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Justin Schleede reaches onto a black lab bench to pick up a tray of small plastic tubes.

"These are saliva samples as well as blood," says Schleede, a geneticist who runs Herasight Inc.'s lab in Morrisville, N.C. "We also...

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...

"If proven to be safe, we believe preventive gene editing could be one of the most important health technologies of...

WILLIAM BATESON, a foundational figure in the science of genetics at the turn of the last century, once recounted the...

IVF on purple graphic
By Sarah Elizabeth Richards, Scientific American | 04.02.2026

For the past two decades, fertility specialists have wrestled with a troubling question: Why do Black people have lower live...

sperm
By Anna Collinson and Jo Adnitt, BBC | 04.02.2026

The government in northern Cyprus has said it is launching an investigation after several British families told the BBC they...

sperm graphic
By Dr. Coco Newton, Progress Educational Trust | 03.30.2026

Have you ever wondered what it means to have dozens of half-siblings across the world – or to never know...

biotech canna graphic
By Peter Ward, Slate | 03.30.2026

I’m in a cramped examination room at a clinic in Panama City. The lights are dim, and calming classical music...

a sign explaining the Indiana Eugenics law
By Mary Hartnett, WFYI | 03.30.2026

"1907 Indiana Eugenics Law" via Wikimedia Commons | CC by-SA 4.0

Indiana was the first government in the...

brain rendering
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 03.30.2026

After operating in secrecy for years, a startup company called R3 Bio, in Richmond, California, suddenly shared details about its...

IVF graphic on purple background
By Carly Mallenbaum, Axios [cites Emily Galpern] | 03.29.2026

More Americans are turning to surrogacy to build their families, as the practice becomes more common and more publicly...

map of US states
By Carly Mallenbaum, Axios [cites Surrogacy360] | 03.29.2026

Without a federal law, surrogacy in the U.S. is governed by a patchwork of state regulations/

Why it matters: Confusing...