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

South Africa Does Not Allow Heritable Human Genome Editing 

By Pete Shanks | 11.24.2024
Biopolitical Times

Flag of South Africa; design by Frederick Brownell,
image by WikimediaCommons users.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

What is the legal status of heritable human genome editing (HHGE)? In 2020, a comprehensive policy analysis by Baylis, Darnovsky, Hasson, and Krahn documented that more than 70 countries and an international treaty prohibit it, and that no country explicitly permits it. Policies in some countries were non-existent, ambiguous, or subject to possible amendment, but the general rule remained, even after one...

Human Genetic Modification

Neoliberalism’s Love Affair with Innovation

By Emma McDonald Kennedy | 11.24.2024
Biopolitical Times

Gig work in childcare, nursing, and transportation; non-invasive prenatal testing; gene editing; and space expeditions can all be attributed to one mistaken, pervasive assumption: that “we can innovate our way out of the thorniest problems, including reproductive ones” (22). In Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype, feminist political theorist Jennifer Denbow demonstrates why the U.S. has put so much of its hopes, and its money, on technological “innovations”––and why that hasn’t addressed...

U.S. Federal

US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’

By Hannah Devlin, Tom Burgis, David Pegg, and Jason Wilson, The Guardian [cites CGS’ Katie Hasson] | 10.18.2024

Aggregated News

A US startup company is offering to help wealthy couples screen their embryos for IQ using controversial technology that raises...

Genetic Selection

South Africa amended its research guidelines to allow for heritable human genome editing

By Françoise Baylis and Katie Hasson, The Conversation | 10.24.2024

Aggregated News

A little-noticed change to South Africa’s national health research guidelines, published in May of this year, has put the...

Policies

Biopolitical Times

South Africa Does Not Allow Heritable Human Genome Editing 

By Pete Shanks | 11.24.2024

Flag of South Africa; design by Frederick Brownell,
image by WikimediaCommons users.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

What is...

Human Genetic Modification

Neoliberalism’s Love Affair with Innovation

By Emma McDonald Kennedy | 11.24.2024

Gig work in childcare, nursing, and transportation; non-invasive prenatal testing; gene editing; and space expeditions can all be attributed to...

U.S. Federal

Trump’s Eugenic Fantasies

By Pete Shanks | 10.08.2024

“Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore  is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

On October 7, Donald Trump’s long-standing promotion...

Civil Society

News

The Horrors of Hepatitis Research

By Carl Elliott, The New York Review of Books | 11.21.2024

Photo "Traces of Willowbrook" by Matt Green on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

In academic medicine, as with Confederate statuary, the mighty are starting to fall. The names of physicians once celebrated for ethically questionable research are finally being removed...

Society

WHO releases new principles for ethical human genomic data collection and sharing

By World Health Organization, World Health Organization | 11.20.2024

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a set of principles for the ethical collection, access, use and sharing of human genomic data. Created with guidance from the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Genomics (TAG-G) and other international experts, these...

Policies

He has already fathered many children. Now Musk wants all of the US to embrace extreme breeding

By Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian | 11.19.2024

Photo "Elon Musk Presenting Tesla's Fully Autonomous Future" by  on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Is Elon Musk the dinner party guest from hell? It sure seems that way. Not only is the man desperate for people to...

Genetic Selection

UN puts AI Titans on the hook for billions of dollars of biopiracy payments

By Jim Thomas, Scan the Horizon | 11.19.2024

It’s the wee hours of 2nd November 2024 in Cali, Colombia. In a large UN negotiating hall   Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamed  has slammed down the gavel on a decision that should send a jolt through the AI policy world. ...

Genomics

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