News

Bay Area Startups Want to Make Genetically Engineered Babies. What Could Go Wrong?

By Grace Won, KQED [with CGS' Katie Hasson] | 12.02.2025

In the U.S., it’s illegal to edit genes in human embryos with the intention of creating a genetically engineered baby. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Bay Area startups are focused on just that. It wouldn’t be the first...

Genetic Selection

Developments in gene-editing technology raise new ethical questions

By [cites CGS' Katie Hasson], KCBS Radio | 11.19.2025

This is Ask An Expert, where every weekday at 9:20am, KCBS Radio is giving you direct access to top experts in various fields. Today: Gene-editing technology allows scientists to work with DNA in unprecedented ways, but there are larger scientific...

U.S. Federal

Genetically Engineered Babies Are Banned. Tech Titans Are Trying to Make One Anyway.

By Emily Glazer, Katherine Long, Amy Dockser Marcus, The Wall Street Journal | 11.08.2025

For months, a small company in San Francisco has been pursuing a secretive project: the birth of a genetically engineered...

Genetic Selection

Who Gets to Procreate and Parent? A Black Feminist Critique of the Pronatalist Agenda

By Jallicia A. Jolly, Sydney Curtis and Nicole Sessions, Ms. Magazine | 10.17.2025

Pronatalism is an old idea with roots in eugenics and nationalism, that is now fashionable among far-right influencers and policymakers. They talk...

U.S. Federal

The world's leading transhumanists aren't the voices you need to listen to about "AI safety."

Under a Mask of AI Doomerism, the Familiar Face of Eugenics

By Émile P. Torres, Truthdig | 10.17.2025

The Internet philosopher Eliezer Yudkowsky has been predicting the end of the world for decades. In 1996, he confidently declared...

Society

magnifying glass and DNA on blue background

He Was Expected to Get Alzheimer’s 25 Years Ago. Why Hasn’t He?

By Pam Belluck, The New York Times | 10.17.2025

Before dawn on a March morning, Doug Whitney walked into a medical center 2,000 miles from home, about to transform...

Genomics

graphic of doctor looking at genes and making judgments

The race to create the perfect baby is creating an ethical mess

By Julia Black, MIT Technology Review | 10.16.2025

Consider, if you will, the translucent blob in the eye of a microscope: a human blastocyst, the biological specimen that emerges...

Genetic Selection

Donald Trump pointing finger and yelling at campaign rally

Trump moves to push employers on IVF coverage and lower fertility drug costs

By Carter Sherman, The Guardian | 10.16.2025

^{"Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the South Point Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada"...}

Policies

Exposure to any germs could've killed her. 11 years later, she's living a normal life thanks to a gene therapy treatment.

By Kaitlin Sullivan, NBC News | 10.15.2025

Two months after she was born, Eliana Nachem got a cough that wouldn’t go away. Three weeks later, she also...

Genomics

Inside FDA, career staffers describe how political pressure is influencing their work

By Lizzy Lawrence, Stat News | 10.14.2025

^{"Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Legends Event Center in Phoenix, Arizona."...}

Stem Cells

Time to end self-regulation of the Australian fertility industry

By Karin Hammarberg and Catherine Mills, BioNews | 10.13.2025

The Australian fertility industry has been rocked by several recent cases of embryo and sperm mix-ups. With a lack of...

Policies

baby graphic with arrows showing hierarchy

Will it be the Wild West for designer babies?

By Abby McCloskey, The Dallas Morning News | 10.10.2025

We Texans like to do things our way — leave some hide on the fence rather than stay corralled, as...

Genetic Selection