Center for Genetics and Society
Viewpoint: Hunting cloned sheep? What weird things might happen as our bio-engineering skills improve?
Some people — not just Montanans — pay to indulge in “captive hunting,” and large sheep make excellent targets ...
Did eugenicist Charles Lindbergh fake his disabled son’s ‘crime-of-the-century’ kidnapping to cover up experiments by Nazi-sympathizing scientists?
The kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s son has inspired plausible theories about what really happened ...
The Olympics of the future: Transhumanist-supported Enhanced Games recognizes world records achieved with drug use, steroids and stimulants
Peter Thiel and two other venture capitalists, Christian Angermayer and Balaji Srinivasan, are now funding “the Olympics of the future.” ...
$3 million barrier to sickle cell gene therapy: How prohibitive costs could limit practical benefits of newly-approved drugs
In a much-anticipated move, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two new gene therapies for sickle cell disease ...
Viewpoint: Center for Genetics and Society advances ‘progressive’, ‘techno-pessimist’ argument against human germline editing
AI is a hot topic that some experts deeply steeped in the AI debate are warning about the social justice ...
Applying racial and social justice principles to case of Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cell lines
Human cell lines are an instrumental part of basic biomedical research and necessary for the development of vaccines and drugs ...
Viewpoint: Breaking taboos or pioneering breakthroughs? Weighing ethics of gene editing of human embryos
The German Ethics Council has now also ruled that inheritable genome editing is fundamentally morally permissible ...
Viewpoint: Producing more intelligent humans? Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom ventures into eugenics-fraught science of the future
An overlapping set of movements— effective altruism, longtermism, and transhumanism, all with strong links to eugenics—have recently made news, thanks ...
Viewpoint: ‘Hipster eugenics’ — The ethical case against using personalized genetics to choose embryos
The techno-utopian credos known as “effective altruism” and “longtermism” have recently gained wide notice, judging by Google searches, news articles, ...
Drawing a line: European Convention upholds ban on heritable human genome editing
The Council of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, better known as the Ovideo Convention, explicitly bans heritable human ...
Genetically modified babies? Turkish-based medical tourism company says they can help you make one
Heal2Go describes itself as “an innovative medical travel platform” with a mission “to make medical traveling easier… We’re working on ...
Viewpoint: Did the New York Times blunder in its analysis of non-invasive prenatal blood test (NIPT) limitations?
On January 1st, The New York Times website prominently featured a substantial piece of investigative journalism about a relatively new ...
The first child selected as an embryo on the basis of its ‘polygenic risk score’ is now 16 months old
The first child acknowledged to have been selected as an embryo on the basis of its “polygenic risk score” is ...
Viewpoint: Political left, right and sprinkling of bioethicists express concern about modifying rules on embryo research
On May 26, the International Society of Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), a non-governmental organization of scientists, released newly revised guidelines ...
Viewpoint: Debating the debate over the new stem cell research guidelines
An organization of scientists is recommending that limitations on several experimental and controversial research procedures – including heritable genome editing, ...
Viewpoint: Patenting human embryo gene editing? Two rival universities push the ethical and legal debate
Two prominent groups of scientists, and two major American universities, are trying to patent methods for editing human embryos, with ...
Quickly-advancing human embryo research raises prickly ethical questions
Nature published two peer-reviewed papers about generating in vitro, with slightly different methods, “blastoids” or “human blastocyst-like structures”... Notably, none ...
Viewpoint: Why assisted reproduction needs to be more comprehensively regulated
The United States fertility market is growing very rapidly, and is projected to reach $15.4 billion in 2023, more than ...
Viewpoint: How might the Biden Administration regulate heritable human gene editing?
The new Biden-Harris Administration faces a number of harrowing challenges in which science and technology policies will be critical. Along ...
Viewpoint: Biden Administration should push back against ‘troubling innovations in bioweapons research’
Genetically engineered bioweapons are not a fictional or far-fetched notion. Many countries around the world, including the United States, have ...
Viewpoint: Public confused and divided about genetically engineering diseases out of babies
Here’s a provocative headline and subhead from OneZero, a publication by Medium, above an article by Emily Mullin published on August 17: Men Are ...
Coronavirus highlights why the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act is ripe for overhaul
[Palantir] has been hired and has assigned 45 staff to a project “designed to predict surges in NHS demand during the ...
Litany of unknowns surface at FDA germline modification meeting
An FDA committee held a historic public meeting last week to discuss the scientific, technologic, and clinical issues related to ...
Hopes and fears surround new induced stem cell method
Two papers published in Nature on January 30 describe a new and remarkably simple technique for generating pluripotent cells: cells ...
Direct-to-consumer genetic testing just not ready for prime time
Stories keep coming in from people who signed up for genetic testing and received strange, conflicting, or just plain wrong ...
Scientists alarmed by so-called stem cell “therapies”
The dubious business of selling so-called stem cell "therapies" seems to be gathering momentum, and some scientists are becoming quite ...
Center for Genetics and Society calls for rejection of life-saving therapy
The U.K.'s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority has announced its endorsement of mitochondrial replacement therapy. The therapy, which could save ...
Viewpoint: Biotechnology is a threat to biodiversity
The burgeoning "bioeconomy" is as much a threat to the environment as the fossil fuels it aims to replace ...
