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...

Stem cells under microscope dyed blue
By Usha Lee McFarling, Los Angeles Times | 01.23.2019

In case you haven’t noticed, stem cell clinics are popping up everywhere. There are hundreds across the country, especially in...

Close-up of macaque monkey
By Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Gizmodo | 01.23.2019

Chinese researchers have cloned five gene-edited monkeys with a host of genetic disease symptoms, according to two scientific papers published...

Blue double helix DNA on black background
By Pam Belluck, The New York Times | 01.23.2019

A year ago, Dr. Matthew Porteus, a genetics researcher at Stanford, received an out-of-the-blue email from a young Chinese scientist...

Photo of several chromosomes all dyed different colors
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 01.22.2019

Doctors say they’ve helped an infertile woman become pregnant by combining her egg with that of a donor—another successful use of...

A strand of DNA and a computer animated child's face in profile with white skin and blonde hair
By Jim Kozubek, Scientific American | 01.21.2019

A Chinese researcher recently disrupted the CCR5 gene, which builds a protein that acts as an entryway that HIV uses...

He Jiankui sitting and speaking into a microphone with a panel of speakers
By Dennis Normile, Science | 01.21.2019

He Jiankui, the Chinese researcher who claimed to have edited the genomes of twin baby girls in a heritable way—and...

Photo of He Jiankui in a lab
By Austin Ramzy and Sui-Lee Wee, The New York Times | 01.21.2019

HONG KONG — A Chinese scientist who claimed to have created the world’s first genetically edited babies “seriously violated” state...

Bensalem police car parked in front of fence
By Heather Murphy, The New York Times | 01.21.2019

BENSALEM, Pa. — They call it the “magic box.” Its trick is speedy, nearly automated processing of DNA.

“It’s groundbreaking...