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...

Black and white postcard ca. 1910 showing the Sonoma State Home (Hospital).
By Nicole L. Novak and Natalie Lira, The Conversation | 03.22.2018

In 1942, 18-year-old Iris Lopez, a Mexican-American woman, started working at the Calship Yards in Los Angeles. Working on the...

Picture of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
By Samantha Pearson, The Wall Street Journal | 03.22.2018

SÃO PAULO—With “jewel-tone eyes,” blond hair and a “smattering of light freckles,” Othello looks nothing like most Brazilians, the majority...

Two babies wearing hats
By Sumathi Reddy, The Wall Street Jounral | 03.21.2018

It was her last chance.

MaryJo Dunn had been trying to get pregnant through in-vitro fertilization for 20 months.

At...

Silhouettes of 4 people sitting in chairs. Word bubbles suggest that they are exchanging ideas.
By Simon Burall, Nature | 03.21.2018

Over the past three years, thousands of articles have been published about editing genes and genomes. Apart from a public...

A line drawing of a globe with a face. One eye is looking out a spyglass.
By Sheila Jasanoff and J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Nature | 03.21.2018

In August 2017, scientists reported that they had used the gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9 to correct a mutation in viable human...

University Hospitals building in Cleveland, Ohio
By Ginger Christ, The Plain Dealer [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky] | 03.21.2018

CLEVELAND, Ohio - After two recent failures of cryotanks storing eggs and embryos, a number of agencies and organizations are...

microscopic image of human embryonic stem cells
By David Cyranoski, Nature | 03.20.2018

Dieter Egli was just about to start graduate school in 1998 when researchers first worked out how to derive human...

Tubes of human blood
By Gina Kolata, The New York Times | 03.19.2018

This spring, the National Institutes of Health will start recruiting participants for one of the most ambitious medical projects ever...