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
an anatomical image of a kidney

Jordan Crowley Would Be in Line for a Kidney—if He Were Deemed White Enough

By Jennifer Tsai, Slate | 06.27.2021

Jordan Crowley was born with only one shrunken kidney to clean his blood. As he gets older, his one kidney...

U.S. Federal

CRISPR injected into the blood treats a genetic disease for first time

By Jocelyn Kaiser, Science | 06.26.2021

The gene editor CRISPR excels at fixing disease mutations in lab-grown cells. But using CRISPR to treat most people with...

Human Genetic Modification

He Inherited A Devastating Disease. A CRISPR Gene-Editing Breakthrough Stopped It

By Rob Stein, NPR | 06.26.2021

Patrick Doherty had always been very active. He trekked the Himalayas and hiked trails in Spain.

But about a year...

Human Genetic Modification
Image of covid

For now, stem cells for Covid-19 are mostly a shot in the dark

By Paul Knoepfler, STAT | 06.25.2021

Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

The uncertainty over how to effectively treat Covid-19 is proving to be an...

Stem Cells
person pushing their own wheelchair

Britney Spears’ Reproductive Freedom is a Disability Rights Issue

By Zoe Brennan-Krohn and Rebecca McCray, ACLU | 06.25.2021

There were many shocking moments in Britney Spears’ 24-minute statement calling for an end to her conservatorship, delivered Wednesday to...

Perspectives
Poster for the movie

When a child is born: the film lifting the lid on surrogacy, race and disability

By Cath Clarke, The Guardian | 06.24.2021

There are two films called The Surrogate. The first is a made-for-TV movie about an obsessive fan who cons her...

Society

The ‘race realist’ on campus

By Jason Fagone, San Francisco Chronicle | 06.24.2021

With one painful exception that she still thinks about today, Marisol Schowengerdt enjoyed her classes at Cal State East Bay.

She...

Eugenics
a microscope and screen on a table with the screen displaying a microscopic image of some embryos

ISSCR: grave omission of age limit for embryo research

By Josephine Johnston, Françoise Baylis, & Henry T. Greely, Nature | 06.22.2021

We are researchers with differing views on the ethics of stem-cell and embryo research who nonetheless share deep concerns about...

Policies