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During his 2015 State of the Union address, then-President Barack Obama announced what he promised would be an ambitious public health project. “Tonight, I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes...

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...

Justin Schleede reaches onto a black lab bench to pick up a tray of small plastic tubes.

"These are saliva...

"If proven to be safe, we believe preventive gene editing could be one of the most important health technologies of...

Empty surgical bed
By Erin Brodwin, STAT | 01.04.2021

After a tumultuous three years marked by halting progress and high rates of employee turnover, Haven — the ambitious...

Shobita Parthasarathy
By Daniel Sarewitz, Public Books | 01.04.2021

To converse with Shobita Parthasarathy is to be enveloped in two kinds of warmth: that of a generous-spirited, energetic, and...

Down syndrome ultrasound
By Richard Gunderman, Psychology Today | 01.03.2021

A recently released study finds that Europe has reduced the number of babies born with Down syndrome by 54%. In...

Facial recognition
By Catherine Stinson, American Scientist | 01.01.2021

“Phrenology” has an old-fashioned ring to it. It sounds like it belongs in a history book, filed somewhere between bloodletting and...

By Eric T. Jeungst, AMA Journal of Ethics | 01.01.2021

Abstract

The Holocaust and the racial hygiene doctrine that helped rationalize it still overshadow contemporary debates about using gene editing...

Human genome graphic
By Megan Molteni , Wired | 12.30.2020

IN 1987, WHEN researchers first used the word genomics to describe the newly developing discipline of mapping DNA, Eric Green had...

IVF clinic equipment
By Helen Pidd, The Guardian | 12.29.2020

England’s first not-for-profit IVF clinic is to open in London next year, run by a charity better known for providing...

Home DNA kit
By Darrell Etherington, TechCrunch | 12.29.2020

DNA testing technology company 23andMe  has raised just shy of $82.5 million in new funding, from an offering of...