Under the new bill, treatments will only need to have passed preliminary phase I trials (which tend to involve 20-100 people) before they can be made accessible.

Biothicists and legal scholars are concerned about the ethics of selling unproven drugs - and worry that people could get hurt.

The bill essentially expands Right to Try, a law designed for terminally ill people. But was developed and lobbied for by people interested in longevity.

The idea is to let people experiment with potentially lifespan-extending drugs.

Thank you so much to Jules and Joyce, and to their partners Maria and Paul, for taking the time (and effort) to share their incredible stories.

In Italy, people are not allowed to destroy or donate their embryos. Any "leftover" frozen embryos are stuck in storage, ostensibly forever.

I learned so much about the fascinating and murky status of embryos for this piece. Thank you to all sources. www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/13/1...

And it varies by country. In the UK, embryos can be stored for 55 years, as long as ppl renew their consent every 10 years. In the US, many clinics don't like to destroy embryos - they worry about bad press or legal action if the intended parents change their minds about using those embryos.

Scientific advances have helped us improve how we freeze and thaw embryos, and IVF success rates. But sticky social, religious, and legal factors mean we often don't know what to do with "leftover" embryos.

Some see them as people. Some see them as property. Many think they're somewhere in between

... and a man has died. The US is stockpiling 10 million vaccines and developing new ones. But, given the virus's spread in farms, a national population of 340 mn, vaccine hesitancy, and global vaccine inequity, are we as prepared as we should be?

www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/10/1...

As seen in this interesting paper about the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 by @michelleoyen.bsky.social and her colleagues

And that's pasteurized milk!

Americans, please don't drink raw milk.

“It’s surprising to me that we are totally fine with … our pasteurized milk products containing viral DNA,” virologist Seema Lakdawala told me. “We don’t know how much virus we need to ingest [to become infected], and whether any is going to slip through pasteurization.”