News

More Americans are turning to surrogacy to build their families, as the practice becomes more common and more publicly discussed.

Why it matters: As surrogacy becomes more visible and accessible, ethical, legal and cultural tensions become harder to ignore...

This is the first part of the 14th 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. The series is organized by...

Without a federal law, surrogacy in the U.S. is governed by a patchwork of state regulations/

Why it matters: Confusing...

"MC0_8230" via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by 2.0 

This report documents a deliberate assault on disabled people in...

A pregnant woman lays on a bed of blankets with her arm extended, as another woman with medical tools touches her arm.
By Sharmila Rudrappa, The Conversation | 10.23.2017

Would you pay someone US$150,000 to have your baby?

The high cost of surrogacy in the U.S. has pushed many...

Landscape photo of the CA Capitol Building, against a blue sky and surrounded by trees,\.
By Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times | 10.20.2017

On Oct. 2, California took a major step to address an emerging public health crisis. That’s the day Gov. Jerry...

An empty, sealed bag labeled as evidence.
By Ashley Southall, New York Times | 10.19.2017

Freezing winds whipped the snow-covered coastline of Brooklyn’s Calvert Vaux Park on the day two years ago that a severed...

Close-up of an eye retina.
By Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic | 10.19.2017

And she isn’t the only one.

Last year, a 77-year-old woman traveled to a clinic in Georgia to have stem...

Blueprint sketch of a human head against a grid.
By Ilya Sutskever and Dario Amodei, Wall Street Journal | 10.18.2017

How to avoid the nightmare scenario of artificial intelligence? According to researchers from Elon Musk’s OpenAI, the trick is teaching

...
Illustrated image, featuring a graphic of a map of the seven continents. A vertical double helix appears at the center. Two horizontal curving lines appear faintly in the background. The letters ATCG are repeated across the horizontal lines.
By Jeff Lyon, JAMA | 10.18.2017

As CRISPR/Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats–Cas9) and other gene-editing technologies hasten the feasibility of effective somatic and germline...

Portrait that frames a person in a business suit's upper body. They hold a sign in front of them, which reads in bold letters "Read the fine print."
By Kristen V. Brown, Gizmodo | 10.18.2017

You probably wouldn’t hand out your social security number without having a pretty good idea of how that information was...

An empty hospital room, with two beds and screens, separated by a curtain
By Liz Szabo, Kaiser Health News | 10.17.2017

Outrage over the high cost of cancer care has focused on skyrocketing drug prices, including the $475,000 price tag for...