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...

Wooden gavel
By Associated Press, Omaha World-Herald | 02.18.2018

DES MOINES (AP) — The birth mother of an 18-month-old girl who agreed to be paid as a surrogate to...

Basketball player, Stephen Curry, shooting
By Thomas H. Murray, The Daily Beast | 02.18.2018

The World Anti-Doping Agency’s fundamental purpose is preserving “the spirit of sport.” In its official Code, WADA describes that spirit...

Male and Female symbol
By Rebecca Gale, Refinery29 [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky] | 02.16.2018
It was 2011 and Kathryn Taylor was ready to get pregnant — with a boy. “I wanted a boy first...
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...