Health Archives - Attention to the Unseen

Bird flu is raging on a mink farm. It could spark a human pandemic, experts say, but officials won’t act

From elsewhere — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:35:59 +0000

ProPublica reports: The strain of bird flu that’s ripped through American barns for the last four years has killed two people who caught it from sick animals. But as far as anyone can tell, humans can’t spread it. The virus has remained a true “bird” flu, tailored to attach to avian cells, not invade human throats and noses, where coughing and sneezing reliably spew droplets. Under the right conditions, however, that could change. A single mutation could give the bird...

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Start-up claims to use AI-created phage viruses to treat a patient

From elsewhere — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:04:49 +0000

The New York Times reports: For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient. Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly bacterial infection. Phages attack bacteria, and the hope is that this one will kill the microbes causing the infection. Radical Numerics, the start-up that created the viruses, posted a technical report about them on its...

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Walking: Moving your body may help free your mind

From elsewhere — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 00:15:57 +0000

Richard Sima writes: What do Albert Einstein, Virginia Woolf, Stephen King, Henry David Thoreau and Friedrich Nietzsche have in common? They all credit walking as essential for helping their creative thinking. Though walking may seem mundane, it has many health benefits, including improving longevity and making your brain younger. Research also shows that walking helps people come up with an essential ingredient for creativity. “It really helps you generate ideas, novel ideas, original ideas,” said Alex Thabane, a researcher at...

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Was the human microbiome healthier in ancient times?

From elsewhere — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:35:07 +0000

The New York Times reports: The human microbiome — the trillions of microbes that live in our guts — was a stable ecosystem for tens of thousands of years before rapidly changing in industrialized countries, raising possible health concerns for modern people, scientists reported on Wednesday. In a study of Africans and South Americans, researchers identified more than 600 species of bacteria that may once have been common in the gut but are now rare or missing entirely from people...

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Palantir AI is making a mess of nurses’ schedules. They say it’s a safety issue

From elsewhere — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:06:08 +0000

Wired reports: Over the past four months, Amber Retzloff, a critical care nurse in Florida, requested to work 50 specific 12-hour shifts. But over half the time, she says her hospital’s Palantir-powered scheduling software assigned her to different shifts, often putting her on back-to-back-to-back days and leaving her mentally drained. Retzloff doesn’t expect to always get the slots she wants, but by her count the tool does a far worse job honoring her preferences than managers did when they assigned...

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A human gene lurks in a virus that causes skin infections

From elsewhere — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:06:53 +0000

The New York Times reports: Scientists have discovered a virus that is a tiny bit human, carrying a gene it stole from our ancestors about 100,000 years ago. And this virus may be using our own gene to infect us. Previous studies have demonstrated that viruses can pick up genes from their hosts. But the new discovery, reported Thursday in the journal Science, may be the first known instance of a virus with a human gene acquired in recent evolutionary...

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AI is pushing medical costs higher

From elsewhere — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 23:52:20 +0000

The New York Times reports: In the latest sign that artificial intelligence is fueling higher health care costs, a group of insurers released a report Thursday claiming that hospitals’ use of A.I. was responsible for nearly $1 billion in additional expenses over two years. Using codes for various medical conditions, hospitals submitted claims for tens of thousands of patients that described their illnesses as more complex in 2024 and 2025 than in 2023. Despite the added conditions, there was no...

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Death by AI data centers

From elsewhere — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:30:01 +0000

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang compared the impacts of AI data centers to having a surgery. "They’ve got to inflict an enormous amount of pain and suffering on you so that they can save you. And so I think AI’s kind of like that." pic.twitter.com/9jer8muLeJ — Pubity (@pubity) September 25, 2026 Dorothy Slater writes: My patient is throwing up when I enter the room. There are beads of sweat on her head; her brow is wrinkled with fear. I place a...

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AI staff complain of mental toll over fears of threat to society

From elsewhere — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:32:25 +0000

The Financial Times reports: Staff at world-leading AI companies and institutions are increasingly suffering from the mental strain of working on systems they fear could cause serious harm to society. Multiple staff at the United Kingdom’s AI Security Institute, the global leader in the independent testing of frontier AI models, have been signed off work with stress and are undergoing counselling, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The tight schedules for testing unreleased AI models and alarm over...

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Meta has accepted, for the first time, that much of its business model is unacceptable for children

From elsewhere — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 23:21:06 +0000

Nathaniel Lubin writes: For almost two decades, social-media companies have avoided legal consequences for the negative effects of exposure to their products. Damage to users’ mental health, the facilitation of crimes including sexual abuse—outcomes like these have been the subject of public protest, but were never successfully challenged through legal action. Then, about four years ago, prosecutors across America began to focus on companies’ business and design decisions, rather than, as they had in the past, on companies’ promotion of...

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