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

How to create a more inclusive future post-COVID

By Alice Wong, Mashable | 03.03.2021

There are two major lessons to be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Alice Wong, founder and director of...

Bioethics

The New Wave of Anti-Trans Legislation Sure Looks a Lot Like Eugenics

By Evan Urquhart, Slate | 03.03.2021

^{Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash}

A huge wave of anti-transgender legislation is coursing through statehouses in the early months...

U.S. States

The beautiful science of embryology

By Kate Womersley, Prospect | 03.03.2021

It’s a familiar story: the virile sperm fights its path through the hostile uterus to the passive female egg. After...

Assisted Reproduction

CRISPR rivals put patents aside to help in fight against Covid-19

By Walter Isaacson, STAT | 03.03.2021

In early January 2020, Feng Zhang, a gene-editing researcher at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, started getting emails...

Human Genetic Modification

The World Must Regulate Tech Before It’s Too Late

By Vivek Wadhwa, Tarun Wadhwa, Foreign Policy | 03.01.2021

A century’s worth of change is about to be squeezed into a single decade. By 2030, entire industries are likely...

Human Genetic Modification

How the Los Angeles Times shilled for the racist eugenics movement

By Alexandra Minna Stern, Los Angeles Times | 02.28.2021

Last month, Caltech announced that the names of six men with historical ties to the university would be removed from...

U.S. Federal

Was “science” on the ballot?

By Stephen Hilgartner, J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Sheila Jasanoff, Science | 02.26.2021

On 7 November 2020, moments before Kamala Harris and Joe Biden began their victory speeches, giant screens flanking the stage...

U.S. Federal

Decoding the CRISPR-baby stories

By J. Benjamin Hurlbut, MIT Technology Review | 02.24.2021

The conventional story of CRISPR genome editing is one of heroic power and promise with an element of peril. That...

Human Genetic Modification