News

Cathy Tie slips on a white lab coat bearing her name and the logo of her startup: Origin Genomics. "Welcome!" she says as she leads an NPR reporter, photographer and videographer on an exclusive tour of Origin's labs located...

This is the 17th 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 Osagie K. Obasogie in...

THE INSTAGRAM POST, precision-guided by sex and age, had zeroed in on its target. Yuchen Tu is a conser­vatory-trained viola...

This is the 16th installment in the Legacies of Eugenics series, which features essays by leading thinkers devoted to exploring...

Screenshot of Titanovo's testing kit advertisement for measuring telomeres as indicators for health information.
By Kristen V. Brown, Gizmodo | 02.15.2017

Recently, Vitaliy Husar received results from a DNA screening that changed his life. It wasn’t a gene that suggested a...

Two white officers handcuff a young black teen on the side of the police vehicle.
By Kelly Davis, Voice of San Diego | 02.15.2017

When it comes to collecting DNA from criminal offenders, California law is especially protective of juveniles.

While 2004’s Proposition 69...

A statue of two male scientists in lab coats. The figures seem to be connected by holding a strand of DNA.
By Sharon Begley, STAT | 02.15.2017

The US patent office ruled on Wednesday that hotly disputed patents on the revolutionary genome-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 belong to the...

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 Guardian, New 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 ...