HEALTH AND SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS

June 18, 2024 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

• Rare drug-resistant flu variant identified in the US, CDC says (CNN)
• New Recall Warning Issued for Eye Lubricants Sold at Walmart, CVS (WebMD)
• For Republicans, raw milk is the new masking (Salon)
• Lung Cancer Drug’s 'Off-the-Charts’ Results Give Patients Hope (WebMD)

SCIENCE AND TECH

• AI Systems Are Learning to Lie and Deceive, Scientists Find (Futurism)
• Top news app in US has Chinese origins and ‘writes fiction’ with the help of AI (Reuters)
• A Catholic organization built an AI priest. Here's what happened (CNN).

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

HEALTH

Rare drug-resistant flu variant identified in the US, CDC says (CNN)

... Cases of the “dual mutant” influenza variant were identified in 15 countries across five continents, including two cases in the US, according to a report published Wednesday in the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.

New Recall Warning Issued for Eye Lubricants Sold at Walmart, CVS (WebMD)

Four eye lubricant products, including some sold at Walmart and CVS, have been added to the growing list of potentially contaminated over-the-counter eye products made in India. 

For Republicans, raw milk is the new masking (Salon)

Consuming raw milk could lead to the spread of bird flu. Republicans don't care.

Lung Cancer Drug’s 'Off-the-Charts’ Results Give Patients Hope (WebMD)

... While 85% of all lung cancers are non-small-cell (NSCLC), just 3% to 5% of the these cancers are the ALK-positive kind. The prognosis has been especially grim, as it's common for the cancer to spread to the brain and survival is typically measured in months...In DeMara’s case, the cancer was already found in both lungs, his liver, bones, and brain. His doctors prescribed a targeted oral medication, lorlatinib (Lorbrena)...

SCIENCE AND TECH

AI Systems Are Learning to Lie and Deceive, Scientists Find (Futurism)

AI models are, apparently, getting better at lying on purpose. Two recent studies — one published this week in the journal PNAS and the other last month in the journal Patterns — reveal some jarring findings about large language models (LLMs) and their ability to lie to or deceive human observers on purpose...” GPT- 4, for instance, exhibits deceptive behavior in simple test scenarios 99.16% of the time”

Top news app in US has Chinese origins and ‘writes fiction’ with the help of AI (Reuters)

NewsBreak [is] a free app with roots in China that is the most downloaded news app in the United States…  Billing itself as "the go-to source for all things local," Newsbreak ... publishes licensed content from major media outlets, including Reuters, Fox, AP and CNN as well as some information obtained by scraping the internet for local news or press releases which it rewrites with the help of AI. It is only available in the U.S.  But in at least 40 instances since 2021, the app's use of AI tools affected the communities it strives to serve, with Newsbreak publishing erroneous stories; creating 10 stories from local news sites under fictitious bylines; and lifting content from its competitors...

A Catholic organization built an AI priest. Here's what happened (CNN).

A priest, running on AI, was trained on Catholic doctrine and meant to be a cutting-edge tool to answer questions about faith. The chatbot caught on quickly, but with unintended consequences. CNN's Jon Sarlin explores the rise (and rebirth) of Father Justin.