News

A Chinese scientist horrified the world in 2018 when he revealed he had secretly engineered the birth of the world's first gene-edited babies.

His work was reviled as reckless and unethical because, among other reasons, gene-editing was so new...

INTRODUCTION

Baby bonuses. Motherhood medals. Fertility tracking. You may have heard of these policy proposals as solutions from the Trump administration to help encourage women to have more children.

Besides falling short of ensuring that people have what they need...

Adapted from Mitochondrial DNA at
National Human Genome Research Institute

Recently, media outlets around the world have been reporting on...

A newly available kind of genetic testing, called polygenic embryo screening, promises to screen for conditions that can include cancer...

biodiversity DNA graphic
By Ben Johnson, Nature | 02.14.2025

A London-based biotech has amassed the world’s largest ethically sourced foundational biodiversity database for training artificial intelligence (AI) by setting...

lab equipment
By Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic | 02.14.2025

Photo by Hans Reniers on Unsplash

For decades in the united states, scientists and government officials have coexisted in a...

eugenics graphic
By Lily Hu, Los Angeles Review of Books | 02.13.2025

IN MAY 1921, the organizers of the Second International Congress of Eugenics assured the public that its conference, to be...

global egg trade graphic
By Nino Tarkhnishvili, Radio Free Europ | 02.13.2025

When Na, a Thai woman, saw a Facebook advertisement promising work as a surrogate mother in Georgia, it seemed almost...

gene therapy graphic
By Robin Fields, ProPublica | 02.12.2025

Vincent Gaynor remembers, almost to the minute, when he realized his part in birthing the breakthrough gene therapy Zolgensma had...

ivf graphic
By Alice Margaria and Florina Markwalder, BioNews | 02.10.2025

On 30 January 2025, the Swiss Federal Council announced plans for a comprehensive reform of the Reproductive Medicine Act (RMA)...

Asilomar State Beach photograph
By Tina Stevens and Stuart A. Newman, A Bigger Conversation | 02.06.2025

Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash

In June 1971, Robert Pollack, a young researcher at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, phoned...