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...

Far away landscape image of a factory, with smoke pollution. The image is filtered by a green and blue tint.
By Wesley Yang, New York Magazine | 02.14.2017

Perhaps you’ve noticed, amid the hot invective and dry mockery of daily events in your social-media feeds, reports of the...

Embryo, with 5 visible cells.
By Rob Stein, NPR [cites Marcy Darnovsky] | 02.14.2017

Scientists could be allowed to make modifications in human DNA that can be passed down through subsequent generations, the National...

A male lab technician in a red coat and a blue face mask sits at a desk. He is concentrated on inserting a sample of DNA from a pipette into a test tube. A test tube rack is placed on his desk along with a hazardous waste basket and other equipment.
By Eli Rosenberg, The New York Times | 02.10.2017

The question of how widely investigators should be able to examine DNA databases is in the news, as officials in...

Illustrative painting of a woolly mammoth in a green, lush landscape, and a blue sky.
By John Hawks, Medium Science | 02.09.2017

George Church, artificial wombs, elephant embryos, and a gullible science media

According to the GuardianNew Scientist, and many...

Three empty hospital beds are shown in a dimly lit room.
By Juliana Edelman, The Irish Times | 02.09.2017

It hasn’t gone away, you know: Victorian junk science has its race-baiting adherents

When I teach Irish university students about ...

A lab scientist views a petri dish that is illuminated by a microscope light.
By Kelly Murray, CNN | 02.09.2017

In the not-so-distant future, research suggests, eggs and sperm may no longer be needed to make a baby -- at...

Two male scientists view a DNA sequence
By Claire Ainsworth, Nature | 02.07.2017

The intricate development of the fetus is yielding its long-held secrets to state-of-the-art molecular technologies that can make use of

...
Black and white image of an alarm clock. Its time reads 11:55:30 seconds
By Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times [cites Marcy Darnovsky] | 02.03.2017

Evangelina Padilla Vaccaro of Corona is the new face of stem cell science in California. Born with “bubble baby” disease that...