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

4 pregnant women dressed in robes, standing in line; grayscale

Safety Concerns For Ukrainian Surrogate Mothers And Babies

By Bianca Facchinei, Newsy [cites CGS' Emily Galpern] | 03.25.2022

^{Photo by Astaken on Flickr}

The war in Ukraine has disrupted trade and threatened the global economy, from oil to...

Other Countries

Some past Science News coverage was racist and sexist. We’re deeply sorry

By Science News Staff, Science News | 03.24.2022

^{Image from Wikicommons}

In late 2019, with the 100th birthday of Science News a few years off, our team considered...

Bioethics

tweezers are used to take a DNA strand apart

Should we use genome editing to make better babies? Here’s what the experts think

By Tim Brinkhof, Big Think [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky] | 03.23.2022

George Church is one of the world’s most famous pioneers of genetics and biotechnology. He has made colossal contributions to...

Society

Are We About to Cure Sickle-Cell Disease?

By Dhruv Khullar, The New Yorker | 03.22.2022

In September, 1904, a twenty-year-old Grenadian man named Walter Clement Noel disembarked in New York after an eight-day voyage from...

Assisted Reproduction

In a first, brain implant lets man with complete paralysis spell out thoughts: ‘I love my cool son.’

By Kelly Servick, Science | 03.22.2022

In its final stages, the neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can bring extreme isolation. People lose control of their...

Synthetic Biology

Person in black uniform typing on a laptop

This Database Stores the DNA of 31,000 New Yorkers. Is It Illegal?

By Troy Closson, The New York Times | 03.22.2022

Three years ago, Shakira Leslie was returning home from a cousin’s birthday party in the Bronx when officers pulled over...

Policies

Silicon Valley’s Favorite Weird Philosophy Is Fundamentally Wrong

By Susan B. Levin, Slate | 03.22.2022

If, through biotechnology, we could drastically enhance ourselves—such that our ability to absorb and manipulate information was unlimited, we experienced...

Human Genetic Modification

Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

By Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Science | 03.21.2022

^{Photo by ZEISS Microscopy on Flickr}

A California company says it can decipher almost all the DNA code of a...

Assisted Reproduction