A couple of highlights from around the web that made it into our feeds this week.
A Family Doctor’s Search for Salvation
How do you live after doing the unthinkable? That question sits quietly at the heart of this extraordinary profile of Dr. Greg Gulbransen, a Long Island pediatrician who accidentally killed his two-year-old son, Cameron, by backing over him in 2002. Rather than turning inward, Gulbransen spent the next two decades turning outward: lobbying Congress to make backup cameras mandatory, documenting survivors of gun violence in the Bronx, showing up for addicts, for grieving parents, for anyone he could help. We see how medicine and meaning intertwine when a physician’s own grief becomes a lifelong act of service.
Your Genes Are Simply Not Enough to Explain How Smart You Are
Charles Murray once bet that by 2025 we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence. Psychologist Eric Turkheimer writes that we don’t—and maybe never will. As genome studies grow, the dream of isolating “IQ genes” has only shown how entangled intelligence is with environment, privilege, and chance. What’s left is a humbling reminder: science can measure almost everything except what makes us human.
Chinese Surgeons Perform First Pig-to-Human Liver Transplant
Chinese surgeons have transplanted a genetically modified pig liver into a human for the first time, into a 71-year-old man with advanced liver cancer and cirrhosis. The porcine lobe functioned for 38 days before removal, giving his remaining liver time to regenerate. Though the patient later died, the case marks a historic step toward temporary “bridge” transplants that could sustain patients until human donor organs become available. Just a glimpse of what will likely be a new era in transplant medicine.
Kids who use social media score lower on reading and memory tests, a study shows
A new study published in JAMA finds that preteens who spend more time on social media score lower on reading, vocabulary, and memory tests than those who use little or none. Even an hour a day by age 13 was linked to measurable drops in cognition, suggesting a “dosage effect” of small but compounding differences could widen over time. As researchers call for age limits and schools debate phone bans, the question grows sharper: what are kids’ developing brains being trained to focus on?
Related:
- From Pig to Patient: How Columbia Researchers Are Bringing Xenotransplantation Closer to Reality
- One Living Donation Saves Three Lives: NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia Performs the First Domino Split-Liver Transplant in Adults in the U.S.
- Living Drugs and Rewriting Immunity: A Conversation with CAR T-Cell Pioneer Michel Sadelain