Genetic Testing Is A Hot New Benefit For Employees, But Researchers Say It Might Do More Harm Than Good

The New York Times: Employees Jump At Genetic Testing. Is That A Good Thing?
Levi Strauss & Company introduced a novel benefit for employees at its San Francisco headquarters last fall: free genetic screening to assess their hereditary risks for certain cancers and high cholesterol. Chip Bergh, Levi’s chief executive, said he had hoped that the tests would spur employees to take preventive health steps and in that way reduce the company’s health care costs. But even Mr. Bergh was surprised by the turnout. Of the 1,100 eligible Levi’s employees, more than half took the genetic tests. Now, he wants to extend the benefit to employees in other cities. (Singer, 4/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Why No One Wants To Back The Gun Of The Future
It was supposed to be the dawn of a new era of “smart guns.” Spurred by the deaths of 20 young children in the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, Silicon Valley set out to make safer, technologically advanced weapons that could only be fired by their owners. Venture-capital luminary Ron Conway, known for his early investments in Google and PayPal, led the charge, raising millions for grants aimed at jump-starting the smart-gun industry. (Elinson and Palazzolo, 4/14)

The New York Times: ‘We’re Out Of Options’: Doctors Battle Drug-Resistant Typhoid Outbreak
The first known epidemic of extensively drug-resistant typhoid is spreading through Pakistan, infecting at least 850 people in 14 districts since 2016, according to the National Institute of Health Islamabad. The typhoid strain, resistant to five types of antibiotics, is expected to disseminate globally, replacing weaker strains where they are endemic. Experts have identified only one remaining oral antibiotic — azithromycin — to combat it; one more genetic mutation could make typhoid untreatable in some areas. (Baumgaertner, 4/13)

The New York Times: Trillions Upon Trillions Of Viruses Fall From The Sky Each Day
High in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Spain, an international team of researchers set out four buckets to gather a shower of viruses falling from the sky. Scientists have surmised there is a stream of viruses circling the planet, above the planet’s weather systems but below the level of airline travel. Very little is known about this realm, and that’s why the number of deposited viruses stunned the team in Spain. Each day, they calculated, some 800 million viruses cascade onto every square meter of the planet. (Robbins, 4/13)

NPR: Doctors Keep Hypertension Patients Honest With A Drug Test
There's an irony at the heart of the treatment of high blood pressure. The malady itself often has no symptoms, yet the medicines to treat it — and to prevent a stroke or heart attack later — can make people feel crummy. "It's not that you don't want to take it, because you know it's going to help you. But it's the getting used to it," says Sharon Fulson, a customer service representative from Nashville, Tenn., who is trying to monitor and control her hypertension. (Farmer, 4/16)

Los Angeles Times: Too Much Sitting May Thin The Part Of Your Brain That's Important For Memory, Study Suggests
If you want to take a good stroll down memory lane, new research suggests you'd better get out of that chair more often. In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers have found that in people middle-aged and older, a brain structure that is key to learning and memory is plumpest in those who spend the most time standing up and moving. At every age, prolonged sitters show less thickness in the medial temporal lobe and the subregions that make it up, the study found. (Healy, 4/13)

The Wall Street Journal: The Benefits Of Bright Light For Hospital Patients
Some hospitals and nursing homes are seeing the light—and rethinking the dim glow that illuminates most patients’ rooms. Once an afterthought, lighting is getting attention as researchers see how it affects a person’s mood, energy and sleep. A clinical trial at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City is testing whether brighter lights in cancer patients’ rooms in the morning can make them feel less tired and depressed and help them sleep through the night. (Lagnado, 4/14)

The Washington Post: Birth Control Ban Imagined In Art Exhibition
Remember the early 2000s, when the United States passed laws banning condoms and the pill, and sex was officially designated for reproductive purposes only? Of course you don’t — it never happened. But a new art exhibition in New York imagines what life would be like if it had. “Museum of Banned Objects,” at the Ace Hotel New York Gallery through April 30 (continuing online after that), looks at the history of “The Ban” from the vantage point of a dystopian future. The law — sweeping legislation in which all reproductive-health products and contraceptives were made illegal — took birth control underground. (Blakemore, 4/14)

The Washington Post: Marriage Researchers Explain How Marriage And Intimate Relationships Affect Your Health
Is hostility in your marriage stressing or depressing you? Does your partner have a chronic disorder? Then watch out. Although married people generally have better health than others, studies have found, partners in these two situations can face an increased risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease. Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser, director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University, and Stephanie J. Wilson, a postdoctoral researcher in her lab, study — and explain here — the health effects of intimate relationships. (Rusting, 4/15)

Kaiser Health News: ‘Scary’ Lung Disease Now Afflicts More Women Than Men In U.S.
Joan Cousins was among a generation of young women who heard — and bought into the idea — that puffing on a cigarette was sophisticated, modern, even liberating. No one suspected it would make them more than equal to men in suffering a choking, life-shortening lung disease. “Everybody smoked. It was the cool thing to do,” said Cousins, who smoked her first cigarette 67 years ago at age 16. (Gorman, 4/16)

The New York Times: You Share Everything With Your Bestie. Even Brain Waves.
A friend will help you move, goes an old saying, while a good friend will help you move a body. And why not? Moral qualms aside, that good friend would likely agree the victim was an intolerable jerk who had it coming and, jeez, you shouldn’t have done this but where do you keep the shovel? Researchers have long known that people choose friends who are much like themselves in a wide array of characteristics: of a similar age, race, religion, socioeconomic status, educational level, political leaning, pulchritude rating, even handgrip strength. The impulse toward homophily, toward bonding with others who are the least other possible, is found among traditional hunter-gatherer groups and advanced capitalist societies alike. (Angier, 4/16)

The New York Times: Friendship’s Dark Side: ‘We Need A Common Enemy’
As a rule, friendship is considered an unalloyed good, one of life’s happy-happies, like flowers and fresh fruit. “Report: It Would Probably Be Nice Having Friends,” read a recent headline in The Onion. Ha ha! Of course it’s “kind of fun” and “pretty cool” to “have a few select people in your life to do stuff with on a regular basis.” Most people can name at least half a dozen people they view as reasonably good friends. The only society where people don’t have any friends, according to Daniel Hruschka, an evolutionary anthropologist at Arizona State University, is found in the science fiction of C.J. Cherryh’s “Foreigner” series. (Angier, 4/16)