May 23, 2025
(MIT Technology Review) – You may not be familiar with Tie, but she’s no stranger to the public spotlight. A former Thiel fellow, she is a partner in the attention-grabbing Los Angeles Project, which promised to create glow-in-the-dark pets. Over … Read More
May 22, 2025
(New Scientist) – Despite a huge media fanfare in which Colossal Biosciences claimed to have resurrected the extinct dire wolf, the company’s chief scientist now concedes that the animals are merely modified grey wolves The dire wolf is “the world’s … Read More
May 22, 2025
(Gizmodo) – The pharmaceutical company bought “substantially all” of 23andMe’s business for $256 million. Genetic testing company 23andMe isn’t going away, despite declaring bankruptcy. The company and nearly all of its assets, including its biobank of customer genetic samples, have … Read More
May 19, 2025
HEC Forum (vol. 37, no. 2, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
May 15, 2025
(New York Times) – The technique used on a 9½-month-old boy with a rare condition has the potential to help people with thousands of other uncommon genetic diseases. The baby, now 9 ½ months old, became the first patient of … Read More
May 14, 2025
(BBC) – A new treatment approach can significantly improve survival rates for patients with aggressive, inherited breast cancer, a study suggests. The trial, led by Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, and published in Nature Communications, involved women with early-stage breast cancer … Read More
May 13, 2025
(MIT Technology Review) – Microbes can produce compounds that affect the way neurons work. They also influence the functioning of the immune system, which can have knock-on effects on the brain. And they seem to be able to communicate with … Read More
May 13, 2025
(MIT Technology Review) – The CRISPR patents are back in play. On Monday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier will get another chance to show they ought to own the … Read More
May 12, 2025
Hastings Center Report (vol. 55, Issue 2, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
May 8, 2025
(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
(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
(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
European Journal of Human Genetics (vol. 33, no. 4, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
May 2, 2025
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
European Journal of Human Genetics (vol. 33, no. 3, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
April 8, 2025
(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
