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...

The Earth in orbit, with one side illuminated by the sun, and the other side in darkness.
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff, New York Times | 06.17.2017

There’s a well-to-do couple thinking about having children. They order a battery of genetic tests to ensure that there’s nothing...

Two pigs, in a barn, gaze directly at the camera.
By Angela Chen, The Verge | 06.16.2017

The road to growing organs in pigs is paved with ethical questions

In 2003, a South Korean company called Maria...

A double helix diagonally positioned as if it were moving. Small speckles surround it.
By Ed Young, The Atlantic | 06.16.2017

Three Stanford scientists have proposed a provocative new way of thinking about genetic variants, and how they affect people’s bodies

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Microscopic image of an oocyte and the tip of a syringe.
By Kristen V. Brown, Gizmodo | 06.16.2017

Last fall, John Zhang made headlines after his fertility clinic announced that for the first time a baby had been...

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

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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

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