News

During his 2015 State of the Union address, then-President Barack Obama announced what he promised would be an ambitious public health project. “Tonight, I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes...

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...

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

"These are saliva...

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

genome sequencing against disease
By Julia Black, Insider | 11.17.2022

Sitting in their toy-filled family room on a sunny September afternoon, Simone and Malcolm Collins were forced to compete with...

eye exam
By Jocelyn Kaiser, Science | 11.17.2022

After some early but cautious optimism, a company is shelving its pioneering gene-editing treatment for a rare inherited blindness disorder...

elderly white hands
By Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review | 11.16.2022

“Who wants to live forever?” The immortal words of Freddie Mercury blast from the speakers as blue lights swivel around...

white DNA strands on a blue background
By Megan Molteni, STAT | 11.15.2022

Boston–––In science journalism, there’s a well-worn technique reporters reach for when they’re interviewing a researcher and the technical material starts...

a police officer searches on a keyboard
By Albert Fox Cahn, The Daily Beast | 11.14.2022

This week, when police in Edmonton, Canada, released a suspect’s image, the crude graphic didn’t come from CCTV or a...

a hand in a lab coat removes a piece from a DNA strand on a pink background
By Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review | 11.11.2022

According to her parents, Ayla Bashir is “a miracle.” The talkative and smiley 15-month-old is also a pioneer—the first person...

a tumor colored pink and green
By Emily Mullin, Wired | 11.10.2022

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

In a new step for Crispr, scientists have used the gene-editing tool to...

double helix DNA on a blue and green background
By Nicky Phillips, Nature | 11.09.2022

Around lunchtime on a warm March day in 1999, Kathleen Folbigg went to check on her sleeping 18-month-old daughter and...