News

US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’

By Hannah Devlin, Tom Burgis, David Pegg, and Jason Wilson, The Guardian [cites CGS’ Katie Hasson] | 10.18.2024

A US startup company is offering to help wealthy couples screen their embryos for IQ using controversial technology that raises questions about the ethics of genetic enhancement.

The company, Heliospect Genomics, has worked with more than a dozen couples undergoing...

Genetic Selection

South Africa amended its research guidelines to allow for heritable human genome editing

By Françoise Baylis and Katie Hasson, The Conversation | 10.24.2024

A little-noticed change to South Africa’s national health research guidelines, published in May of this year, has put the country on an ethical precipice. The newly added language appears to position the country as the first to explicitly permit...

Policies

The New Artificial Intelligentsia

By Ruha Benjamin, Los Angeles Review of Books | 10.18.2024

IN THE FALL OF 2016, I gave a talk at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton titled “Are Robots...

A "Post-Human" Future?

What Do You Risk With At-Home DNA Test Kits?

By Ashleigh Wyss [cites CGS' Katie Hasson], Listnr | 10.09.2024

Discovering your genetic history can be as simple as spitting into a test tube, but what happens when your data...

Society
Weaving genes together

GM ‘designer babies’: breakthrough or nightmare?

By Dave King, Red Pepper | 12.06.2021

Hongjie mao, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In late 2018, when He Jiankui announced that he had created...

Human Genetic Modification
PGD selection

IVF used by some to avoid passing on genetic diseases to offspring

By Jamie Talan, The Washington Post | 12.04.2021

By Fotograf Kallestad, Gorm / NTB Scanpix. CC BY NC 4.0

In vitro fertilization (IVF), widely known as a way...

Assisted Reproduction
Francis Collins

Science misinformation alarms Francis Collins as he leaves top NIH job

By Nidhi Subbaraman, Nature | 12.03.2021

This month, Francis Collins will step down as director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) after more than...

Genomics
DNA microarray

Scientists claim big advance in using DNA to store data

By Paul Rincon, BBC | 12.01.2021

DNA microarray image by Guillaume Paumier, 
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
Unported licence, via Wikimedia Commons

Scientists say...

Genomics

Controversial mitochondrial donation legislation passed after conscience vote

By Sarah Martin, The Guardian | 12.01.2021

Members of parliament have voted to legalise controversial mitochondrial donation in the first conscience vote since same-sex marriage in 2017...

Human Genetic Modification

Gene-edited livestock: robust rules needed before approval, say ethicists

By Ian Sample, The Guardian | 12.01.2021

Robust regulations must be put in place to protect the welfare of farmed animals before genome-editing procedures are approved for...

Synthetic Biology
Earth in a pair of hands

Biology is a spectrum: Life on Earth is complex and irreducible

By Dan Samorodnitsky, Massive Science | 11.30.2021

If I placed before you an atom with one proton and one electron, you would be forced to admit it...

Biopolitics
Cover of the book "The Genetic Lottery" by Kathryn Paige Harden

The Genetic Lottery is a bust for both genetics and policy

By Kevin Bird, Massive Science | 11.29.2021

The last decade has seen genetics and evolution grapple with its history; one composed of figures who laid the foundations...

U.S. Federal