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Email: darnovsky[AT]geneticsandsociety[DOT]org

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Groundbreaking Social Justice Principles on Heritable Human Genome Editing

By Center for Genetics and Society | 02.14.2024

Press Statement

Groundbreaking Social Justice Principles on Heritable Human Genome Editing Released by International Coalition of Advocates and Scholars

Endorsed by 70+ Individuals and Organizations

An international coalition of scholars, advocates, and social change organizations today released Social Justice and Human Rights...

Calls for Course Correction in the Heritable Genome Editing Debate: Decentering the Summit, Spotlighting Social Justice

By Center for Genetics and Society | 03.04.2023

Press Statement

Events and initiatives highlight widespread opposition to altering the genes of future children and generations

“Genetic Justice from Start to Summit” symposium now available online

The Center for Genetics and Society’s virtual symposium “Genetic Justice from Start to Summit” was...

Comment on WHO Human Genome Editing Recommendations

By Center for Genetics and Society | 07.12.2021

Press Statement

WHO committee recognizes need for global cooperation, meaningful public engagement on heritable genome editing; falls short by not calling for global ban

Today a World Health Organization advisory committee released two reports with recommendations for governance of human genome editing, the...

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

Super Expensive Startup “Screening” Parents’ Embryos for IQ

By Maggie Harrison Dupré, Futurism [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 10.19.2024

A US-based startup called Heliospect Genomics is charging parents tens of thousands of dollars to "screen" embryos they conceive for their IQs, according to startling new reporting from The Guardian.

Details of the secretive startup were largely revealed by ...

Genetic Selection

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

Articles and Commentary

Eugenics is Back: In a range of new flavors

By Anne Rumberger and Marcy Darnovsky, Science for the People | 02.29.2024

Eugenics is widely regarded as a debunked pseudoscience—developed and promoted mostly in Nazi Germany—that fell off the political radar after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed. In fact, twentieth century eugenics represented the mainstream science of its day and...

Assisted Reproduction

Scientists Still Can’t Be Trusted on Gene Editing

By Pete Shanks, The Progressive Magazine | 12.04.2023

Five years ago, on November 25, 2018, the world learned that a rogue Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, had created the first children whose DNA had been tailored using gene editing before they were born. They were twins, code-named “Lulu” and...

Human Genetic Modification

From small beginnings: to build an anti-eugenic future

By Benedict Ipgrave, Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, Marcy Darnovsky, Subhadra Das, Charlene Galarneau, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Nora Ellen Groce, Tony Platt, Milton Reynolds, Marius Turda, Robert A Wilson, The Lancet | 05.21.2022

September, 1921 was unusually hot and New York was sweltering. For the many immigrants who crowded the city's tenements and pavements, one of the few places for relief from the incessant heat was the American Museum of Natural History. That...

A "Post-Human" Future?