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...

Black and white image of a winding staircase.
By Melanie Evans, Wall Street Journal | 09.25.2016

The race is on to develop better ways to predict if patients will develop diabetes, heart disease or other critical...

"Top Secret" stamp over white background.
By Dave Mosher, Business Insider | 09.24.2016

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may reportedly still engage in a banned practice that manipulates popular news coverage...

Illustrated image of double helix
By Rachael Rettner, LiveScience [citing CGS' Marcy Darnovsky] | 09.23.2016

Scientists in Sweden have become the first to edit the genetic material in healthy human embryos, but what exactly are...

Silhouette of a hand gesturing with a "thumbs down," against a white background
By Leonid Schneider, For Better Science | 09.23.2016

The tide is turning for the fallen star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, who transplanted numerous patients with lethal tracheas made...

Black and white image of an old globe of the world.
By Eric Niiler, Seeker | 09.23.2016

A Swedish medical researcher has taken another step toward eventually being able to engineer a custom-made human being. The experiment, ...

Illustrated color drawing the inside of a person's head, with the brain exposed. On the right side, there are social and creative activities in place. Grass surround  this side of the brain. On the left side, people are working in cubicles.
By Jim Kozubek, Scientific American | 09.23.2016

Not now, certainly, but maybe someday—although there are plenty of hurdles to overcome first

A letter was recently published in Nature ...

Landscape photo of an agricultural field. In the middle of the green field, there is a tractor.
By Sharon Begley, STAT | 09.22.2016

Agriculture giant Monsanto has licensed CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing technology from the Broad Institute for use in seed development, the company announced on...

A matrix tunnel of big data and numbers
By Cyrus Farivar, ARS Technica | 09.22.2016

A Kuwaiti lawyer has filed a formal constitutional challenge to his country’s controversial mandatory DNA law, which is reportedly set...