The Center for Genetics and Society brings social justice and human rights to the center of public and policy discussions about human genetics and assisted reproduction.

Featured

Taking a closer look at recent reporting on gene-edited embryos

By Katie Hasson | 07.11.2026
Biopolitical Times

Media coverage of recent developments in embryo gene editing might seem to suggest that gene-edited babies are close to becoming a reality. As tech billionaires eager to profit off of techno-eugenics invest in “designer baby” technologies, attempts to normalize heritable genome editing – which remains unsafe and raises significant ethical and societal concerns – are especially dangerous. It’s worth taking a closer look at these developments and what they mean, in a way that pushes back on narratives normalizing the...

Genomics

Palantir Has a Hand in NIH’s Most Ambitious Health Initiative

By Julia Métraux, Mother Jones [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.07.2026

Aggregated News

During his 2015 State of the Union address, then-President Barack Obama announced what he promised would be an ambitious public health project. “Tonight, I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes...

U.S. Federal

Book Review: How to Rule the World

By Pete Shanks | 07.10.2026
Biopolitical Times

The title of this book is clever, not least because it is borrowed from a very secret society of a...

Patents & Other IP

‘I didn’t come here to get rich’: new research on the lives of Ukrainian women in Georgia’s surrogacy boom

By Olga Oleinikova, Medea Badashvili, and Polina Vlasenko, Guest Contributors | 04.23.2026
Biopolitical Times

“I didn’t come here to get rich. I came because I had no other way to keep my son safe...

Other Countries

Biopolitical Times

Reviews of Two Books Wrestling with Genomics

By Pete Shanks | 08.28.2026

What We Inherit by Sam Trejo and Daphne O. Martschenko; and Original Sin by Kathryn Paige Harden have a great...

Human Genetic Modification

Gene therapy trial characterised by hype and hubris ends in a child's death

By Claire Robinson and Jonathan Matthews, Guest Contributors | 08.25.2026

This is an excerpt of an article originally published on August 1, 2026 at GMWatch.

A six-year-old girl has...

U.S. Federal

Taking a closer look at recent reporting on gene-edited embryos

By Katie Hasson | 07.11.2026

Media coverage of recent developments in embryo gene editing might seem to suggest that gene-edited babies are close to becoming...

Genomics

News

'Epigenetic' editing is here: gene-tagging technique banishes hepatitis B virus

By Miryam Naddaf, Nature | 09.21.2026

A wave of epigenetic therapies is offering hope as ways to cure chronic hepatitis B — a lingering liver infection that is caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV) and affects more than 250 million people around the world. Currently...

Human Genetic Modification

US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say

By Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, CNN | 09.18.2026

The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.

The US...

U.S. Federal

Education for Motherhood

By Anna L. Philippe, Pop Panic | 09.17.2026

What does it mean when education is considered a threat to population? As an education student, I am interested in the ways population panics are essentialized and circulated in formal education settings. Schools can play a major role in shaping...

U.S. States

Mice with human brain cells open a new testing ground for drugmakers to study disease

By Karen Weintraub, Endpoints News | 09.16.2026

To better understand certain neuropsychiatric disorders, researchers at Stanford University have bred rodents that lack a cortex and hippocampus and then replaced those missing brain cells with human ones.

The altered mice, a scientific first, provided insights that would not...

Animal Biotechnologies

Video
Reproduction and Family Formation: The State and the Market
Use Gene Editing to Make Better Babies | Debate | Intelligence Squared U.S.
The 'Perfect' Baby?: The Dangers of Gene Editing in Assisted Reproduction