News

More Americans are turning to surrogacy to build their families, as the practice becomes more common and more publicly discussed.

Why it matters: As surrogacy becomes more visible and accessible, ethical, legal and cultural tensions become harder to ignore...

This is the first part of the 14th 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. The series is organized by...

Without a federal law, surrogacy in the U.S. is governed by a patchwork of state regulations/

Why it matters: Confusing...

"MC0_8230" via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by 2.0 

This report documents a deliberate assault on disabled people in...

By Robert I. Field, Anthony W. Orlando, and Arnold J. Rosoff, Philadelphia Inquirer | 01.28.2021

At this very moment, someone, somewhere, might be exposing your intimate genetic data. They probably don’t realize they’re doing it...

DNA
By Søren Hough, SFTP | 01.28.2021

By 2018, it was clear that CRISPR had spun out of control. In the United States, one biotech company managed...

Wall Street data
By Matthew Ponsford, Neo.Life | 01.28.2021

We’re beginning to get a picture of the people who might have a goldmine in their genome.

The paradox of...

Baby genome
By Eben Kirksey, Sapiens | 01.27.2021

Surreal artwork in the hotel lobby—a gorilla peeking out of a peeled orange, smoking a cigarette; an astronaut riding a...

Virginia State Capitol
By Ellen Wayland-Smith, Boston Review | 01.27.2021

Image: Skip Plitt - C'ville Photography,
CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

When Elizabeth Catte began researching Pure America...

Bare jail cell
By Jacob Stern, Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic | 01.27.2021

The victims of the so-called Golden State Killer lived in subdivisions and middle-class neighborhoods. They included a nurse, a medical...

Hospital room
By Kristen V Brown , Bloomberg | 01.27.2021

DNA-testing company 23andMe Inc. has launched a new tool that aims to predict an infected person’s risk of developing a...

Eric Lander
By Eli Hager, The Marshall Project | 01.26.2021

This image is distributed under the CC-BY 2.0 license.

In November 1988, at a secretive conference center in the...