News

The Mysterious Eugenics of Aesthetic Taste

By Michael Rossi, The Los Angeles Review of Books | 01.11.2026

This is the 10th 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. The series is organized by Osagie K. Obasogie in...

Arts & Culture

The mirage of AI deregulation

By Alondra Nelson, Science | 01.15.2026

One of the most interventionist approaches to technology governance in the United States in a generation has cloaked itself in the language of deregulation. In early December 2025, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to announce a forthcoming “One...

Global Governance

More and “Better” Babies: The Dark Side of the Pronatalist Movement

By Daphne O. Martschenko and Julia E. H. Brown, Hastings Bioethics Forum | 01.14.2026

There is growing concern that falling fertility rates will lead to economic and demographic catastrophe. The social and political movement...

Genetic Selection

Bay Area Startups Want to Make Genetically Engineered Babies. What Could Go Wrong?

By Grace Won, KQED Forum [with CGS' Katie Hasson] | 12.02.2025

In the U.S., it’s illegal to edit genes in human embryos with the intention of creating a genetically engineered baby...

Genetic Selection

Before making a mammoth, ask the public

By Victoria Herridge, Nature | 10.20.2021

^{Image by Russ Seidel on Flickr}

Every few years for the past 20 or so, the story resurfaces, frozen in...

Synthetic Biology

“Science and Technology Now Sit in the Center of Every Policy and Social Issue”

By Alondra Nelson and William Kearney, Issues in Science and Technology | 10.19.2021

^{Photo of Alondra Nelson by Dan Komoda}

In January 2021, President Biden appointed sociologist Alondra Nelson, a leading scholar...

U.S. Federal

In a First, Surgeons Attached a Pig Kidney to a Human, and It Worked

By Roni Caryn Rabin, The New York Times | 10.19.2021

Surgeons in New York have successfully attached a kidney grown in a genetically altered pig to a human patient and...

Animal Biotechnologies

a picture of the now removed Robert E Lee statue

Ghosting the Confederacy

By Erin Thompson, Harper's Bazaar | 10.18.2021

^{"Robert E. Lee IMG_2662" by OZinOH

is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0}

What should happen to Confederate monuments after...

Society

Empty Vermont State House, where the apology was given

Vermont’s legislative leaders apologize for state-sanctioned eugenics movement

By Rachel Nostrant, VTDigger | 10.18.2021

^{Photo of Vermont State House by Don Shall on Flickr}

MONTPELIER — Legislative leaders formally apologized on Saturday for Vermont’s...

Eugenics

Inside Nigeria’s unregulated human egg industry

By Mariam Adetona, Al Jazeera | 10.17.2021

It was a hot afternoon in October 2019, and 22-year-old Joan* [Names have been changed] had just been crying...

Other Countries

Polygenic screening of embryos is here, but is it ethical?

By Philip Ball, The Guardian [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 10.17.2021

The birth of the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, in 1978 provoked a media frenzy. In comparison, a little girl...

Genomics

The Children of Sperm Donors Want to Change the Rules of Conception

By Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic | 10.15.2021

^{Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash}

Damian Adams grew up knowing that his parents had used an anonymous sperm donor...

Other Countries