The knowledge and infrastructure needed to engineer a pandemic pathogen, once confined to a handful of elite military and civilian research institutions, are quietly becoming more accessible.

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With the NFL pre-season well under way, I can't help thinking about the incremental neurological damage that's being inflicted on the players with each vicious tackle and violent collision. The damage --Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease better known as CTE -- has often been decades in the making.

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Apologies for the outdated affiliation on the version sent previously!

A booming wellness market has formed around peptides—mini-proteins that affect various processes inside the body. They help regulate hunger, blood sugar, inflammation, tissue repair, sleep and hormone release, among other bodily functions. Synthetic versions are sold as injections, pills, nasal sprays and creams. Some, including insulin and GLP-1 drugs, have been rigorously tested and approved by the FDA and are sold by prescription. But many wellness peptides lack credible evidence of safety or effectiveness, yet are available online.

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Every transformative technology has its prophets of doom. AI is just the latest to draw them out.

In the early 1800s, the "Luddites," followers of the possibly mythical Ned Ludd, smashed textile machinery, convinced that destroying the new technology would save their livelihoods. They weren't entirely misguided: Mechanized looms did largely displace artisans. But they were wrong about everything else. History doesn't remember the Luddites for foreseeing the future; it remembers them for mistaking sabotage for a strategy.

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The United States once defeated a ravenous, parasitic fly with mass releases of sterile insects. A genetically engineered strain could strengthen that defense, while CRISPR gene drives remain a more contentious possibility.

The flesh-eating New World screwworm (NWS)—a parasitic fly whose maggots feed on the living tissues of warm-blooded animals—has returned to the United States, creating a challenging agricultural biosecurity emergency across the ranchlands, border corridors, and wildlife habitat of Texas and New Mexico.

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