(Axios) – Even states that made progress narrowing racial and ethnic health disparities have considerable gaps on access, outcomes and quality of care, a new Commonwealth Fund report finds. The big picture: Black and Native Americans are much likelier to die early from preventable illnesses than their white and Asian counterparts. (Read More) The post Racial Health Disparities Exist in Every State, New Report Says first appeared on bioethics.com ..read more

(Axios) – Declining confidence in major institutions is driving more people to trust their own ability to assess health information or turn to friends for guidance, indicates a new global Edelman Trust Barometer survey provided exclusively to Axios. Why it matters: Lack of trust in public health agencies, nonprofits and the media is emerging as an enduring legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has huge implications for how we respond to the next big disease threat or even manage our day-to-day health. (Read More) The post Exclusive: More Trust Themselves to Make Health Decisions first ap ..read more

(Wired) – It seems as though we’ve arrived at the moment in the AI hype cycle where no idea is too bonkers to launch. This week’s eyebrow-raising AI project is a new twist on the romantic chatbot—a mobile app called AngryGF, which offers its users the uniquely unpleasant experience of getting yelled at via messages from a fake person. Or, as cofounder Emilia Aviles explained in her original pitch: “It simulates scenarios where female partners are angry, prompting users to comfort their angry AI partners” through a “gamified approach.” The idea is to teach communication skills by simulating a ..read more

(New York Times) – The W.H.O.’s previous stance was that only a handful of pathogens — those that travel in small droplets and spread across long distances, like tuberculosis — could be considered airborne. But the new report suggests broader categories that do not rely on droplet size or distance spread. Such changes were contentious because they raised the prospect that more diseases might now demand costly control measures, such as hospital isolation rooms and protective gear. (Read More) The post W.H.O Broadens Definition of Airborne Diseases first appeared on bioethics.com ..read more

(New York Times) – Nearly 1.5 million teenage girls in some of the world’s poorest countries will miss the chance to be protected from cervical cancer because the drugmaker Merck has said it will not be able to deliver millions of promised doses of the HPV vaccine this year. (Read More) The post Millions of Girls in Africa Will Miss HPV Shots After Merck Production Problem first appeared on bioethics.com ..read more

(The Verge) – It’s alive! A day after announcing it was retiring Atlas, its hydraulic robot, Boston Dynamics has introduced a new, all-electric version of its humanoid machine. The next-generation Atlas robot is designed to offer a far greater range of movement than its predecessor. Boston Dynamics wanted the new version to show that Atlas can keep a humanoid form without limiting “how a bipedal robot can move.” The new version has been redesigned with swiveling joints that the company claims make it “uniquely capable of tackling dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks.” (Read More) The post Bost ..read more

(New York Times) – With the advent of consumer neurotechnologies, the data being collected is becoming ever more intimate. One headband serves as a personal meditation coach by monitoring the user’s brain activity. Another purports to help treat anxiety and symptoms of depression. Another reads and interprets brain signals while the user scrolls through dating apps, presumably to provide better matches. (“‘Listen to your heart’ is not enough,” the manufacturer says on its website.) The companies behind such technologies have access to the records of the users’ brain activity — the electrical ..read more

(The Atlantic) – “It really is a game changer,” says Steve Devine, the chief medical officer of the nonprofit NMDP, which runs the U.S. donor registry and has led research into the use of mismatched donors. Today, agonizing searches for a matched donor are largely a thing of the past. The drug powering this breakthrough is actually very old. Cyclophosphamide was first developed in the 1950s for chemotherapy. Fifty years later, researchers at Johns Hopkins began studying whether it could be repurposed to prevent a common and sometimes deadly complication of bone-marrow transplants called graf ..read more

(The Verge) – Meta is launching a new hub for Quest headsets later this year that should make it easier for educators to use them in schools. In a blog post on Monday, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, writes that the hub will let teachers access “education-specific apps and features,” along with tools to manage all Quest headsets in the classroom. (Read More) The post Meta Is Making It Easier to Bring Quest Headsets Into the Classroom first appeared on bioethics.com ..read more

(Reuters) – U.S. employers’ obligation to accommodate workers’ pregnancies also extends to abortions and the use of contraception, the U.S. agency that enforces workplace discrimination laws said on Monday. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) unveiled a rule to implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a law that Congress passed with bipartisan support and the backing of major business groups in 2022. (Read More) The post US Employers Must Accommodate Abortions, Birth Control, Agency Says first appeared on bioethics.com ..read more