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...

Regular and golden rice
By The Stop Golden Rice Network, Independent Science News | 08.07.2020

The push for corporate-led solutions to hunger and malnutrition is alarming. In particular, Golden Rice is now being proposed as...

Carl Linnaeus
By Brian Lovett, Undark | 08.06.2020

WE ARE LIVING through a period of cultural upheaval. Around the world, statues of iconic men who held racist beliefs and...

American Covid-19 lockdown
By Ed Yong, The Atlantic | 08.04.2020

How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the...

Gene editing process
By Catherine Shaffer, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 08.03.2020

Just seven years ago, the Broad Institute’s Feng Zhang, PhD, and Harvard geneticist George Church, PhD, separately demonstrated that in...

CRISPR genome engineering
By Stuart A. Newman and Tina Stevens, Medium | 08.03.2020

Studies in animals, including one described recently in Wired, show that the gene manipulation technique CRISPR has a habit...

Robert Edwards
By Michael Cook, BioEdge | 08.02.2020

If the “cancel culture” is gunning for eugenicists, there are more than enough candidates. One of the most prominent is...

By Marcy Darnovsky, Issues in Science and Technology | 07.31.2020

In this interview as in past public comments, Jennifer Doudna opens the door to using the CRISPR platform she helped...

By Caitlin Harrington, Wired | 07.30.2020

JEFF JOHNSON WAS in a hurry. His lunch break was nearing its end, and he needed to catch the 6 train...