science

‘We’re not trying to create a mind in a dish’

Business Wire via AP

Two years ago, Lena Smirnova and her colleagues coined the term “organoid intelligence,” arguing that brain organoids — artificial mini-brains made in a lab from stem cells — could be capable of learning, classification, and control. The lab’s work has taken them a step in that direction this year, after they found the organoids are able to do things that resemble the biological building blocks of learning and memory. 

This isn’t a Frankenstein scenario, the researchers say. Rather, the goal is to better understand how the brain works, and how it reacts to drugs, toxins, or a genetic mutation. Another would be to leverage that cognitive function to build organoid-machine hybrids that could do the same work as the systems powering today’s AI boom, but without all the environmental carnage.

While the scientific community has been largely skeptical of the idea, lately, it’s started to gain some traction. Both the National Science Foundation and DARPA have invested millions of dollars in organoid-based biocomputing in recent years. And there are a handful of companies claiming to have built cell-based systems already capable of some form of intelligence. Read more from Megan about how the field might set limits for itself, and why an influx of attention might not be a good thing.

global health

A cervical cancer prevention milestone

A major international effort to increase access to the HPV vaccine has reached an important milestone, helping to protect 86 million girls in high-risk countries from cervical cancer, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, announced Sunday. The Geneva-based organization estimated that the expanded use of HPV vaccine will prevent 1.4 million deaths from cervical cancer in future.

The toll from cervical cancer is highest in lower-income countries, which often lack screening programs that can result in early detection and treatment programs that might avert deaths. Of the 350,000 cervical cancer deaths in 2022, 90% were in these countries.

The HPV vaccine is highly effective in preventing infection by the major strains of human papillomavirus that cause cervical cancer, but access to the vaccine in lower-income countries lagged behind more affluent regions. A campaign to increase access was launched in 2023 and has resulted in substantial increases in coverage, rising to 25% by the end of 2024 for all Gavi-supported countries, which is triple the 2022 coverage rate of 8%. — Helen Branswell 

policy

Intersex exceptions abound in trans health bans

When Emory Hufbauer was a baby, doctors performed an operation that Hufbauer describes generally as one that took away their fertility and their ability to produce their own hormones; they also describe it emphatically as intersex genital mutilation. It was the first of a series of medical interventions they received growing up in order to organize their body more neatly into a gender binary.

There isn’t formal legislation in the U.S. focused on intersex people. But between 2021 and 2024, more than two dozen states passed bans on gender-affirming care like surgery and hormones for transgender minors. In each state, the law makes an explicit exception for treatment and procedures for intersex youth. I wrote on Friday about how intersex people, advocates, and bioethicists interpret this apparent inconsistency. Read more.