News

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...

Colorful bands indicating DNA test results against a dark blue background
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 11.08.2019

Anxious couples are approaching fertility doctors in the US with requests for a hotly debated new genetic test being called...

A row of babies in hospital cots swaddled in pink and blue blankets
By Clare Wilson, New Scientist | 11.07.2019

Plans for the National Health Service to sequence the DNA of every baby born in the UK, starting with a...

a doctor with white hair explains a medical procedure to a young white couple with brown hair
By Kelly Glass, Medium Elemental [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky] | 11.06.2019

When Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos and her husband were trying to conceive with in vitro fertilization (IVF), they were presented with...

Human egg being penetrated by a needle for IVF
By Sharon Begley, STAT | 11.05.2019

By the time Sarah Chamberlin’s fertility doctor declared her genes “incompatible” with her husband’s and said the clash might be...

Office building with 23andMe logo
By Kashmir Hill and Heather Murphy, The New York Times | 11.05.2019

For police officers around the country, the genetic profiles that 20 million people have uploaded to consumer DNA sites represent...

Fingerprints and data code on a blue background
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 10.30.2019

A private DNA ancestry database that’s been used by police to catch criminals is a security risk from which a...

By Sarah Franklin, Nature | 10.29.2019

In the autumn of 1869, Charles Darwin was hard at work revising the fifth edition of On The Origin of...

Rainbow double helix
By Emily Maxmen, Nature | 10.29.2019

Joseph Vitti’s stomach turned when he opened a link an acquaintance had sent him. It took him to an app...