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 dissolving
By Yelena Biberman and Jonathan D. Moreno, Bioethics Forum | 04.16.2024

A quiet biological revolution in warfare is underway. The genome is emerging as a new domain of conflict. The level...

worker in a lab pipettes
By Eric Schmidt, TIME | 04.16.2024

Imagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics...

AI
By Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, First Monday | 04.14.2024

The stated goal of many organizations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI)...

orchid graphic
By Jason Kehe, Wired | 04.11.2024

God help the babies! Or, absent God, a fertility startup called Orchid. It offers prospective parents a fantastical choice: Have...

stethoscope
By Neel Shah, The Preprint | 04.11.2024

Years ago, I interviewed for a residency position at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Standing before the domed Victorian...

stem cells
By Tomoko Otake, The Japan Times | 04.09.2024

A decade ago, researcher Haruko Obokata caused a sensation when she published two papers in the journal Nature, in which...

person in white lab coat holds swab
By Jorge Barrera and Rachel Houlihan, CBC | 04.09.2024

A Canadian DNA laboratory knowingly delivered prenatal paternity test results that routinely identified the wrong biological fathers — ruling out...

Gene Editing
By Harold Brubaker, The Philadelphia Inquirer | 04.04.2024

Acompany started by University of Pennsylvania scientist Jim Wilson has received FDA approval to test a form of gene editing...