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

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

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