled us out of the Paris Agreement on climate. He attacked our allies and supported our adversaries. And now the Trump administration—in the name of every American—has threatened Ecuador and other smaller countries over a World Health Organization resolution promoting the…
In the first few hours of a newborn’s life, doctors administer a vitamin K shot. This is because infants are born without enough of the vitamin, and the baby needs a boost to prevent any potential bleeding. This is a routine practice—ask your pediatrician, your obstetrician, or the CDC. “Babies are born with very low…
A new study has identified the hotspots of philosophical and religious vaccine exemptions: the paperwork that (in some states) you can fill out in lieu of getting your kindergartener vaccinated. Most are in rural areas, but 15 mid-size cities have a dangerous combination of a large population and a high rate of these exemptions. These…
Image: via AP. The Trump administration is expected to announce the implementation of a domestic gag rule on Friday, the New York Times reports. The domestic gag rule, which has been a top priority for anti-abortion conservatives in the administration, would prevent reproductive healthcare providers like Planned Parenthood from accessing Title X funds if they…
Horseshoe crabs are sometimes called “living fossils” because they have been around in some form for more than 450 million years. In this time, the Earth has gone through multiple major ice ages, a Great Dying, the formation and subsequent breaking up of Pangaea, and an asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs and most of…
If I get addicted to vaping, I thought, in March, I will always remember this Texas strip mall. I was walking out of a store called Smoke-N-Chill Novelties, in Southwest Austin, holding a receipt for $62.95 and two crisp, white shrink-wrapped boxes. I got into the driver’s seat of a rental car and began to…
Donated water bottles in Flint in 2016. Photo: AP If residents in Flint, Michigan, need some bottled water, they can’t rely on the state anymore. The city of nearly 100,000 is still reeling—nearly four years later—from a crisis that left residents (and their children) exposed to dangerous levels of lead in their water supply. However,…