Pete Shanks
Pete Shanks, MA, attended Oxford University, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and moved to California in the mid-1970s. He has been active in a range of local and international political movements, while mostly making his living in the publishing industry, especially on the production side; he enjoys the craft of bookmaking. Appalled by the eugenic possibilities of biotechnology, he has consulted with the Center for Genetics and Society since its earliest days. He is the author of Human Genetic Engineering: A Guide for Activists, Skeptics, and the Very Perplexed (Nation Books) and a regular contributor to Biopolitical Times.
Publications
In mid-July, a bipartisan trio of U.S. Senators—Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California and Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Republican...
News broke this week that the first “three-parent” baby had been born. But the untested and controversial nature of the...
On May 10, about 130 scientists, entrepreneurs and others held an invitation-only event at Harvard. Organisers told invitees not to...
In the News
Analyzing and indefinitely keeping the DNA profiles of thousands of Californians arrested for felonies, but never charged with a crime,...
Let’s Not Distort Debates about Human Cloning and Heritable Gene Editing
Cloning is back in the headlines. Researchers managed to...
The direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing industry has been around for just over a decade. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration...
Biopolitical Times
On December 30, China’s official state news agency Xinhua reported that three scientists had been found guilty of “the crime...
The first Republican to file for Oklahoma’s presidential primary was Zoltan Istvan, the transhumanist. His campaign slogan is “Upgrading...
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
—Yogi Berra, or perhaps Mark Twain, Niels Bohr or some anonymous...
Talks and Testimonies
Synthetic Biology Shaping San Francisco hosted a forum titled, "Synthetic Biology: DIY Tinkering Meets Big Capital."
Full video and transcript can be...