Having data about our bodies tracked is so much a part of our daily lives that we sometimes forget it can be used against us.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, a deluge of articles warned people to delete their menstrual tracking apps. While these technologies can be useful for those seeking (or avoiding) pregnancy, these apps have come under fire in the past for selling intimate data to social media sites. With the changing legal landscape, privacy experts pointed out that this data could be used to criminalize people seeking abortions. Proponents of forced birth also recognize this potential, and are working to ensure that menstrual data remains open to search warrants. Turning this data into a site of political contestation raises questions of collective response beyond the limits of bodily autonomy.
It’s become normalized for data about our bodies and actions to be collected, quantified, and sold on the market. Facial recognition and body scans have become necessary to travel. Employer health insurance can require divulging health information from blood pressure to sexual...
Paula Amato & Shoukhrat Mitalipov
[OHSU News/Christine Torres Hicks]
On September 30th, a team of 21 scientists from Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) published a significant paper in Nature Communications, with a scientifically accurate but, to many, somewhat abstruse headline:
Induction of experimental cell division to generate cells with reduced chromosome ploidy
The lead authors were Shoukhrat Mitalipov, recently described here as “a push-the-envelope biologist,” and his long-term colleague Paula Amato. (Recall that in July the pair had co-published with...
Before dawn on a March morning, Doug Whitney walked into a medical center 2,000 miles from home, about to transform from a mild-mannered, bespectacled retiree into a superhuman research subject.
First, a doctor inserted a needle into his back to...
By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Zoeann Murphy, The Washington Post | 10.01.2025
Aggregated News
MEXICO CITY — When she walked into an IVF clinic in June, Alin Quintana knew it would be the last time she would try to conceive a child. She had prepared herself spiritually and mentally for the visit: She had traveled to a nearby...
Scientists have created human eggs containing genes from adult skin cells, a step that someday could help women who are infertile or gay couples have babies with their own genes but would also raise difficult ethical, social and legal issues...
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