Kristen V. Brown

Mexico’s Molar City Could Transform My Smile. Did I Want It To? More than a thousand dentists have set up shop in Los Algodones. Their patients are mostly Americans who can’t afford the U.S.’s dental care.

My family went to the dentist in Mexico growing up, and honestly that was the best dentist I ever had

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

I recall the story of Dr. Thomas C. Rainbow, who in mid 1984 wrote an article for Isaac Asimov's magazine about how the current generation could live forever due to medical advancements expected in the next 20 years.

The December issue contained his obituary.

Bryan Johnson Is Going to Die Millions of dollars in treatments, supplements, and scans. Immortality through AI. Bryan Johnson’s longevity script has everything—except an ending.

"All of us are in a time and place where we will be immortal."

If immortality means reincarnation as AI, count me out!

@katie-drummond.bsky.social presses the (still mortal!) Bryan Johnson on his plans to live forever

www.wired.com/story/big-in...

The Quest for a Hangover-Free Buzz Startup GABA Labs is testing an additive that it says will take nonalcoholic drinks to the next level.

For @bloomberg.com Businessweek, I wrote about the man hunting for a hangover-free buzz, something that can deliver the fun bits of drinking without all the nonsense.

After decades of research and scrounging for funding, he says that they are finally close.

www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

I started to wonder whether there was something else that might do for me what alcohol did. This led me to David Nutt and GABA Labs, a company that is working to invent a brand new molecule that delivers the buzz of alcohol without all the nonsense.

When I took a break from drinking last fall, I realized that even as an occasional drinker, alcohol played a huge role in my life. Many of my close friendships were forged with the help of booze, as was my marriage. I missed the serendipity and mischief that can come along with a few glasses of wine

This is what we all need and want though!

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/d...

Yes. A balloon tamponade.

‘Dark proteins’ hiding in our cells could hold clues to cancer and other diseases The human genome encodes potentially thousands of tiny proteins that were previously overlooked. The search is on to find out what they do.

Yet again, the genome proves to be more complex than we'd ever imagined

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cookies is my family's love language and I only kicked my own sugar habit in my twenties when I lived in a country where I found all the desserts entirely disappointing. This @caity.bsky.social is a masterpiece and also entirely relatable

Worth noting: IVM has been around for a long time. Since the 90s! But the economics of the fertility industry (little federal research funding, PE-backed clinics, etc) has made it hard for anything that doesn't increase success rates (or revenue) to get funding.

A Less Brutal Alternative to IVF Fertility treatment doesn’t have to be so painful.

New scientific techniques are raising the possibility that an alternative to IVF could free thousands of aspiring mothers from brutal protocols, @kristenvbrown.bsky.social reports.

A Less Brutal Alternative to IVF Fertility treatment doesn’t have to be so painful.

IVF has gotten a lot better since the first IVF baby was born in 1978. What hasn't gotten better? How hard it is on women. But that could soon change. My story on how:

www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

2025 Oscar Nominations: See the Full List The movies competing for the 97th Academy Awards. The ceremony will air on March 2.

I guess I have to watch The Brutalist now

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/m...

How I Broke Through the Fertility Industry’s False Promises to Become a Mom at 44 - Ms. Magazine improving outcomes in IVF, assisted reproductive technology for Black and Brown and older women is the first step in fertility equality.

I hear a lot about IVF success rates for certain groups needing to improve but the reality is if you don’t have good eggs, IVF is not going to work no matter how good it is (with your own eggs anyway). In other words, there isn’t actually much room for improvement.

msmagazine.com/2025/01/16/i...

The Place Where I Grew Up Is Gone And so is the man who made it magical

@nancywalecki.bsky.social lost her neighbor to the Palisades Fire, she writes. He made her childhood neighborhood magical—now both are gone.

Not Many Meta Employees Will Have to Move to Texas After All Mark Zuckerberg said content moderation teams in California will relocate to Texas to help reduce bias. In practice, employees aren't expecting many forced relocations.

Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta's content moderation teams in California will relocate to Texas to reduce bias. In practice, the announcement appears to be more posturing than actual practice:

www.wired.com/story/not-ma...

I think whether they will be more reliable is still very much up for debate/hard to answer without 20 more years of data!

My favorite thing about this is that the husband knows his wife loves an AI, and is totally cool with it...

Aspiring Parents Have a New DNA Test to Obsess Over An emerging field of genetics promises to let parents choose the “healthiest” baby.

Aspiring parents are now turning to sophisticated—but suspect!—polygenic risk scores to help them pick the perfect "healthy" baby with the help of DNA testing and IVF

www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

I've written a lot about polygenic risk scores in DNA testing, which, for at least the time being, are regarded as largely unhelpful (at best). That's because these tests analyze many genes to predict risk of a condition. With our current knowledge of the genome, that's just tough to do.

It should not be understated that it is extremely weird that we know nothing about them

I think their booze wasn't quite as strong as ours!

Arrested by AI: Police ignore standards after facial recognition matches Confident in unproven facial recognition technology, sometimes investigators skip steps; at least eight Americans have been wrongfully arrested.

Christopher Gatlin spent 16 months in jail after being charged with assault in St. Louis. Another incident of police relying too heavily on facial recognition tech: www.washingtonpost.com/business/int...

Will MAHA add alcohol to its list of health foes? As health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could try to sidestep politics and start a new alcohol temperance movement.

As health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could try to sidestep politics and start a new alcohol temperance movement.

Prediction: in 10 years we're going to talk about alcohol like we now talk about cigarettes. I personally haven't drank anything since Halloween. All the mounting evidence that it's bad for you just killed the joy for me

Not Just Sober-Curious, but Neo-Temperate How sobriety went from a radical social movement to a tool of self-optimization

"Today’s temperance is focused on the transformation of self."

www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Ha! It’s a very old study

Maybe my first encounter with an exclamation point in a scientific publication

I think a lot about whether consumer DNA testing has done more harm or good. I think the answer to that probably comes down to individual experience—in my own family we've seen both the good (connecting with new fam) and the bad (revelations of family secrets).