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

Where Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery Lives Today

By Cara J. Chang, Isabella B. Cho, Ella L. Jones, And Monique I. Vobecky, The Harvard Crimson | 05.02.2022

^{Photo by Manu Ros on Unsplash}

Harvard’s campus is replete with the names of prominent historical figures who were essential...

Perspectives

Our Obsession with Ancestry Has Some Twisted Roots

By Maya Jasanoff, The New Yorker | 05.02.2022

A mile into Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon, heading east from Salt Lake City toward the Wasatch ski slopes, several concrete...

U.S. States

3 dna double helixes of 3 different colors

Substituting genetic ancestry for race in research? Not so fast

By Anna C. F. Lewis, STAT | 05.02.2022

Race, widely used as a variable across biomedical research and medicine, is an appropriate proxy for racism — but not...

Genomics

Australia Moves Ahead Cautiously With '3-Parent IVF'

By Emily Mullin, Wired | 04.29.2022

^{Photo by Michael on Unsplash}

Australia has become the second country after the United Kingdom to legalize a fertility procedure...

Policies

Not the full story: Seeking eugenics history in Yale’s science curriculum

By Tigerlily Hopson, Yale News | 04.29.2022

^{Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash}

According to students and professors, the mark of eugenics has not left campus —...

Public Opinion

China focuses on ethics to deter another ‘CRISPR babies’ scandal

By Smriti Mallapaty, Nature | 04.27.2022

^{"China Flag" by BWJones is

marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.}

China’s powerful State Council is calling on research...

Policies

Trans men’s eggs have been matured in the lab—and could help them have children

By Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review | 04.26.2022

Ovaries contain hundreds of thousands of underdeveloped eggs, held in a kind of suspended animation. Each month, one matures and...

Assisted Reproduction

The scientist who co-created CRISPR isn’t ruling out engineered babies someday

By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 04.26.2022

The day I spoke to Jennifer Doudna was a tough day: the US Patent Office had just ruled against her...

Human Genetic Modification