News

Justin Schleede reaches onto a black lab bench to pick up a tray of small plastic tubes.

"These are saliva samples as well as blood," says Schleede, a geneticist who runs Herasight Inc.'s lab in Morrisville, N.C. "We also...

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...

"If proven to be safe, we believe preventive gene editing could be one of the most important health technologies of...

WILLIAM BATESON, a foundational figure in the science of genetics at the turn of the last century, once recounted the...

stem cell
By Susan Dominus, The New York Times Magazine | 04.27.2026

Why are babies born young? The most natural phenomenon on earth is actually hard to explain — at least...

Image that represents AI
By Emile P. Torres, Truthdig | 04.27.2026

The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is on a messianic mission to bring about the singularity, the moment at...

graphic showing preference for certain genes
By Alexandre Piquard, Le Monde [cites Katie Hasson] | 04.27.2026

"Si on en prouve la sûreté, nous croyons que l’édition préventive du génome pourrait être l’une des technologies de santé...

image of DNA on a dark background
By Marcelo Jauregui-Volpe, Wired | 04.24.2026

Two companies that launched last year with plans to create gene-edited babies have already shut down, citing money issues and...

Image of a man pointing at his ear.
By Rob Stein, NPR | 04.23.2026

The Food and Drug Administration approved the first gene therapy to restore hearing for people who were born deaf.

The...

gene therapy graphic
By Sriparna Roy, Reuters | 04.23.2026

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Regeneron’s gene therapy ‌for a rare genetic form of deafness, the company...

"superbaby" flies above DNA double helix
By John Donvan, WNYC and Open to Debate [with Marcy Darnovsky] | 04.23.2026

For complete introduction see Substack

Some call it eugenics, an unsettling step toward a world of “designer babies” reserved for...

sperm on blue background
By Emily Mullin, Wired | 04.23.2026

A STARTUP OUT of Utah, Paterna Biosciences, says it has successfully grown functional human sperm in a lab and used the...