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...

Human embryo on blue background
By David Cyranoski, Nature | 10.03.2018

Japan has issued draft guidelines that allow the use of gene-editing tools in human embryos. The proposal was released by...

Process of IVF--blue egg being injected on blue background
By Pamela Tsigdinos, Marie Claire | 10.01.2018

Shortly after her 40th birthday, Sarah Chamberlin and her husband Julio interviewed reproductive endocrinologists at four different clinics in...

Child getting his mouth swabbed by woman wearing red scrubs
By Jamie Williams AND Hayley Tsukayama, Electronic Frontier Foundation | 09.28.2018

California's kids now have common-sense protections against unwarranted DNA collection. Gov. Jerry Brown this week signed A.B. 1584, a...

Mosquito on skin with green background
By Michael Nedelman, CNN | 09.25.2018

Researchers have rendered a population of mosquitoes in a lab sterile using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 by homing in on...

White pencil made out of a strand of DNA, on a blue background
By Catherine Bliss, Zocalo Public Square | 09.25.2018

Over the past 25 years, we’ve become surprisingly comfortable with the idea that genes play a large role in our...

Red and yellow musical symbols on red background
By Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic | 09.25.2018

Genetic-ancestry tests are having a moment. Look no further than Spotify: On Thursday, the music-streaming service—as in, the service used...

Blue double strand DNA on white background
By Nathaniel Comfort, Nature | 09.25.2018

It’s never a good time for another bout of genetic determinism, but it’s hard to imagine a worse one than...

Mosquito standing on leaf/green background
By Rob Stein, National Public Radio | 09.24.2018

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that a controversial new kind of genetic engineering can rapidly spread a self-destructive...