News

The quest to create gene-edited babies gets a reboot

By Rob Stein, NPR [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 08.06.2025

A Chinese scientist horrified the world in 2018 when he revealed he had secretly engineered the birth of the world's first gene-edited babies.

His work was reviled as reckless and unethical because, among other reasons, gene-editing was so new...

Genetic Selection

Baby Bonuses and Motherhood Medals: Why We Shouldn’t Trust the Pronatalist Movement

By Staff, National Women's Law Center | 08.13.2025

INTRODUCTION

Baby bonuses. Motherhood medals. Fertility tracking. You may have heard of these policy proposals as solutions from the Trump administration to help encourage women to have more children.

Besides falling short of ensuring that people have what they need...

Human Genetic Modification

We Don’t Know if the Babies Born From Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy Will Still Develop Mitochondrial Disease

By Katherine Drabiak, Journal of Medical Ethics Forum | 08.07.2025

^{Adapted from Mitochondrial DNA at

National Human Genome Research Institute}

Recently, media outlets around the world have been reporting on...

Assisted Reproduction

Can doctors test embryos for autism? And should they?

By Brittany Luse, Liam McBain, and Neena Pathak, NPR [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 05.28.2025

A newly available kind of genetic testing, called polygenic embryo screening, promises to screen for conditions that can include cancer...

Genetic Selection

Black and white image of a large house on a plain plot of land that says at the bottom in small letters "Virginia state colony for epileptics and feeble-minded"

Emma, Carrie, Vivian: How A Family Became A Test Case For Forced Sterilizations

By Jennifer Schmidt and Thomas Lu, NPR | 04.23.2018

The day was June 4, 1924. A dark-haired girl, just 17 years old, was admitted to the Virginia State Colony...

U.S. States

Double stranded helix inside a building with windows surrounding it.

In human cells, scientists find DNA that looks like a twisted knot instead of a double helix

By Deborah Netburn, Los AngelesTimes | 04.23.2018

Biology textbooks may be due for a rewrite.

For the first time, scientists have detected a DNA structure inside living...

Technologies

A pair of hands are typing on a laptop computer with lines of code across it. There is a black mug with white writing on it in the background of the picture.

23ANDME Wants You To Share Even More Health Data

By Megan Molteni, Wired | 04.20.2018

Almost exactly a year ago, 23andMe earned the right to tell people what diseases might be lurking in their DNA. Since then...

Public Opinion

A women with blonde hair and a white lab coat is sitting at a lab bench plating bacteria on a red medium agar plate.

How Many Genes Do Cells Need? Maybe Almost All of Them

By Veronique Greenwood, Quanta Magazine | 04.19.2018

Technologies

Bioethics committee reviewing stand on genetic modification for mitochondrial disorders

By Jalelah Abu Baker, Channel News Asia | 04.19.2018

SINGAPORE: The Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) is reviewing its current stand against genetic modification with regards to genetic disorders passed...

Human Genetic Modification