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

The “Correlation” Between Statistics and Eugenics

By Aubrey Clayton, Los Angeles Review of Books | 07.18.2024

Aggregated News

Image "Sir Francis Galton" by Spudgun67 from Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

IN 2013, A SERIES of ads about the dangers of teen pregnancy appeared on New York City subway trains. Sponsored by the city’s Human Resources Administration...

Reproductive Justice, Health & Rights

Dawn of the Silicon Valley Superbaby

By Julia Black and Margaux MacColl, The Information [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.19.2024

Aggregated News

When venture capitalist Jack Abraham first began dating his wife, Gabriella Massamillo, he insisted on one condition: that when they were ready to have children, she’d be willing to conceive using in vitro fertilization. Abraham had lost both his mother...

Genetic Selection

GATTACA on Screen in San Rafael with Katie Hasson

By Pete Shanks | 06.26.2024
Biopolitical Times

GATTACA was released in 1997, but — remarkably — is even more relevant now than it was then, as the...

Assisted Reproduction

The legacy of eugenics

By Sheila Kaplan, UC Berkeley School of Public Health | 06.20.2024

Aggregated News

Image by Gennie Stafford from Flickr

These days, it’s a rare scientist who would admit to working in eugenics.

The...

Human Genetic Modification

Biopolitical Times

Update on Polling about Human Biotechnologies

By Pete Shanks | 08.26.2024

It has been for years a truth universally acknowledged that heritable human genome editing – “designer baby” technology –  should...

Biopolitics

Recent Biopolitical News: Ethics, Guidelines, History, and Pure Fantasy

By Pete Shanks | 07.31.2024

It’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics, with developments in the US, UK, China, Japan, and implicitly on...

Genomics

What Is Up With the FDA? What Comes Next?

By Pete Shanks | 07.18.2024

Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical...

Stem Cells

News

I.V.F. Threats in Alabama Drive Clinics to Ship Out Embryos

By Azeen Ghorayshi and Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 08.12.2024

An emerging movement against in vitro fertilization is driving some doctors and patients in red states to move or destroy frozen embryos.

The embryo migration is most striking in Alabama, where the State Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos...

Assisted Reproduction

Sickle cell disease in India: The quest for a cure

By Priyanka Runwal, Chemical and Engineering News | 08.05.2024

Saritee Sanodiya, 26, has spent countless days wondering if she’ll ever live a “normal” life. Growing up, Sanodiya often missed school, frequenting the hospital for sudden, life-threatening drops in her hemoglobin levels and excruciating pain in her joints. High fever...

Stem Cells

OpenAI’s Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. We should be very afraid

By Gary Marcus, The Guardian | 08.03.2024

Image by TechCrunch from Flickr licensed under CC by 2.0

On 16 May 2023, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s charming, softly spoken, eternally optimistic billionaire CEO, and I stood in front of the US Senate judiciary subcommittee meeting on AI oversight...

Biotech & Pharma

Disabled Bodies and Enabling The Creation of The Medical Genetics Profession

By Robert Resta, The DNA Exchange | 07.22.2024

Medical geneticists and genetic counselors have an often complicated and at times tense relationship with people with disabilities, their families, advocates, and scholars. Geneticists are strong advocates and supporters for all of their patients, regardless of their abilities and disabilities...

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