News

Surrogacy goes more mainstream

By Carly Mallenbaum, Axios [cites Emily Galpern] | 03.29.2026

More Americans are turning to surrogacy to build their families, as the practice becomes more common and more publicly discussed.

Why it matters: As surrogacy becomes more visible and accessible, ethical, legal and cultural tensions become harder to ignore...

U.S. Federal

Eugenics and the Modern Synthesis, Part I

By Jessica Riskin, Los Ángeles Review of Books | 03.23.2026

This is the first part of the 14th 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...

Civil Society

Surrogacy laws are all over the map

By Carly Mallenbaum, Axios [cites Surrogacy360] | 03.29.2026

Without a federal law, surrogacy in the U.S. is governed by a patchwork of state regulations/

Why it matters: Confusing...

Policies

Project Eugenics: The Rollback of Disability Rights

By Kiana Jackson and Shannon Stubblefield, New Disabled South | 02.09.2026

^{"MC0_8230" via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by 2.0}

This report documents a deliberate assault on disabled people in...

U.S. States

Inside the lawsuit that ended US gene patenting

By Heidi Ledford, Nature | 10.25.2021

Not so long ago, if you asked someone about the US Patent and Trademark Office’s practice of granting patents on...

Policies

California’s shameful history of forced sterilization

By Editorial Board, The Press Democrat | 10.24.2021

^{Photo of Sonoma Developmental Center

licensed for use under CC BY-SA 4.0 on WikiCommons}

Staff Writer Phil Barber’s startling account...

Bioethics

image of coronavirus - a red sphere with green spikes

COVID-19 and the rebiologisation of racial difference

By Wingel Xue, Alexandre White, The Lancet | 10.23.2021

In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, early dashboards set up by the US Centers for Disease Control and...

Public Opinion

What Dune Reveals about Reproductive Control and Eugenics

By Andrew J. Mongue and Caitlin E. McDonough-Goldstein, Scientific American | 10.22.2021

Few fictional creatures are as iconic or as synonymous with their franchise as the giant apex predators of the desert...

Society

No, scientists are not any closer to pig-to-human transplants than they were last week

By Jason Mast, Endpoints News | 10.22.2021

Steve Holtzman was awoken by a 1 a.m. call from a doctor at Duke University asking if he could put...

Biotech & Pharma

States Are Toughening Up Privacy Laws for At-Home DNA Tests

By Emily Mullin, Wired | 10.21.2021

IF YOU’VE EVER spit into a plastic tube or swabbed your cheek and mailed your saliva away to learn about your...

Policies

Campus professor Osagie K. Obasogie elected as member to the National Academy of Medicine

By Lydia Sidhom, The Daily Californian [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky] | 10.20.2021

UC Berkeley professor of law and bioethics Osagie K. Obasogie was elected for membership to the National Academy of Medicine...

Civil Society

Ancient-DNA Researchers Set Ethics Guidelines for Their Work

By Sabrina Imbler, The New York Times | 10.20.2021

^{Photo by pedrik on Flickr}

In 2017, a team of scientists successfully extracted the DNA of members of a Pueblo...

Policies