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
Image of IVF technique known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection.

An IVF Embryo Test Aims to Prevent Miscarriages: Is It Worth It?

By Laura Hercher, Scientific American | 06.01.2022

In clinics today, fertility patients using in vitro fertilization (IVF) are routinely advised to pay for an expensive supplemental test...

Assisted Reproduction
Image of test tubes

Is your child at higher risk of rare disease? Why more couples are going for genetic tests

By Mohana Basu , The Print | 05.31.2022

New Delhi: For centuries, matching janampatris and kundalis, or natal charts, has been an important aspect of the matchmaking process...

Assisted Reproduction
Digital image of the CRISPR technology

It's Not Just Great Replacement Theory That Influenced the Buffalo Shooter

By Kyle Barr, Gizmodo News | 05.31.2022

The bunk theory of eugenics has come up once again as a talking point in the wake of the devastating...

U.S. Federal
Japanese flag in front of a corporate building

Japan to undergo first U.N. disabilities committee review in August

By The Japan Times, The Japan Times | 05.30.2022

Photo by Roméo A. on Unsplash

Japan will undergo a policy review by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of...

Other Countries
Image of DNA sequencing in a lab

Australia Wields a New DNA Tool to Crack Missing-Person Mysteries

By Oscar Schwartz, The New York Times | 05.28.2022

When a man washed up on the shores of Christmas Island in 1942, lifeless and hunched over in a shrapnel-riddled...

Genomics
ads on cork board for egg donation

As DNA Donors’ Secrets Emerge, What Should the Children Know?

By Amy Dockser Marcus, The Wall Street Journal | 05.27.2022

Tyler Sniff took a home DNA test at 32 years old and unexpectedly learned that the man who raised him...

Genomics
Large company conference room

Employer fertility benefits have a dramatic and startling expansion amid the Great Resignation, experts say

By Michelle Fox, CNBC | 05.27.2022

Photo by Benjamin Child on Unsplash

As employers try to entice new workers and keep the ones they have, more...

Assisted Reproduction
Image of a DNA strand

The Pandora’s Box of Embryo Testing Is Officially Open

By Carey Goldberg, Bloomberg | 05.26.2022

Photo by Warren Umoh on Unsplash

Simone Collins knew she was pregnant the moment she answered the phone. She was...

Assisted Reproduction