News

These companies help parents try to pick their babies' traits. Experts are wary

By Rob Stein, NPR [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 05.06.2026

Justin Schleede reaches onto a black lab bench to pick up a tray of small plastic tubes.

"These are saliva samples as well as blood," says Schleede, a geneticist who runs Herasight Inc.'s lab in Morrisville, N.C. "We also...

Genetic Selection

The Measured Listener

By Daniel Shanahan, Los Angeles Review of Books | 05.31.2026

This is the 15th installment in the Legacies of Eugenics series, which features essays by leading thinkers devoted to exploring the history of eugenics and the ways it shapes our present. You can read the first part here. The series...

U.S. States

The start-ups dreaming of creating genetically modified babies

By Alexandre Piquard, Le Monde [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 05.22.2026

"If proven to be safe, we believe preventive gene editing could be one of the most important health technologies of...

U.S. Federal

Natural Election

By Jonathan Basile, Los Ángeles Review of Books | 04.29.2026

WILLIAM BATESON, a foundational figure in the science of genetics at the turn of the last century, once recounted the...

Society

Experimenting With Disaster, Part 3

By Mara Hvistendahl, The Intercept | 11.01.2022

Part 1; Part 2

IT STARTED WITH a bold idea. “Someone finally convinced me to do something really, really stupid,” virologist...

U.S. Federal

Experimenting With Disaster, Part 2

By Mara Hvistendahl, The Intercept | 11.01.2022

Part 1; Part 3

AT THE MOMENT that the ferret bit him, the researcher was smack in the middle of...

U.S. Federal

Experimenting With Disaster, Part 1

By Mara Hvistendahl, The Intercept | 11.01.2022

Part 2; Part 3

THE GRADUATE STUDENT was alone in the lab on a Saturday, handling a mouse infected...

Other Countries

Gene Treatment for Rare Epilepsy Causes Brain Side Effect in 2 Children

By Erika Check Hayden, The New York Times | 10.26.2022

Weeks after Valeria Schenkel took an experimental drug named after her, the daily seizures that had afflicted her from birth...

Genomics

a painting of skulls stacked on top of each other

How scientists want to make you young again

By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 10.25.2022

^{Paul Cézanne, Pyramide de crânes, via Wikipedia}

A little over 15 years ago, scientists at Kyoto University in Japan made...

Human Genetic Modification

Why gay men and other groups are banned from donating sperm

By Amber Ferguson, The Washington Post | 10.20.2022

TreVaughn Roach-Carter had been waiting to donate his sperm for nearly two years in early 2020 when he visited the...

Policies

America has a Black sperm donor shortage. Black women are paying the price.

By Amber Ferguson, The Washington Post | 10.20.2022

Every night a little after 1 a.m., following her shift as a guard at a women’s prison, Reese Brooks...

Public Opinion

Racial disparities in neonatal mortality even wider with tools like IVF, study finds

By Andrew Joseph, STAT | 10.19.2022

When Sarka Lisonkova and her colleagues set out to study disparities in the birth outcomes of people who’ve used methods...

Assisted Reproduction