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...

Human embryo on blue background
By Julianna LeMieux, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 04.01.2019

An anonymous incubator space just off the New Jersey Turnpike is the unlikely setting for Genomic Prediction, a genetic testing...

Several fingerprints stamped on a white background
By Clive Thompson, Smithsonian | 04.01.2019

At 9:00 a.m. last December 14, a man in Orange County, California, discovered he’d been robbed. Someone had swiped his...

Gel DNA plate with UV illumination
By Jan Ransom and Ashley Southall, The New York Times | 03.31.2019

When Karina Vetrano was found beaten and strangled in a Queens park nearly three years ago, the New York Police...

Blue double helix DNA strand on dark blue background
By Landon J. Getz and Graham Dellaire, The Hastings Center | 03.29.2019

On March 13, Nature published a call for a global moratorium on heritable human genome editing signed by several prominent...

Padlock attached to a DNA strand on a blue background.
By Karen Gullo, Electronic Frontier Foundation [cites CGS and Pete Shanks] | 03.29.2019

Analyzing and indefinitely keeping the DNA profiles of thousands of Californians arrested for felonies, but never charged with a crime...

Three test tubes nect to gloved hand
By Elizabeth Joh, Slate | 03.29.2019

Sometimes a marketing pivot serves a truth-telling function. A new television ad for the consumer DNA database FamilyTreeDNA asks the...

Brown mouse sitting on gloved hand
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 03.26.2019

Since its invention, CRISPR has let scientists introduce DNA changes at specific locations in a genome. Often these precise changes...

By Anna Maria Romero, The Independent | 03.21.2019

Mumbai—A Malaysian national has been detained at the Mumbai International Airport after it was discovered that he was carrying live...