News

How the Los Angeles Times shilled for the racist eugenics movement

By Alexandra Minna Stern, Los Angeles Times | 02.28.2021

Last month, Caltech announced that the names of six men with historical ties to the university would be removed from all“campus buildings, assets, and honors.”This unnaming came as the institution renounced its historical connections to the Human Betterment...

U.S. Federal

The Dark Side of CRISPR

By Sandy Sufian and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Scientific American | 02.16.2021

Americans have celebrated the fact that the Biden administration is embracing science and returning the country to evidence-based policymaking. We agree that science should guide policy—except in cases where it wouldn’t assist people to live their lives but would, instead...

Human Genetic Modification

Student debt is driving more Americans to donate their eggs — and some suffer lasting complications

By Diane Tober, Salon | 02.15.2021
Janine* was raised by a single mother in the San Francisco Bay Area. With resources tight, both she and her sister needed to find a way to put themselves through college. Her sister started donating her eggs for pay once she turned 20...
Perspectives

Response to Levrier re: Human Germline and Heritable Genome Editing: The Global Policy Landscape

By Marcy Darnovsky, Katie Hasson, and Timothy M. Krahn, The CRISPR Journal | 02.19.2021
Levrier apparently misunderstands the nature of our project published in The CRISPR Journal in October 2020.
Policies
man behind fence

Surviving the Crackdown in Xinjiang

By Raffi Khatchadourian, The New Yorker | 04.05.2021

I. HOME

When Anar Sabit was in her twenties and living in Vancouver, she liked to tell her friends that...

Eugenics
virus

Harbingers of Things to Come in Gene Therapy

By Josh P. Roberts, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 04.02.2021

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

It is one thing to anticipate what gene therapy will look like in 5 years...

Human Genetic Modification
The Code Breaker book cover

What Is It to Be Human Anymore?

By Michael Hirsh, Foreign Policy | 04.02.2021

This book is not for the faint of mind. Walter Isaacson is a great storyteller who has devoted his justly...

Society
sterilization protest with signs

Reparations for CA forced sterilization survivors: Support AB 1007

By Aminah Elster, The Daily Californian | 04.02.2021

Between 1909 and 1979, California forcibly sterilized over 20,000 people of color, people with disabilities and imprisoned people. Based on...

Civil Society
baby plants

“Small” changes made with gene editing cause severe deformities in plants

By GMWatch | 04.01.2021

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Gene editing causes drastic unwanted effects in gene-edited plants including severe deformities, a new...

Genetic Selection
capitol hill rotunda

Official apology for eugenics program moves ahead in Vermont Legislature

By Ethan Bakuli, Burlington Free Press | 04.01.2021

Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash

An apology letter intended to acknowledge Vermont's role in a program that sought to...

U.S. States
sickled blood cells

FDA approves CRISPR gene therapy trials for sickle cell disease

By Catherine Hsu, The Daily Californian | 04.01.2021

CRISPR genome editing technology, which was developed at UC Berkeley, has been approved for clinical trials to correct gene mutations...

Genetic Selection
A sickled cell

UC launches gene therapy trial to transform the treatment of sickle cell disease

By Lisa M. Krieger, The Mercury News | 03.31.2021

"Sickle cell disease (SCD)" by National Institutes
of Health (NIH) is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

A team of University...

Human Genetic Modification