CGS encourages responsible uses and effecitve governance of human genetic and assisted reproductive technologies

Featured

CIRM Faces Its Future

By Pete Shanks | 08.14.2018
Biopolitical Times

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is running out of money. It is also running out of time to prove that California’s $6 billion dollar investment in the agency was worthwhile. (Half of that money was for interest.) Current estimates are that the last grants funded by 2004’s Proposition 71 will be made in 2019.

What next? CIRM won’t immediately fold in the fourth quarter of next year; the administrative budget will run through at least 2020. But...

Technologies

Genetically modifying future children isn’t just wrong. It would harm all of us

By Marcy Darnovsky, The Guardian | 07.17.2018

Op-Ed

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has taken what it clearly regards as a brave new step: it has openly endorsed the use of genome editing to engineer the traits of future children and generations. The council’s report, Genome editing...

Human Genetic Modification

The Evolving State of Human Germline Editing

By Katie Hasson, GeneWatch | 08.06.2018

Op-Ed

A wave of controversy about reproductive gene editing gathered force in response to reports in 2015 of the first CRISPR...

Technologies

Beyond Bioethics: Toward a New Biopolitics

By Daniel Bojar, The Biologist [review of the book edited by CGS' Osagie K Obasogie and Marcy Darnovsky] | 09.06.2018

Aggregated News

The dramatic pace of scientific discoveries in recent decades has not only led to remarkable improvements in domains such as...

Society

Biopolitical Times

DNA Tests: Neither Destiny nor History

By Pete Shanks | 10.16.2018

Senator Elizabeth Warren has released the results of a DNA analysis bolstering her family’s belief that their ancestry is partly...

Technologies

The Arts of Polling

By Pete Shanks | 10.10.2018

When considering whether and how to proceed with regulating human germline gene editing, everyone supports public engagement. The National Academies...

Human Genetic Modification

Students Create Online Resources about the US Eugenics Movement

By Audrey Kalman, Guest Contributor | 10.03.2018

Editor’s note: Audrey Kalman reports on the project she and her classmates completed last spring in Kate Wiley’s senior-year history...

Society

News

The First DNA Test as Political Stunt

By Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic | 10.15.2018

Has there ever been such an elaborate rollout for the results of a DNA test?

On Monday morning, Elizabeth Warren—Massachusetts senator, likely presidential candidate—unveiled a web page with five videos featuring interviews of family, friends, students, former colleagues, and the...

Technologies

Most White Americans’ DNA Can Be Identified Through Genealogy Databases

By Heather Murphy, The New York Times | 10.11.2018

The genetic genealogy industry is booming. In recent years, more than 15 million people have offered up their DNA — a cheek swab, some saliva in a test-tube — to services such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com in pursuit of answers...

Technologies

Supercharged crime-scene DNA analysis sparks privacy concerns

By Ewen Callaway, Nature | 10.11.2018

Genetic sleuthing techniques that led to the arrest of a suspect in the infamous Golden State Killer case this year are set to become vastly more powerful, suggest two papers published today1,2.

The studies conclude that...

Technologies

CRISPR cures inherited disorder in mice, paving way for genetic therapy before birth

By Sharon Begley, Stat | 10.08.2018

Nearly 40 years after surgeons first operated on fetuses to cure devastating abnormalities, researchers have taken the first step toward curing genetic disease before birth via genome editing: scientists reported on Monday that they used the genome editing technique CRISPR...

Technologies

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