Biopolitical News of the Year 2013

For better and worse, 2013 has been a year in which several related issues familiar to those who follow human biotechnology moved into the wider sphere of public discussion. Many involve genetic testing – at every stage of life – and some explicitly raise issues of inheritable genetic modification. The legacy of eugenics past, the horror of sterilization abuse in the present, and the advocacy of genetic selection for intelligence and other traits in the near future all hit the headlines.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of important and yet strangely incomplete rulings whose implications are still being unraveled. The commercialization of synthetic biology and other newly developed technologies proceeded apace, with well-financed businesses, partly crowd-sourced ventures and a number of outright scams. The assisted reproduction industry continued its global spread, and there were encouraging signs of academic interest in analyzing its processes.

Here are our picks for the top biopolitical news stories of 2013:

• Testing, Testing …
• “Three-Parent” Babies and Inheritable Genetic Modification
• Eugenics: Past and Present as Prologue
• IQ and Genetics and Education and Immigration
• A...