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...

A close up on the viewing end of a lab microscope.
By Elizabeth Cook (reporting), KPIX 5 CBS SF Bay Area (with CGS' Marcy Darnovsky) | 12.04.2018

(KPIX 5) – A Chinese scientist with Bay Area ties is reportedly missing, just days after unveiling a controversial genetic...

Two clear chairs sit side by side against a white wall.
By Paul Knoepfler, STAT | 12.03.2018

On a cold, drizzly night almost three years ago, I stood inside the nearly deserted Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C...

An illustration of a user video website with the graphic of a person with short hair in a suit standing beside.
By George Estreich, The Conversation | 12.03.2018

On Sunday, Nov. 25, the scientist He Jiankui claimed the birth of the world’s first genetically engineered children: twins, created...

A pool ball with the number fifteen in black letters on a red band of color.
By Ed Yong, The Atlantic [cites CGS] | 12.03.2018

Updated on December 4 at 10:55 a.m. ET.

Before last week, few people had heard the name He Jiankui. But...

A close-up on a light-skinned hand holding a tube to spit in for sending into a DNA analysis company and getting back results on genetic ancestry.
By Aviva Chomsky, TruthDig | 12.02.2018

Amid the barrage of racistanti-immigrant, and other attacks launched by President Trump and his administration in recent...

Francis COllins, director of the National Institutes of Health, is pictured sitting down in a white coat.
By Jon Cohen, Science | 11.30.2018

A “profoundly unfortunate,” “ill-considered,” “epic scientific misadventure” that “flout[ed] international ethical norms” and was “largely carried out in secret” with...

An old medical drawing shows 7 individual sperm overlapping one another.
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 11.29.2018

In the wild uproar around an experiment in China that claimed to have created twin girls whose genes were altered...

15 colored pencils stand upright spanning the color spectrum from yellow to green to blue to indigo to red to orange to brown to gray.
By Emily Mullin, Neo.Life/Medium | 11.29.2018

Jiankui He stunned the world this week when a report revealed he had edited genes in human embryos aiming to...