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...

By Agence France-Presse, The Guardian | 05.27.2016

The Dutch government has announced it wants to allow growing human embryos “under strict and limited conditions” for scientific research...

By Joe Matthews (Zócalo Public Square), Huffington Post | 05.27.2016

Near the end of a wide-ranging conversation about the complexity of the human genome and the history and future of...

By Aaron Carroll (The Incidental Economist), Academy Health Blog | 05.27.2016

For many, many years we’ve been hearing about gene therapy – the chance that we can get into people’s DNA...

By Carl Zimmer, STAT | 05.26.2016
Untitled Document

At the American Museum of Natural History, the venerable Science Talent Search announced Thursday that it was changing...

By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 05.25.2016

The biggest beneficiary of a plan to fabricate a human genome from scratch could be a Massachusetts startup called Gen9...

Image of five people standing.
By Marcy Darnovsky, Dan Sarewitz, Samuel Weiss Evans, Arvis Sulovari, Eric A. Widra, Zócalo Public Square | 05.24.2016

With the ubiquitous ways we apply our knowledge of genetics today—in crop seeds, medicine, space—it’s hard to believe the...

By Charles Pulliam-Moore, Fusion | 05.24.2016

In 2006, author Alon Ziv published the first edition of Breeding Between the Lines, a haphazard exploration of the...

By Greg Roumeliotos & Mike Stone | 05.24.2016

German drugs and chemicals group Bayer has made an unsolicited takeover proposal to U.S. seeds company Monsanto, aiming to create...