Quiz / interactive
Hype or Real?
Health headlines love a miracle and a menace in equal measure. Some of the most hyped ideas are genuinely real; some real-sounding claims are myths. Read each claim, make your call, and see the evidence. The goal is not cynicism, it is calibration: knowing which breakthroughs to believe.
mRNA vaccines change your DNA.
Software approved by regulators already helps read medical scans.
A smartwatch can diagnose a heart attack.
Gene therapies have been approved to treat some inherited diseases.
CRISPR is routinely used to create custom "designer babies".
Remote video consultations are now a normal part of healthcare.
A single blood test can reliably screen for all cancers today.
AI will cure cancer within a couple of years.
Some cancer treatments are already matched to a tumour genetic profile.
Wearable data means you no longer need medical check-ups.
Sources
- Understanding How COVID-19 Vaccines Work US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Software as a Medical Device US Food and Drug Administration
- Wearable devices and heart health American Heart Association
- What is Gene Therapy? US Food and Drug Administration
- Human genome editing: recommendations World Health Organization, 2021
- Consolidated telemedicine implementation guide World Health Organization, 2022
- Screening Tests: Multi-cancer detection tests US National Cancer Institute
- Ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health World Health Organization, 2024
- Precision Medicine US National Human Genome Research Institute
Last reviewed: 2026-07-17
Want the background first?
The innovation explainers and the health-tech timeline cover the technologies behind these claims, in plain language and with sources.