Nathaniel Comfort
Viewpoint: New book ‘Blueprint’ revisits the dangerous theory of genetic determinism
It’s never a good time for another bout of genetic determinism, but it’s hard to imagine a worse one than ...
Carl Zimmer’s new book walks us deep into the ‘thickets of genetics and genomics’
Our word for a diagram of the lines of descent—pedigree—is probably derived from the French pé de grue, or “crane’s foot,” ...
‘A Crack in Creation’: Jennifer Doudna’s CRISPR memoir is flawed, but convincing
The prospect of a memoir from Jennifer Doudna, a key player in the CRISPR story, quickens the pulse. And A ...
Tame the hype: Is medical genetics plagued by unfilled promises?
Recently, I read an article promising that medical genetics will...make medicine predictive and personalized through detailed knowledge of the patient’s ...
Precision medicine: Over promising genetic breakthroughs offers patients false hope
Science has always issued medical promissory notes. In the 17th century, Francis Bacon promised that an understanding of the true ...
Early eugenics movement first introduced biology to politics
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. For centuries, human hereditary ...
Nathaniel Comfort slams Richard Dawkins’ ‘Brief Candle in the Dark’ as outdate science
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. In Brief Candle in the ...
Response to Steven Pinker: Society can’t afford for bioethicists to ‘get out of the way’ of science
"Get out of the way." So said the European colonists as they pushed indigenous Africans, Americans, Aborigines, and Maoris off ...
Can gene editing preserve line between medicine and eugenics?
CRISPR is the latest chapter in a long, darkly comic history of human genetic improvement. Like whole-gene engineering in the ...
Is it time to retire ‘book’ metaphor when talking about DNA?
Since its discovery, biologists have compared DNA to a book that contains the instructions for making a cell's proteins. But if ...
Is individuality the savior of eugenics?
Payment of the poor or incarcerated has long been acknowledged as a form of coercion; yet some such women genuinely ...
The new eugenics movement
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece out by Nathaniel Comfort, The Eugenic Impulse. I would just like to ...
Single gene may hold key to life itself?
"Your IQ depends on a single gene"; "Long life is all in the genes"; "A gene that could explain why ...
