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...

Oocyte with zona pellucida
By Jon Cohen, Science | 06.13.2019

In a bold rejection of the widespread sentiment—and regulations in many countries—that no one should alter the genome of a...

Gloria Steinem speaking in front of an American flag
By Vivian Wang, The New York Times | 06.12.2019

The proposal to legalize surrogacy in New York was presented as an unequivocal progressive ideal, a remedy to a ban...

illustration of many faces having mugshots taken
By Elizabeth Joh, The New York Times | 06.11.2019

Someone broke into a church in Centerville, Utah, last November and attacked the organist who was practicing there. In March...

Egg surrounded by sperm
By Editors, Nature | 06.11.2019

A worldwide debate is under way on how to regulate gene editing in human sperm, eggs or embryos.

A researcher...

logo for the journal nature
By David Cyranoski, Nature | 06.10.2019

A Russian scientist says he is planning to produce gene-edited babies, an act that would make him only the second...

An embryo being fertilized
By Katie Hasson, The Hill | 06.10.2019

Late last year, scientist He Jiankui announced the birth of the world’s first genetically modified babies. He deployed a...

Public debate
By Marcy Darnovsky, ISSUES in Science and Technology | 06.05.2019

As the debate about heritable genome editing unfolds, divergent perspectives are coming more clearly into view. Those who see it...

U.S. Supreme Court
By Kelly Servick, Science | 06.04.2019

A congressional proposal that would overturn a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that barred the patenting of human genes and...