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...

Illustrated clipboard, with three check marks on a generic list.
By Hannah Beech, Time | 09.21.2016

China is looking for quality sperm. Ever since the nation loosened its one-child family-planning policy earlier this year, its sperm...

A chaotic illustration of a DNA strand
By Heidi Ledford, Nature | 09.21.2016

Geneticist George Church has pioneered methods for sequencing and altering genomes. He has been called a founding father of synthetic...

A public hearing is in session, angled as if the viewer was in the audience facing the representative officials.
By Alexandra Ossola, Scientific American | 09.21.2016

Earlier this month the U.S. Food and Drug Administration opened its doors to public commentary on its newest guidelines on...

A clock is featured in the background of a stack of coins.
By Eyder Peralta, NPR | 09.21.2016

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative just announced one of its biggest investments to date: It is ponying up more than $3...

Two teammates of a tug-of-war game are pictured, with competitive looks on their faces as they cling to the rope. Onlookers look entertained.
By Hannah Devlin, The Guardian | 09.20.2016

Getting stuff right is normally regarded as science’s central aim. But a new analysis has raised the existential spectre that...

Crime scene tape, gloves, and packages of evidence are stacked in a pile on a desk.
By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post | 09.20.2016

Widely used methods to trace complex DNA samples, bullets, tread and bite marks to criminal defendants fall short of scientific...

Patient's arm is injected.
By David Wagner, KPBS | 09.20.2016

Jim Gass made sure to record the moment in an iPhone video because he’d paid tens of thousands of dollars...