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
DNA gel

The ethical landscape(s) of non-invasive prenatal testing in England, France and Germany: findings from a comparative literature review

By Adeline Perrot & Ruth Horn, European Journal of Human Genetics | 10.04.2021

Abstract

Since 2019, England, France and Germany have started offering NIPT as a publicly funded second-tier test for common chromosomal...

Genomics
Sue-meg State Park

California state park with ties to racist past will now be called by Indigenous name

By Lila Seidman, Los Angeles Times | 10.04.2021

Photo by Kirt Edblom on Flickr

Skip Lowry learned the Indigenous dances of the Yurok people as a child by...

Civil Society
Microscope images of HeLa cells colored in green and blue

Family of Henrietta Lacks files suit against biotech company for using famous ‘HeLa’ cells without permission

By Meredith Cohn and Hallie Miller, The Baltimore Sun | 10.04.2021

Family members of Henrietta Lacks filed a lawsuit Monday against the U.S. biotech giant Thermo Fisher Scientific accusing the company...

Biotech & Pharma
Free Britney Spears protest

Britney’s conservatorship is one example of how the legacy of eugenics in the US continues to affect the lives of disabled women

By Michaela Kathleen Curran, The Conversation | 10.01.2021

Photo by Mike Maguire on Flickr

Britney Spears has been locked in a court battle 13 years in the making...

Media Coverage

Will Sociogenomics Reduce Social Inequality?

By Erik Parens, The Hastings Center | 09.30.2021

In her new book, Kathryn Paige Harden is full of hope that insights from genetics will become powerful tools...

Bioethics

The chimaera challenge

By Liam Drew, Nature | 09.29.2021

It’s 2036, and you have kidney failure. Until recently, this condition meant months or years of gruelling dialysis, while you...

Animal Biotechnologies

Don’t Count On Woolly Mammoths To Save The Planet

By Frederick Hewett, WBUR | 09.27.2021

“What we need to fight climate change is woolly mammoths” — said no climate scientist, ever.

But that’s not deterring a hotshot...

Stem Cells
autism in the UK

High-profile autism genetics project paused amid backlash

By Katharine Sanderson, Nature | 09.27.2021

A large, UK-based study of genetics and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been suspended, following criticism that it failed to...

Other Countries