News

Palantir Has a Hand in NIH’s Most Ambitious Health Initiative

By Julia Métraux, Mother Jones [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.07.2026

During his 2015 State of the Union address, then-President Barack Obama announced what he promised would be an ambitious public health project. “Tonight, I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes...

U.S. Federal

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

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...

Genetic Selection

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
Chaco Canyon ruins

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
Elephant and woolly mammoth in the snow

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
Photo of Alondra Nelson

“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
an egg cell with a question mark inside

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