Buffalo shooting ignites a debate over the role of genetics researchers in white supremacist ideology
By Megan Molteni,
STAT
| 05. 23. 2022
Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash
The 18-year-old gunman suspected of carrying out a racist attack that killed 10 and injured three people in Buffalo, N.Y., last weekend left no questions about why he drove 200 miles to a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood and opened fire. A 180-page document he allegedly posted online detailed the white supremacist ideologies that motivated his plan to target and murder Black Americans.
But for the genetics researchers who discovered their work cited in the screed as justification for the bloodshed, there are only questions — how did this happen? Could we have done more to prevent it? And what needs to change to stop it from happening again?
“I’m horrified,” said Daniel Benjamin, a behavioral economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-founder of the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC). Formed in 2011 and funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, the group aims to find links between genes and outcomes that interest social scientists. Beginning in 2013, they began to publish a series of bigger and...
Related Articles
By Josie Ensor, The Times | 12.09.2025
A fertility start-up that promises to screen embryos to give would-be parents their “best baby” has come under fire for a “misuse of science”.
Nucleus Genomics describes its mission as “IVF for genetic optimisation”, offering advanced embryo testing that allows...
By Hannah Devlin, The Guardian | 12.06.2025
Couples undergoing IVF in the UK are exploiting an apparent legal loophole to rank their embryos based on genetic predictions of IQ, height and health, the Guardian has learned.
The controversial screening technique, which scores embryos based on their DNA...
By Frankie Fattorini, Pharmaceutical Technology | 12.02.2025
Próspera, a charter city on Roatán island in Honduras, hosts two biotechs working to combat ageing through gene therapy, as the organisation behind the city advertises its “flexible” regulatory jurisdiction to attract more developers.
In 2021, Minicircle set up a...
By Vardit Ravitsky, The Hastings Center | 12.04.2025
Embryo testing is advancing fast—but how far is too far? How and where do we draw the line between preventing disease and selecting for “desirable” traits? What are the ethical implications for parents, children, clinicians, and society at large? These...
