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.

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The Shameful Legacy of Tuskegee Is Still Relevant

By Pete Shanks | 01.28.2026
Biopolitical Times

Group of Tuskegee Experiment test subjects
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Every generation needs to learn about what is commonly known as the Tuskegee syphilis study, which ran from 1932 to 1972. (Officially, it was the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, Alabama, which gets the emphasis right.) For many people, the history is hard to believe, though it is hardly unique. Of the 600 subjects, all Black men, 399 had syphilis, for which...

U.S. Federal

The Mysterious Eugenics of Aesthetic Taste

By Michael Rossi, The Los Angeles Review of Books | 01.11.2026

Aggregated News

This is the 10th installment in the Legacies of Eugenics series, which features essays by leading thinkers devoted to exploring the history of eugenics and the ways it shapes our present. The series is organized by Osagie K. Obasogie in...

Arts & Culture

More and “Better” Babies: The Dark Side of the Pronatalist Movement

By Daphne O. Martschenko and Julia E. H. Brown, Hastings Bioethics Forum | 01.14.2026

Aggregated News

There is growing concern that falling fertility rates will lead to economic and demographic catastrophe. The social and political movement...

Genetic Selection

Bay Area Startups Want to Make Genetically Engineered Babies. What Could Go Wrong?

By Grace Won, KQED Forum [with CGS' Katie Hasson] | 12.02.2025

Aggregated News

In the U.S., it’s illegal to edit genes in human embryos with the intention of creating a genetically engineered baby...

Genetic Selection

Biopolitical Times

Public Health, Vaccines and Modern Eugenics

By Pete Shanks | 02.27.2026

Last month, we published “The Shameful Legacy of Tuskegee” which focused on a proposed experiment in Guinea-Bissau. The...

Bioethics

The Shameful Legacy of Tuskegee Is Still Relevant

By Pete Shanks | 01.28.2026

Group of Tuskegee Experiment test subjects
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Every generation needs to learn about what is commonly...

U.S. Federal

Some of Our Favorite 2025 Blog Posts

By Pete Shanks | 01.06.2026

Following a long-standing CGS tradition, we present a selection of our favorite Biopolitical Times posts of the past year.

In...

Policies

News

Untidy Feminist Entanglements

By Margaret R. Eby, Los Angeles Review of Books | 03.15.2026

IN MARCH 2017, then–vice president Mike Pence tweeted a photo of himself at a table with members of the House Freedom Caucus discussing plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with the American Health Care Act...

Biopolitics

Can a "Living Drug" Cure Autoimmune Diseases?

By Jason Liebowitz, The New Yorker | 03.06.2026

When Talaya Reid was in high school, in a quiet suburb of Philadelphia, she developed fatigue so severe that she spent afternoons napping instead of going out with friends. She was lethargic at school and her grades suffered, but after...

Human Genetic Modification

Monash IVF to pay financial settlement to families caught up in embryo bungles

By Antonia O'Flaherty, ABC News Australia | 03.04.2026

Fertility giant Monash IVF has agreed to pay financial settlements to families involved in two major bungles that saw two women transferred the wrong embryo.

In February 2025 the company became aware that one of its Brisbane clinic's patients had...

Bioethics

FDA says it wants individualized medicines. Can we get there?

By Rowan Walrath, Laurel Oldach, Chemical & Engineering News | 03.04.2026

Washington, DC—At a press conference held at the US Department of Health and Human Services headquarters on Feb. 23, two doctors from the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia spoke about their hope for the future of...

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