News

During his 2015 State of the Union address, then-President Barack Obama announced what he promised would be an ambitious public health project. “Tonight, I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes...

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...

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

"These are saliva...

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

Illustration of CRISPR Cas9 gene editing technology in action. An orange strand of DNA is split apart and a pink strand is inserted into the gap.
By Kurt Cobb, Resilience | 05.20.2018

Margaret Atwood’s 2003 novel Oryx and Crake depicts the evolution and aftermath of a bioengineered global catastrophe. Whether Atwood at...

Image of the planet Earth from space.
By Megan Molteni, Wired | 05.18.2018

Yanny or Laurel—could the secret to which word you hear be in your DNA? It’s a notion someone pitched at...

Front of Ohio State House. Lawn, building, and two American flags.
By Rebecca B. Reingold and Lawrence O. Gostin, JAMA | 05.18.2018

In December 2017, Ohio passed into law legislation that prohibited physicians from performing abortions if the pregnant woman’s decision was...

A row of brightly colored blue, purple, yellow and red eggs sits in the snow
By Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post | 05.18.2018

When 27-year-old Rita Ora announced recently that she had frozen her eggs, she joined a long list of celebrities touting...

A genealogy chart made up of pink and blue rectangles used by Snohomish County Sheriff to identify suspect in 1987 murder case.
By Heather Murphy, The New York Times | 05.18.2018

In 1987, Jay Cook, 20, and Tanya Van Cuylenborg, 18, a couple from Canada, were brutally killed while they were...

Illustration of a tree draped with a banner that reads "EUGENICS." The roots of the tree have the names of various disciplines on them, e.g. genetics, genealogy, biology, history.
By The Times Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times | 05.18.2018

As appalling as it sounds today, the practice of sterilizing mentally ill women and men to prevent them from passing...

A hand in latex gloves holds a row of small plastic tubes between thumb and index finger
By Peter Aldhous, Buzzfeed | 05.17.2018

The remarkable sleuthing method that tracked down the Golden State Killer was not a one-off. A company in Virginia is...

Close up of the feet of a newborn baby laying on a white bed in a hospital. The baby has a hospital tag around its right ankle.
By CBS Sacramento, CBS News | 05.14.2018

DNA is back in the spotlight, cracking cold cases. But questions are being raised after the state spent decades collecting...