May 12, 2025
A New Edition of Hastings Center Report Is Now Available
Hastings Center Report (vol. 55, Issue 2, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
Genetic Ethics
May 8, 2025
From apps to gadgets, ‘Second Life’ considers how tech is changing having a baby
(NPR) – In the new book, Second Life: Having A Child In The Digital Age, Hess writes about how technology shapes every aspect of parenting — from our online identities to the pressures of sharing our lives in real-time. “I … Read More
May 7, 2025
Genetic Study Retraces the Origins of Coronaviruses in Bats
(New York Times) – As China and the United States trade charges of a lab leak, researchers contend in a new paper that the Covid pandemic got its start, like a previous one, in the wildlife trade. In a study … Read More
May 6, 2025
Trump restricts funding for ‘gain-of-function’ research — calling it dangerous
(NPR) – President Trump issued an executive order Monday restricting federal funding for research that involves a controversial field of scientific study known as “gain-of-function” research. The research, which is also known as “dual-use” research, involves experimenting with viruses and … Read More
May 5, 2025
A New Edition of European Journal of Human Genetics Is Now Available
European Journal of Human Genetics (vol. 33, no. 4, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
May 2, 2025
The US Has Approved CRISPR Pigs for Food
(MIT Technology Review) – Most pigs in the US are confined to factory farms where they can be afflicted by a nasty respiratory virus that kills piglets. The illness is called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, or PRRS. A few … Read More
April 28, 2025
How Much Should You Know About Your Child Before He’s Born?
(The New Yorker) – When the writer Amanda Hess was twenty-nine weeks pregnant with her first child, her doctor, looking at an ultrasound, “saw something he did not like.” He suspected a rare genetic condition; Hess underwent an amniocentesis and … Read More
April 21, 2025
The genetic mystery of why some people develop autism
(BBC) – Genetic factors are thought to play a major role in the development of autism – but for decades what they are has proven elusive. Now scientists are starting to uncover clues. But while this can offer huge benefits … Read More
April 18, 2025
Whole-genome sequencing susses out rare diseases
(Nature) – Conventional tests that look only at a small subset of genetic code often miss variations hiding outside the protein-coding genome. About 80% of rare diseases are genetic. In their search for disease-causing genetic variants, clinicians regularly refer people … Read More
April 16, 2025
How Virologists Lost the Gain-of-Function Debate
(The New Atlantis) – As with so many other scientific controversies in our political life, public opinion on Covid origins has come to track — and serve as a signifier for — partisan identity. This bodes ill for dispassionate investigation, … Read More
April 15, 2025
FDA OKs trial of pig livers as dialysis-like treatment for liver failure
(ABC News) – U.S. researchers will soon test whether livers from a gene-edited pig could treat people with sudden liver failure — by temporarily filtering their blood so their own organ can rest and maybe heal. The first-of-its-kind clinical trial … Read More
April 11, 2025
Doctors remove pig kidney from an Alabama woman after a record 130 days
(Associated Press) – An Alabama woman who lived with a pig kidney for a record 130 days had the organ removed after her body began rejecting it and is back on dialysis, doctors announced Friday – a disappointment in the … Read More
April 11, 2025
Those Dire Wolves Aren’t an Amazing Scientific Breakthrough. They’re a Disturbing Symbol of Where We’re Heading.
(Slate) – We shouldn’t be celebrating “de-extinction.” We should be focused on the species that are currently in danger. What we’re really looking at, it seems, are gray wolves modified to be dire wolves of George R.R. Martin’s books rather … Read More
April 9, 2025
23andMe is potentially selling more than just genetic data – the personal survey info it collected is just as much a privacy problem
(The Conversation) – And 23andMe collected more than just genetic data generated from consumers’ spit. Eighty-five percent of customers consented to 23andMe research, allowing their individual-level data to be used for studies. The company then collected information from survey questions … Read More
April 9, 2025
Game of Clones: Colossal’s New Wolves Are Cute, But Are They Dire?
(MIT Technology Review) – Somewhere in the northern US, drones fly over a 2,000-acre preserve, protected by a nine-foot fence built to zoo standards. It is off-limits to curious visitors, especially those with a passion for epic fantasies or mythical … Read More
April 9, 2025
A New Edition of European Journal of Human Genetics Is Now Available
European Journal of Human Genetics (vol. 33, no. 3, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
April 8, 2025
Asilomar conference took courage and foresight — today, inclusivity would also be crucial
(Nature) – The 50th anniversary of a landmark biosafety conference is an opportunity to ensure its spirit lives on in today’s scientists. In 2008, Nature published a six-part essay series called Meetings that Changed the World. One of our choices … Read More
April 4, 2025
The influencers who want the world to have more babies – and say the White House is on their side
(BBC) – The US couple, aged 37 and 38, ardently believe that the world needs to have more babies or risk civilisational collapse. They have become the poster children for pronatalism, a movement that believes falling birth rates are a … Read More
April 3, 2025
Should Human Life Be Optimized?
(New York Times) – Orchid screens embryos’ DNA for hundreds of conditions, such as retinitis pigmentosa, which can be traced to a single genetic variant. But the company also goes further, offering what is known as polygenic screening, which gives … Read More
April 3, 2025
A New Edition of The New England Journal of Medicine Is Now Available
The New England Journal of Medicine (vol. 392, no. 10, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
March 28, 2025
In Genetics, a Tense Coexistence of Mainstream and Fringe Views
(Undark) – In an era of open data, genome-wide association studies have become entangled with efforts to prove Black inferiority. Shortly after Abdellaoui announced his withdrawal, he learned that Kirkegaard was scratched from the speaker lineup, and Abdellaoui decided to … Read More
March 28, 2025
How a Bankruptcy Judge Can Stop a Genetic Privacy Disaster
(MIT Technology Review) – Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A tech company accumulates a ton of user data, hoping to figure out a business model later. That business model never arrives, the company goes under, and the … Read More
March 27, 2025
Chinese Scientist Ostracized Over Gene-Edited Babies Seeks Comeback
(Wall Street Journal) – He Jiankui stands by a controversial research approach that landed him in prison as he aims to tackle Alzheimer’s disease Chinese scientist He Jiankui set off global outrage and landed in prison after he skirted ethical … Read More
March 26, 2025
Chinese researchers report a pig kidney transplant and a first-step liver experiment
(NBC News) – Chinese researchers are reporting new steps in the quest for animal-to-human organ transplants — with a successful pig kidney transplant and a hint Wednesday that pig livers might eventually be useful, too. A Chinese patient is the third person in world … Read More
March 26, 2025
23andMe Went From a $6 Billion Giant to Bankruptcy. Its Former CEO Won’t Walk Away.
(Wall Street Journal) – Anne Wojcicki aims to buy the assets of her failed DNA-testing company after her prior bids were rejected The company she co-founded, 23andMe, has burned through more than $1 billion and laid off more than half … Read More
