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...

DNA profile illuminated by a light.
By Nathan Tempey, Gothamist | 06.16.2017

A state commission voted this morning to adopt a controversial policy allowing police to perform familial DNA searches in certain...

Close-up of an adult hand gently touching a baby's curled up hand.
By Antonio Regelado, MIT Technology Review | 06.15.2017

Chinese parents can now decode the genomes of their healthy newborns, revealing disease risks as well as the likelihood of

...
A pot of boiling water cooks two corns.
By Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post | 06.13.2017

JOHNSTON, Iowa — Green stalks have only just begun to sprout in the test fields where biotech giant DuPont Pioneer is...

Microscopic photo of intracytoplasmic sperm injection.
By Emily Mullin, MIT Technology Review [cites Marcy Darnovsky] | 06.13.2017

A startup called Darwin Life says it will use a controversial fertility technique to help forty-somethings get pregnant for $100,000

...
A test tube rack is filled with test tubes. A gloved hand lifts one of the open test tubes, positioned to read the label.
By Francie Diep, Pacific Standard | 06.12.2017

Advances in DNA profiling bring up some interesting questions.

Despite what procedural dramas might lead you to believe, the DNA...

Three double helices are vertically positioned following each other.
By Kristen V. Brown, Gizmodo | 06.12.2017

When people talk about the gene-editing technology CRISPR, it’s usually accompanied by adjectives like “revolutionary” or “world-changing...

Landscape photo of the US Supreme Court building. with the sun and blue sky above.
By Osagie Obasogie, The Atlantic | 06.12.2017

Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws banning interracial marriage, but the issues involved in the

...
Hall displaying several Nobel Prize Laureates.
By Kat Eschner, Smithsonian Magazine | 06.09.2017

The Repository for Germinal Choice was supposed to produce super-kids from the sperm of white high achievers

Robert Klark Graham...