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

The Future of Bioethics: It Shouldn't Take a Pandemic

By Larry R. Churchill Nancy M. P. King Gail E. Henderson, Hastings Center Report | 06.29.2020

Abstract

The Covid‐19 pandemic has concentrated bioethics attention on the “lifeboat ethics” of rationing and fair allocation of scarce medical...

China cuts Uighur births with IUDs, abortion, sterilization

By AP, Associated Press | 06.28.2020

^{Photo by Marc Curtis from Pexels}

The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and...

Other Countries

In China, single women are banned from freezing their eggs. Now one woman is fighting for change

By Cecily Huang, ABC [Australia] | 06.27.2020

When Teresa Xu stood in a Beijing courtroom last December to demand equal access to reproductive rights, she knew she...

Assisted Reproduction

A DNA Mix-Up Involving a Washing Machine Kept a Man in Jail for 3 Years

By Heather Murphy, The New York Times | 06.26.2020

As washing machines go, the one that contributed to Roy Verret’s capital murder charge was pretty average. White, Whirlpool, reliable...

Genetic Selection

Two patients die in now-halted study of Audentes gene therapy

By Ben Fidler, BioPharma Dive | 06.26.2020

Dive Brief:

Two children with a rare neuromuscular disease have died after receiving a high dose of a gene therapy...

Human Genetic Modification

Silhouette of hand placing ballot in box

Directors of the California Stem Cell Agency Back $5.5 Billion Stem Cell Ballot Measure -- With One Exception

By David Jensen, California Stem Cell Report | 06.26.2020

Directors of the financially strapped, California stem cell agency this morning endorsed a $5.5 billion bond measure to refinance the...

Policies

Race Is Real, But It’s Not Genetic

By Alan Goodman, Discover | 06.25.2020

^{Carl Linnaeus, who defined four varieties of humans in the 18th century

Portrait by Alexander Roslin; cropped photo by Nationalmuseum, Sweden}

A friend...

Society

CRISPR gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal mayhem

By Heidi Ledford, Nature | 06.25.2020

A suite of experiments that use the gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9 to modify human embryos have revealed how the process can...

Human Genetic Modification