Biopolitical News of the Year 2013
By Pete Shanks,
Biopolitical Times
| 12. 19. 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...
Related Articles
By George Janes, BioNews | 01.12.2026
A heart attack patient has become the first person to be treated in a clinical trial of an experimental gene therapy, which aims to strengthen blood vessels after coronary bypass surgery.
Coronary artery bypass surgery is performed to treat...
By Staff, ScienceDaily | 01.05.2026
Scientists at UNSW Sydney have developed a new form of CRISPR technology that could make gene therapy safer while also resolving a decades-long debate about how genes are switched off. The research shows that small chemical markers attached to DNA
...
Following a long-standing CGS tradition, we present a selection of our favorite Biopolitical Times posts of the past year.
In 2025, we published up to four posts every month, written by 12 authors (staff, consultants and allies), some in collaboration and one simply credited to CGS.
These titles are presented in chronological order, except for three In Memoriam notices, which follow. Many more posts that are worth your time can be found in the archive. Scroll down and “VIEW...
By Jonathan Matthews, GMWatch | 12.11.2025
In our first article in this series, we investigated the dark PR tactics that have accompanied Colossal Bioscience’s de-extinction disinformation campaign, in which transgenic cloned grey wolves have been showcased to the world as resurrected dire wolves – a...
