News

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...

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...

Adapted from Mitochondrial DNA at
National Human Genome Research Institute

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

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

A strand of DNA is featured. The upper right corner is highlighted.
By Matthew Cobb, New York Review of Books | 07.13.2017

In recent years, two new genetic technologies have started a scientific and medical revolution. One, relatively well known, is the...

A colorful DNA sequencing map (Shaury Nash, Creative Commons via Flikr)
By Kristen V. Brown, Gizmodo | 07.06.2017

Recently, a kerfuffle in the world of CRISPR illustrated just how easily money—and our perception of it—can impact science.

In...

Three cotton swabs lay inside of a DNA testing kit.
By Barbara J. King, NPR | 07.06.2017

In a new book, University of North Carolina, Charlotte anthropologist Jonathan Marks says that racism in science is alive and...

Portrait photo of Jeff Sessions during a testimony.
By Susan R. Paisner, Washington Post [Letter to the Editor] | 07.04.2017

I suppose by this point I shouldn’t be surprised by anything the Trump administration does relating to science. But as...

Side view angle of the Senate side of the US Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
By Charlotte Huff, Kaiser Health News | 06.29.2017

Two years ago, Cheasanee Huette, a 20-year-old college student in Northern California, decided to find out if she was a...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions stands behind podium at a press conference. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly are looking towards him from the side.
By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post | 06.29.2017

Leading U.S. science organizations called on the Justice Department to renew an abandoned partnership with independent scientists to help raise...

A female scientist looks closely at a dye marker on agarose gel used to separate DNA
By Jim Kozubek, STAT | 06.26.2017

The ruckus over the CRISPR gene-editing system hides a dark reality: its high cost may make it unaffordable and questions...

Four transparent panels displaying letters "ATCG (representing DNA bases).
By Sharon Begley, STAT | 06.26.2017

For all the promises of genomics ushering in a new era in medicine, with scientists regularly urging people to get...