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

What’s Wrong with the FDA?

By Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer, Washington Monthly | 01.20.2022

If Robert Califf, the White House nominee for commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is confirmed by the Senate...

U.S. Federal

Kidneys From a Genetically Altered Pig Are Implanted in a Brain-Dead Patient

By Roni Caryn Rabin, The New York Times | 01.20.2022

^{Photo courtesy of Sanford Health via flickr}

Surgeons at the University of Alabama at Birmingham reported on Thursday that they...

Animal Biotechnologies

Rejuvenation by controlled reprogramming is the latest gambit in anti-aging

By Michael Eisenstein, Nature Biotechnology | 01.19.2022

On 19 January, co-founders Rick Klausner and Hans Bishop publicly launched an aging research initiative called Altos Labs, with $3...

Animal Biotechnologies

Xenotransplantation: Three Areas of Concern

By L. Syd M. Johnson, The Hastings Center Bioethics Forum | 01.19.2022

News of the first transplant of a pig’s heart into a human was widely reported last week, raising hope that...

Synthetic Biology

Deregulating GMOs in the UK

By GMWatch, GMWatch | 01.19.2022

A new analysis by A Bigger Conversation suggests that, in its haste to deregulate agricultural gene technologies, the UK government...

Policies

Going bald? Lab-grown hair cells could be on the way

By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 01.18.2022

^{Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash}

Biologists at several startups are applying the latest advances in genetic engineering to the...

Stem Cells

Sperm donation is largely unregulated, but that could soon change as lawsuits multiply

By Naomi Cahn and Sonia Suter, The Conversation | 01.18.2022

^{"Advertisement for sperm donors, MIT Tech"

by milan.ilnyckyj is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0}

When Wendy and Janet Norman...

Policies

Artificial intelligence can discriminate on the basis of race and gender, and also age

By Charlene Chu, Kathleen Leslie, Rune Nyrup, and Shehroz Khan, The Conversation | 01.18.2022

^{Image by Mike MacKenzie licensed

under CC BY 2.0 via www.vpnsrus.com}

We have accepted the use of artificial intelligence (AI)...

A "Post-Human" Future?