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...

a graphic with DNA and a lab technician
By Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times | 08.12.2023

In 1923, Princeton University Press published “A Study of American Intelligence” by Carl Campbell Brigham, a eugenicist and professor of...

flag of china
By Jessie Yeung, CNN | 08.12.2023

Better cancer treatments, advances in longevity, groundbreaking medicines and vaccines: these are just some of the potential prizes on offer...

binary code in blue on a white background
By Lorena O'Neill, Rolling Stone | 08.12.2023

Timnit Gebru didn't set out to work in AI. At Stanford, she studied electrical engineering — getting both a bachelor’s...

a mural of Henrietta Lacks
By Clarence Williams, The Washington Post | 08.10.2023

The heirs of Henrietta Lacks, the Black woman who died in the 1950s and whose cells have been reproduced for...

synthetic embryos on a blue background
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 08.09.2023

Twenty-five years ago, in 1998, researchers in Wisconsin isolated powerful stem cells from human embryos. It was a fundamental breakthrough...

DNA strands coming apart
By Claire Robinson, GMWatch | 08.09.2023

The latest in a long series of papers has been published, detailing unintended effects of CRISPR gene editing. The new...

A photo of the commemorative plaque at Willowbrook State Schoolhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/imjustwalkin/16736581451/in/photostream/
By Jennifer Senior, The Atlantic | 08.07.2023

Photo "Traces of Willowbrook" by Matt Green on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

This story starts, of all things, with...

Henrietta lacks historical marker
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! | 08.07.2023

The family of Henrietta Lacks, a Black cancer patient whose cells were taken by Johns Hopkins University Hospital without her...