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

Disease Has Never Been Just Disease for Native Americans

By Jeffrey Ostler, The Atlantic | 04.29.2020

As the death toll from COVID-19 mounts, people of color are clearly at greater risk than others. Among the most...

Eugenics

Genetic Engineering Could Make a COVID-19 Vaccine in Months Rather Than Years

By Charles Schmidt, Scientific American | 04.29.2020

On January 10, when Chinese researchers published the genome of a mysterious, fast-spreading, virus, it confirmed Dan Barouch’s greatest worry...

Genomics

COVID-19 Immunity Testing: A Passport to Inequity

By Françoise Baylis and Natalie Kofler, Issues in Science and Technology | 04.29.2020

As COVID-19 case numbers start to plateau in various places, some governments are now focusing on how best to ease...

Bioethics

Did this virus come from a lab? Maybe not — but it exposes the threat of a biowarfare arms race

By Sam Husseini, Salon | 04.24.2020

There has been no scientific finding that the novel coronavirus was bioengineered, but its origins are not entirely clear. Deadly pathogens discovered...

Fertility clinics push back

By Alison Motluk, HeyReprotech Newsletter | 04.21.2020

Several of the fertility world's top advisory bodies have strongly urged fertility clinics to stop or severely scale back services...

Assisted Reproduction

blue and black double helix superimposed on map of the world

Ethics and Global Governance of Human Germline Genome Editing: The Problem of Techno-Scientific Colonialist Paternalism

By Gabriela Arguedas-Ramírez, CRISPR Journal (paywall) | 04.21.2020

Abstract

I want to enrich the debate about the ethics and governance of human germline editing (HGE) by emphasizing an...

Policies

Doctors facing grim choice over ventilators told to put patients with disabilities at the back of the line

By Deborah Hellman, The Conversation | 04.20.2020

As cases related to the novel coronavirus continue to strain hospitals, doctors face difficult choices about rationing scarce medical resources...

Bioethics

I Donated My DNA to Help Stop the Coronavirus

By Ronnie S. Stangler, Medium | 04.19.2020

Last night, I entered intimate personal health information into a database that can be accessed by anyone. This is not...

Genomics