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 Azeen Ghorayshi, BuzzFeed | 07.12.2015
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Last month, 30-year-old Alicia Routh got an email from the fertility clinic where she had previously donated dozens...

By Andrew Gelman & Kaiser Fung, The Daily Beast | 07.11.2015
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A few weeks ago in this space, we wrote about the bias toward sensationalist science reporting:  lazy...

By Andrew Gelman & Kaiser Fung, The Daily Beast | 07.11.2015
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A few weeks ago in this space, we wrote about the bias toward sensationalist science reporting: lazy...

By Celeste Orr, The Guardian | 07.11.2015
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“Designer babies” seems like a concept from a dystopian future, but they’re here now: would-be parents who utilize...

By Jonathan Gitlin, ArsTechnica | 07.08.2015

A recent Ars feature story about genetic screening generated quite a lively debate in the discussion thread. However, it also...

By Bill Foster, The Hill | 07.08.2015

It is rare that prominent members of the scientific community come together to warn our leaders of technological breakthroughs that...

By Brian Deese & Stephanie Devaney, Office of Science and Technology Policy | 07.08.2015
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In January 2015, President Obama launched the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), a bold new research effort to revolutionize...

By Erik Parens, The Hastings Center Report | 07.07.2015

The price of sequencing all the DNA in a person's genome is falling so fast that, according to one biotech...