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 Inflated Promise of Genomic Medicine

By Erik Parens, Scientific American | 06.01.2020

Since its birth 30 years ago, proponents of the Human Genome Project have promised that genetics research would yield untold...

Addressing Racism’s Toll: My Minneapolis Experience

By Michele Goodwin, Ms. | 06.01.2020

_{Photo by munshots on Unsplash}

The past few days have been traumatizing for our nation, with the murder of George...

Eugenics

Qatar virus tracing app stirs rare privacy backlash

By Gregory Walton, AFP | 05.24.2020

Doha (AFP) - Privacy concerns over Qatar's coronavirus contact tracing app, a tool that is mandatory on pain of prison...

Policies

Are surrogate and IVF babies ‘essential’ in a pandemic?

By Amrita Pande, Mail & Guardian | 05.22.2020

A recent New York Times article heightened the sense of dystopia of the world that we seem to be...

'All the psychoses of US history': how America is victim-blaming the coronavirus dead

By Lois Beckett, The Guardian | 05.21.2020

_{Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash}

Why do Americans represent less than 5% of the world’s population but nearly a...

America’s Patchwork Pandemic Is Fraying Even Further

By Ed Yong, The Atlantic | 05.20.2020

here was supposed to be a peak. But the stark turning point, when the number of daily COVID-19 cases in the...

U.S. Federal

Inside America’s Horrifying Modern-Day Eugenics Movement

By Cassie Da Costa, The Daily Beast | 05.18.2020

Director Erika Cohn’s new film, Belly of the Beast, part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival which goes...

U.S. Federal

United States relaxes rules for biotech crops

By Erik Stokstad, Science | 05.18.2020

^{Photo by Erwan Hesry via Unsplash.com}

A major change to U.S. regulation of biotech will exempt some gene-edited plants from...

Animal Biotechnologies