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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...

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

Backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and his husband, along with Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, the startup—called...

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

This is the 10th installment in the Legacies of Eugenics series, which features essays by leading thinkers devoted to exploring...

Three x-ray brain scans.
By Emily Mullin, MIT Technology Review | 02.15.2018

After 25 years, scientists are starting to make progress against the devastating illness.

For 15 years, Michelle Dardengo watched helplessly...

Picture of DNA
By Marcy Darnovsky, Leah Lowthorp, and Katie Hasson, OpenGlobalRights | 02.15.2018

What do recent advances in molecular genetics have to do with human rights? Quite a lot, it turns out. And...

An undifferentiated cell being differentiated into different cells. A switch is used to symbolize the changes made that allow the cell to differentiate differently.
By David Jensen, California Stem Cell Report [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky] | 02.14.2018

California is counting its first royalties from a 13-year-old effort to develop stem cell cures and has declared that it...

Buildings in Kiev, Ukraine
By Kevin Ponniah, BBC | 02.13.2018

Ukraine, one of Europe's poorest nations, is fast becoming the place to go for people desperate to find a surrogate...

Close-up view of microscope lens
By Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic | 02.12.2018

BOSTON—Out on an old Navy dry dock, a biotech company called Ginkgo Bioworks is growing genetically modified organisms by the...

A calculator and eye glasses rest on piles of paper
By Paul Kleutghen, David Mitchell, Aaron S. Kesselheim, Mehdi Najafzadeh, and Ameet Sarpatwari, HealthAffairs | 02.08.2018

In a system in which life-saving drugs are developed with direct and indirect taxpayer support and afforded market protection through ...

Pencil above DNA strand (pencil represents gene editing)
By Matthew Herper, Forbes | 02.07.2018

Jim Wilson has been one of gene therapy's pioneers. Now he's raising concerns about the safety of a technology he...

A symbol for cryptocurrrency Bitcoin is shown as a coin falling against a solid black background.
By Emily Mullin, MIT Technology Review | 02.07.2018

People will be able to earn cryptocurrency in exchange for letting pharma companies use their data.

Cryptocurrency in exchange for...