American start-up Heliospect Genomics is charging wealthy parents-to-be up to $50,000 to screen their embryos for IQ and other desirable traits.

Wish you could ensure your unborn child has a higher-than-average IQ? Well, apparently now you can, with the help of genetic enhancement technology. This is controversial territory, as it tends to normalize the idea of superior” and “inferior” humans,, but according to undercover video footage obtained by the campaign group Hope Not Hate, at least one genomic prediction company has begun selling its services to parents who can afford them. Heliospect Genomics has apparently already offered its services to over a dozen parents undergoing in-vitro fertilization, charging them up to $50,000 to screen 100 embryos for IQ and other traits and boasting that their technology could help select children with IQ scores six points higher than those conceived naturally.

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Doctors at a hospital in New Delhi, India, were shocked to find a live 3-centimeter cockroach in the small intestine of a patient complaining of stomach ache and indigestion.

A 23-year-old man recently came to the Fortis Hospital, Vasal Kunj, to complain about stomach problems that he had been experiencing for about three days. He complained of severe abdominal pain, and difficulty in digesting food which resulted in frequent bloating. The man had consumed street food at a night market a few days prior and suspected that to be the cause of his health problems. Doctors decided that the best course of action was to conduct an Upper Gastrointestinal (GI) Endoscopy, a procedure that examines the upper part of the gastrointestinal tract, to hopefully discover the cause of the man’s symptoms. What they certainly didn’t expect to find was a live cockroach chilling in the man’s small intestine.

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A 13-year-old Chinese boy was diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis, a life-threatening condition, after being asked to do 1,000 squats as punishment during summer camp.

Ms. Lu, a mother-of-one from Jining, in China’s Shandong Province, recently revealed the tragic story of how her teenage son suffered a corporeal punishment that threatened to leave him disabled for life. It all happened last summer when the boy was enrolled in a 7-day camp where he could interact with other kids and engage in physical activities. Everything was fine until graduation day when the parents received pictures from the ceremony in which their son had visibly red eyes and a sad expression. His father noticed that one of the boy’s legs appeared limp, but when they asked the camp organizers about him, they were told everything was alright. It was only when they went to pick him up that they realized the seriousness of the situation. Their 13-year-old boy was waiting for them on a stool because he could barely stand up.

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A Chinese man who frequently used a massage gun on his face and eyes had to undergo surgery after suffering lens dislocation and developing cataracts at the age of 42.

Mr. Luo, a fitness enthusiast from Wuhan, in Central China, purchased a battery-powered massage gun at the recommendation of a fitness instructor who told him it would work wonders on his tired muscles. After hitting the gym every two days, Luo was looking for a way to relax, and the massage gun proved incredibly effective. So much so that at one point, the 42-year-old man decided to use it on his eyes as well. Due to his busy work schedule, Luo’s eyes always felt tired and dry, so he thought that the massage gun would have the same effect on his eyes as it did on his muscles. He was wrong!

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A 36-year-old Thai man who admitted to having only a Grade 9 education has been arrested for performing penis enlargement procedures for 20 years without a medical license.

Kittikorn Songsri, a 36-year-old man from the city of Samut Sakhon, in Central Thailand, was arrested last week following a sting operation at a townhouse where he had been conducting various penis enlargement procedures over the last two decades. Songsri admitted to advertising his services via social media and operating on at least two or three patients every month, despite having no medical training or license. He told police that he had taught himself how to do implants when he was 14, and he had been doing it ever since. Unfortunately, he was reported to the authorities by a disgruntled patient who suffered a serious infection following a silicone infection.

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A Japanese acupuncture clinic has gone viral for the large number of needles it sticks into patients to help cure them of physical and spiritual ailments.

Acupuncture has been around for thousands of years, but practitioners often develop their own techniques in order to stand out from the competition. One such example is the Shirakawa acupuncture clinic in Tokyo, Japan, which relies on a large number of needles inserted in various parts of the body including the face, to relieve patients of all sorts of ailments, from muscle stiffness to bad luck and even possession by evil spirits. The clinic reportedly charges upwards of 200,000 yen ($1,400) per session and is very popular with Japanese celebrities and athletes.

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A Chinese man who felt something crawling up his nose one night experienced particularly bad breath for three days before discovering he had a cockroach stuck in his trachea.

A 58-year-old man in Haikou, China’s Hainan Province, recently experienced an entomophobe’s worst nightmare. One night, as he was sleeping, he woke up with a strange sensation that something was crawling up his nose. Then he felt something go down his throat, so he started coughing, but nothing came out so he just went back to sleep. The following day, he put the whole incident to the back of his mind and just went about his business until he realized he had particularly bad breath. Even after three days, his breath still smelled disgusting, and he also started coughing up yellow sputum, so he decided to seek medical help.

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An Austrian neurosurgeon is currently under investigation for allegedly allowing her 13-year-old daughter to drill a hole in a patient’s skull during a brain operation.

In January of this year, a 33-year-old man had to be flown to the University Hospital Graz, in the Austrian city of Graz, following a serious accident in a forest that left him with head trauma. The female neurosurgeon on call, whose name has not been made public to protect her privacy, allegedly allowed her 13-year-old daughter to not only sin in on the procedure but actually drill a hole into the unconscious patient’s skull. Luckily, the operation was a success and the injured man was able to go back to leading a normal life. No one outside the operation room knew about the young girl’s active role in the procedure, but the cat was let out of the bag in July when an anonymous complaint was lodged with the public prosecutor’s office in Graz about the minor’s involvement.

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A Chinese woman suffered vision problems and subsequent depression following a botched double eyelid surgery in which her eyeball was accidentally sewn to the corner of her eye.

In 2021, Ms. Zhang, a woman from Weifang, in China’s Shandong Province, underwent a double eyelid surgery at the Weifang Kuiwen Lirendu Medical Beauty Clinic to correct an unevenness of the corners of her eyes. The woman claims that she felt discomfort during the actual surgery but pushed through it only to discover that her left eyeball and the corner of that eye had been stitched together. At first, the doctor who operated on her told her that everything was fine, but then Zhang started experiencing blurry vision and limited eye movement, and despite attempts to correct the damage, she is still struggling with physical and mental issues more than two years after the procedure.

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A Chinese man needed to have his left eyeball surgically removed to prevent a bacterial infection from reaching his brain after swatting a drain fly on his face.

Flies can be very annoying during the summer months. They fly around our sweaty bodies, landing on our heads and faces, but while the first instinct is to smack them dead right then and there, doctors advise against it, and for good reason. Flies carry dangerous bacteria and swatting them on our skin leaves us exposed to some very serious consequences. Take this man from Shenzen, China, who recently lost his left eye after swatting a small fly on his face and suffering a bacterial infection that doctors couldn’t treat.

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Koi Pla, a popular traditional dish consumed in Thailand and Laos is said to be responsible for the deaths of around 20,000 people every year.

Considered a salad by the Lao people of Laos and Thailand’s Isaan region, Koi Pla consists of minced raw fish, lemon juice, herbs, and spices. As you might have guessed, the fish is the problematic ingredient in this dish, although technically, it’s the parasites living in the fish. Koi Pla is most commonly made with raw freshwater fish from the Mekong basin which are often infested with parasitic flatworms known as live flukes. These parasites have long been known to cause one of the most aggressive types of cancer known to man, cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer, which causes the deaths of around 20,000 people in Thailand alone.

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A Russian man who had experienced pain and discomfort under his ribs for the last nine years was shocked to discover that he had a 9 cm glass shard embedded in his liver.

The 53-year-old unnamed man told doctors at the Kirov Regional Clinical Hospital, in Russia, that he had long experienced sharp pain and discomfort on the right side of his body, under his ribs, but he never bothered getting it checked out. After finally deciding to seek medical help for his problem, he underwent a CT scan which revealed a sharp object stuck in the right lobe of his liver. When doctors asked what the object might be, the patient told them that he had no idea, as he had no history of trauma, nor could he remember an incident where a sharp object could have entered his body. After operating on the man laparoscopically, surgeons removed a 9-cm-long glass shard from his liver.

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35-year-old Brandon Miles May has been making a name for himself in the online anti-aging community because of his unusually youthful looks which he attributes to a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

Looking at Brandon Miles May for the first time, you’d probably mistake him for a teenager, but he is 35 years old. We’ve seen such shocking discrepancies between age and appearance before, but it was usually due to some rare hormonal disorder. In Brandon’s case, he never mentioned such a condition in any of his TikTok videos, instead attributing his incredibly youthful looks to his anti-aging regimen, which includes a balanced diet, minimal sun exposure, and at least eight hours of sleep per night.

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In one of the world’s few medically documented cases, a Philadelphia man was stung by a bee directly in the eyeball and had to endure some serious consequences.

Most people dread the idea of getting stung by a bee anywhere on their bodies but imagine having one of those buzzers piercing your eyeball with its stinger as you’re casually strolling about. Unfortunately, that was the experience of a very unlucky 55-year-old Philadelphia man who reported to the emergency room with severely deteriorated vision and pain in his right eye after being stung by a bee in the eyeball two days prior. The patient told doctors that he had gone to the hospital immediately after getting stung, and doctors there had extracted the bee stinger and sent him on his way. Only it turned out that they hadn’t done that good of a job and a piece of the stinger remained embedded into the man’s eyeball.

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Researchers at the University of California recently created a self-powered throat patch that uses machine learning to translate muscle movements into speech, helping people to speak without vocal cords.

Jun Chen, an assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, came up with the idea for a non-invasive speech-enabling device after feeling his vocal cords get tired as a result of lecturing for several hours at a time. He began thinking of ways of helping a person speak without using their vocal cords, and with the help of his colleagues at the University of California, he designed an innovative patch that sticks to the user’s throat and uses AI technology to decode their muscle movements into speech. The lightweight device is resistant to skin sweat and also harnesses the user’s muscle movements to generate electricity, which means that it doesn’t require a battery to operate.

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