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...

By Pam Belluck, New York Times | 08.09.2011
A simple blood test that can determine a baby’s sex as early as seven weeks into pregnancy is highly accurate...
By Jeremy Gruber, Tina Stevens, and Becky McClain, The Berkeley Daily Planet | 08.08.2011
By Clive Cookson, Financial Times | 08.05.2011

Genetic testing laboratories in the National Health Service are deliberately ignoring most patents on DNA, experts told a meeting in...

By Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle | 08.05.2011

A voter-approved California law requiring police to collect DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony violates the constitutional privacy...

By Gina Maranto, Biopolitical Times guest contributor | 08.03.2011

In a slim new volume, Outsourcing the Womb: Race, Class, and Gestational Surrogacy in a Global Market (Routledge, 2011),...

By Sunita Puri, Slate | 08.02.2011

"The first thing she said to me was, 'I know it's a girl, and I need your help to get...

By Rob Stein, Washington Post | 07.31.2011

Federal examiners have rejected patents for genetic screening tests because the applicants did not explore their effectiveness for different races...

By Andrew Pollack, New York Times | 07.29.2011

In a closely watched case, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that genes can be patented, overturning a lower...