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

Gene-edited beef cattle get regulatory clearance in US

By Candice Choi, Associated Press | 03.07.2022

^{Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash}

U.S. regulators on Monday cleared the way for the sale of beef from gene-edited...

Policies

‘It’s a real-life Hunger Games’: a lifesaving drug costs $2m, but not every child can get it

By Hannah Devlin, The Guardian | 03.05.2022

^{Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash}

Elizabeth Wraige remembers the first time she delivered the diagnosis. “Parents feel as if...

U.S. Federal

Genetically Engineered Golden Rice: Real Hope or Misplaced Hype?

By Melissa Waddell, Living Non-GMO | 03.03.2022

The biotech industry loves to talk about precision.

For example, advocates for genetic engineering and genetic modification have adopted the...

Synthetic Biology

a police officer types on a computer keyboard

SFPD says use of rape victim's DNA in unrelated criminal investigation 'should not have happened'

By J. R. Stone, ABC News | 03.03.2022

Wednesday night the San Francisco Police Chief responded to some tough questions from police commissioners about the use of DNA...

Policies

A doctor explaining an Xray to a patient

Rediscovering a language of healing that doesn’t require ‘cure’

By Lee D. Cooper, STAT News | 03.02.2022

^{"Doctor Patient and Xray" by andyde is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.}

I am a biotech investor and...

Human Genetic Modification

First gene-editing treatment injected into the blood reduces toxic protein for up to 1 year

By Jocelyn Kaiser, Science | 03.01.2022

^{Cas9 from CRISPR from NIH, CC BY-NC 2.0}

The first team to disable a disease gene directly in a...

Human Genetic Modification

Ukraine’s Surrogacy Industry Has Put Women in Impossible Positions

By Alison Motluk, The Atlantic | 03.01.2022

^{Ukrainian Flag by Jolanta Dyr from Pixabay}

Nothing crystallizes the “her body, my baby” conundrum of surrogacy quite like a...

Other Countries

UC Berkeley loses CRISPR gene editing patent case

By Lisa M. Krieger, The Mercury News | 02.28.2022

^{Photo of Jennifer Doudna licensed for reuse under CC BY-SA 3.0}

UC Berkeley scientist Jennifer Doudna earned a Nobel Prize...

Policies