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

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Is Gene Therapy Delivering on Its Promises?

By Pete Shanks | 01.18.2023
Biopolitical Times

Gene therapy has been the next big thing in medicine for decades. Until recent years, the results were underwhelming. Now there are promising developments and real successes, but significant questions remain: Is it safe enough? How many people might benefit, and under what conditions?  And, crucially, how much will gene therapies cost and who will pay?

It has been more than 50 years since gene therapy was formally proposed; more than 40 years since the first scandal; more than 30...

Human Genetic Modification

Hipster Eugenics: Better Babies for Billionaires

By Pete Shanks | 11.30.2022
Biopolitical Times

Cropped from: “Decentralized_Transhumanism” by
Leonel Sohns, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The techno-utopian credos known as “effective altruism” and “longtermism” have recently gained wide notice, judging by Google searches, news articles, and personal experience. Far less attention has been paid to “hipster eugenics,” a term that brutally but accurately sums up the alarming trend previously known by the perhaps more anodyne “designer babies.” All are closely related.

Effective altruism has been defined rather politely as “a global philanthropic...

Assisted Reproduction

The Next Gene Editing Summit Begins to Come into Focus

By Pete Shanks | 10.07.2022
Biopolitical Times

The UK Royal Society has published an overview and schedule for the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing, which...

Policies

Dorothy Roberts Tried To Warn Us

By Irin Carmon, New York Magazine | 09.06.2022

Aggregated News

One day in 2006, Dorothy Roberts went in for a conference with her youngest son’s teacher. The boy, said the...

Perspectives

Biopolitical Times

Techno-eugenics: Two Books and a Movie, Reviewed

By Pete Shanks | 02.02.2023

Matthew Cobb, As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age, US edition, Basic Books, 2022; aka The Genetic...

Genetic Selection

Is Gene Therapy Delivering on Its Promises?

By Pete Shanks | 01.18.2023

Gene therapy has been the next big thing in medicine for decades. Until recent years, the results were underwhelming. Now...

Human Genetic Modification

The Center for Genetics and Society: 2022 Highlights

By CGS Staff | 01.14.2023

Photo by Isabela Kronemberger on Unsplash

Throughout 2022, CGS worked to deepen and expand collaborations with advocates and scholars concerned...

Policies

News

California and the Multimillion-Dollar Costs of Gene Therapies that the State is Helping to Finance

By David Jensen, The California Stem Cell Report | 02.05.2023

The multimillion-dollar costs of gene therapies -- the type that the state of California is helping to finance -- received some national, mainstream attention during the last few weeks. 

A story in the New York Times on Jan. 24...

U.S. States

Scientist who edited babies’ genes says he acted ‘too quickly’

By Hannah Devlin, The Guardian | 02.04.2023

The scientist at the heart of the scandal involving the world’s first gene-edited babies has said he moved “too quickly” by pressing ahead with the procedure.

He Jiankui sent shock waves across the world of science when he announced in...

Other Countries

After a decade, CRISPR gene editing is a 'revolution in progress.' What does the future hold?

By Karen Weintraub, USA Today | 01.30.2023

Medical innovations typically take 17 years from the time a lightbulb goes off in a scientist's head until the first person benefits.

But every once in a while, an idea is so powerful and so profound its effects are felt...

Human Genetic Modification

The Dark History of the Eugenics Movement in Northern California Has Chilling Implications for Today

By Julie Zigoris, The San Francisco Standard | 01.26.2023

It’s easy to think of eugenics as something that happened far away from us, with ideals alien to our character. Yet Adolf Hitler himself studied—and was inspired by—American laws that prevented the birth of people “injurious to the...

U.S. States

Video
A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics in America
Use Gene Editing to Treat Patients, Not Design Babies
CRISPR: What is the future of gene editing? | Start Here