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...

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

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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...

Several containers, with clear liquid are placed side by side in a test tube rack.
By Charles Piller, STAT | 06.08.2017

Federal investigators searched a California DNA testing lab Wednesday and hauled away boxes of documents as part of a health...

A wall displays letters " ATCG" in various colors.
By Dave Roos, Seeker [cites Marcy Darnovsky] | 06.06.2017

A new study offers a cautionary tale for using the widely hyped gene-editing tool CRISPR on people.

The gene-editing technology...

Historical marker in Raleigh, North Carolina H116 which states, "Eugenics Board: State action led to the sterilization by choice or coercion of over 7,600 people, 1933-1973. Met after 1939 one block E."
By Gary D. Robertson, Associated Press | 06.06.2017

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Some surviving relatives of people involuntarily sterilized by the state of North Carolina decades ago can't...

A mail-in kit, containing four long cotton swabs, placed in an envelope, with place holders for each cotton swab.
By Daniel Munro, Maclean's | 06.05.2017

The risks from home-based genetic testing kits to privacy as well as people’s health appear far greater than the supposed

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