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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...

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...

Justin Schleede reaches onto a black lab bench to pick up a tray of small plastic tubes.

"These are saliva...

"If proven to be safe, we believe preventive gene editing could be one of the most important health technologies of...

Free Britney Spears protest
By Michaela Kathleen Curran, The Conversation | 10.01.2021

Photo by Mike Maguire on Flickr

Britney Spears has been locked in a court battle 13 years in the making...

By Erik Parens, The Hastings Center | 09.30.2021

In her new book, Kathryn Paige Harden is full of hope that insights from genetics will become powerful tools...

By Liam Drew, Nature | 09.29.2021

It’s 2036, and you have kidney failure. Until recently, this condition meant months or years of gruelling dialysis, while you...

By Frederick Hewett, WBUR | 09.27.2021

“What we need to fight climate change is woolly mammoths” — said no climate scientist, ever.

But that’s not deterring a hotshot...

autism in the UK
By Katharine Sanderson, Nature | 09.27.2021

A large, UK-based study of genetics and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been suspended, following criticism that it failed to...

Looking at a book with and without glasses
By Ruth Reader, Fast Company | 09.27.2021

On the eighth night of Hanukkah last year, Barry Honig saw light. He could see the shape of the menorah...

blue sperm swimming
By Jenny Kleeman, The Guardian | 09.25.2021

For 40 years, Catherine Simpson thought she knew who she was: a nurse, a mother of three, a daughter and...

By Natalie Ram, Erin E. Murphy, and Sonia M. Suter, Science | 09.24.2021

In May 2021, Maryland enacted the first law in the United States—and in the world—that comprehensively regulates law enforcement’s use...