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

Your Face Is Not Your Own

By Kashmir Hill, The New York Times | 03.18.2021

^{Photo by Dan Nelson on Unsplash}

In May 2019, an agent at the Department of Homeland Security received a trove...

U.S. Federal

Criminal defendants still cite a ‘gene for violence.’ It doesn’t exist.

By Nita Farahany and Gene E. Robinson, The Washington Post | 03.18.2021

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled last month on an extraordinarily important question: Should a criminal defendant be allowed...

Genomics

Human Genetics Needs an Antiracism Plan

By Lea K. Davis, Scientific American | 03.17.2021

The study of human genetics emerged from a deep curiosity of our human inheritance that was firmly rooted in white...

Scientists Create Living Entities In The Lab That Closely Resemble Human Embryos

By Rob Stein, NPR | 03.17.2021

For decades, science has been trying to unlock the mysteries of how a single cell becomes a fully formed human...

Human Genetic Modification

A mouse embryo has been grown in an artificial womb—humans could be next

By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 03.17.2021

The photographs alone tell a fantastic story—a mouse embryo, complete with beating heart cells, a head, and the beginning of...

Animal Biotechnologies

Scientists Grow Mouse Embryos in a Mechanical Womb

By Gina Kolata, The New York Times | 03.17.2021

The mouse embryos looked perfectly normal. All their organs were developing as expected, along with their limbs and circulatory and...

Animal Biotechnologies

Scientists plan to drop the 14-day embryo rule, a key limit on stem cell research

By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 03.16.2021

In 2016, Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz grew human embryos in a lab dish for longer than anyone had before. Bathing the tiny...

Assisted Reproduction

The Threat That CRISPR Poses to Disabled People

By Sandy Sufian, BRINK | 03.15.2021

^{Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash}

The gene-editing technology CRISPR promises enormous potential as a therapeutic for curing illnesses, including...

Society