Articles and Commentary

If you've opened a newspaper or magazine recently, you've probably seen splashy ads for Botox, as part of a new $50 million direct-to-consumer marketing campaign to promote cosmetic injections of botulism toxin.

The Botox campaign follows other recent news reports...

As 2003 began, the mainstream press was grappling with a cloning hoax. This January, it launched extended coverage of the 50th anniversary of the identification of DNA's structure. Both events provided golden opportunities to deepen public understanding of the social...

The Misstep of Human Cloning

by Marcy Darnovsky
San Francisco Chronicle
January 6, 2003

When an extraterrestrial-friendly religious guru and his orange-haired chemist sidekick claimed last month to have cloned a human baby, widespread doubt about their credibility...

As this article is being written, delegates from nearly every country are meeting at the United Nations to take the next steps towards an international convention banning human reproductive cloning. Human cloning is the latest, and loudest, in a series...

July/August 2002

The new human genetic technologies are arguably the most consequential technologies ever developed. Many applications have great potential to prevent disease and alleviate suffering, but others would open the door to a new, high-tech eugenics that could destabilize...

July/August 2002

The atmosphere. The oceans and fresh waters. The land itself, and the fruits and grains our forebears bred and cultivated upon it. The broadcast spectrum. The attention spans of our children.

Does such a list adequately evoke "the...

July/August 2002

As Raymond Barglow's and Jeremy Rifkin's articles demonstrate, thoughtful people of good conscience and progressive politics may come to different conclusions about human embryo cloning.

Rifkin, along with other progressives, believes that embryo cloning could open the door...

After a year of intense debate, the US Senate is set to vote on human cloning. The two constituencies most actively engaged – biomedical scientists and religious conservatives – have battled each other to a deadlock. None of the bills...