News

More Americans are turning to surrogacy to build their families, as the practice becomes more common and more publicly discussed.

Why it matters: As surrogacy becomes more visible and accessible, ethical, legal and cultural tensions become harder to ignore...

This is the first part of the 14th 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...

Without a federal law, surrogacy in the U.S. is governed by a patchwork of state regulations/

Why it matters: Confusing...

"MC0_8230" via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by 2.0 

This report documents a deliberate assault on disabled people in...

The planet Earth
By Brooke Borel, The Atlantic | 09.12.2016

In a crowded auditorium at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in August, Philipp Messer, a population geneticist at...

Illustrated image of shackled hands. Inside the hands lie words of systemic social injustice, such as "classism" and "racism."
By Lauren Kirchner, ProPublica | 09.12.2016

The five teenage boys were sitting in a parked car in a gated community in Melbourne, Florida, when a police...

Black and white photo of Wall Street.
By Ben Fidler, Xconomy | 09.12.2016

Investors hoping to buy into the vast, yet still unproven drugmaking potential of the gene editing system CRISPR-Cas9 will soon...

Embryonic bodies.
By Sheila Black, The New York Times | 09.07.2016

When I was pregnant with my first child, my ob-gyn referred me to a genetic counselor “just in case.”

I...

Bird's eye view of test tube rack filled with test tubes.
By Sheila Kaplan, STAT | 09.07.2016

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday warned women and their doctors that current screening tests for ovarian cancer are...

An individual clasps hands over face, suggesting feelings of being overwhelmed or stressed.
By Nicola Davis, The Guardian | 09.07.2016

Women are choosing to freeze their eggs to gain time to find the right partner rather than to pursue their...

A fire burns
By Claire Hope Cummings, Project Syndicate | 09.06.2016

A cynical move is underway to promote a new, powerful, and troubling technology known as “gene drives” for use in...

Black and white pressure gauge reaches almost its maximum intensity.
By Gretchen Vogel, Science Magazine | 09.06.2016

The scandal surrounding Paolo Macchiarini, the former star surgeon who became famous for his pioneering trachea transplants, has prompted yet another...