News

A Chinese scientist horrified the world in 2018 when he revealed he had secretly engineered the birth of the world's first gene-edited babies.

His work was reviled as reckless and unethical because, among other reasons, gene-editing was so new...

INTRODUCTION

Baby bonuses. Motherhood medals. Fertility tracking. You may have heard of these policy proposals as solutions from the Trump administration to help encourage women to have more children.

Besides falling short of ensuring that people have what they need...

Adapted from Mitochondrial DNA at
National Human Genome Research Institute

Recently, media outlets around the world have been reporting on...

A newly available kind of genetic testing, called polygenic embryo screening, promises to screen for conditions that can include cancer...

DNA graphic
By Jared Whitlock, Endpoints News | 07.15.2025

Patient groups face a harder and unpredictable path going state-by-state to boost screening for rare but treatable conditions after the...

IVF graphic
By Lucy Tu, The Atlantic | 07.11.2025

Donald Trump—who is, by his own accounting, “the fertilization president” and “the father of IVF”—wants to help Americans reproduce. During...

Graphic of IVF
By Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review | 07.11.2025

The Walking Egg project is bringing IVF to rural communities in South Africa.

This week I’m sending congratulations to two...

DNA graphic
By Annika Inampudi, Science | 07.10.2025

Before a baby in the United States reaches a few days old, doctors will run biochemical tests on a few...

DNA dissolving into blue background
By Suzanne O'Sullivan, New Scientist | 07.09.2025

Rare diseases are often hard to spot. They can evade detection until irreversible organ damage or disability has already set...

gene therapy graphic with DNA in pill
By Alice Park, TIME | 07.08.2025

Rare genetic diseases are challenging for patients and their families—made all the more overwhelming because symptoms tend to appear soon...

Census documents
By Philip Bump, Washington Post | 07.07.2025

There are a lot of questions worth asking about the New York Times’s report on Thursday about New York City...

brain puzzle piece graphic
By Oliver Rollins, Los Angeles Review of Books | 07.06.2025

ON OCTOBER 7, 2024, in an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, then–presidential candidate Donald Trump said of immigrants that...