September 13, 2019
(Undark) – In 2015, George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University, announced a stunning breakthrough: Working with pig embryos, he and his colleagues had managed to disable 62 different retrovirus genes in one fell swoop. “This would have been virtually … Read More
August 27, 2019
(Science) – Major academic figures admonish “immoral experiments on the unborn.” An advertisement in The New York Times cautions about the “unknowable risks to human lives.” A government official calls for an ethics board to investigate “attempts to control the … Read More
August 13, 2019
(Nature) – Amy Gutmann and Jonathan Moreno have long been at the heart of bioethics debates, and served together for seven years on Barack Obama’s Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Their book Everybody Wants to Go to … Read More
July 17, 2019
(Science) – Imagine having your foot pinned between a moving van and a motorcycle and subsequently undergoing five surgeries to restore function to your mangled limb over a 1-month period. In order to endure the debilitating pain, you are prescribed … Read More
July 12, 2019
(Undark) – Sardy observed these developments with growing alarm. She and Tom had grown up with a mother whose life had been derailed by schizophrenia, and she was well acquainted with its signs and symptoms. “Memories unfurl inside as I … Read More
July 11, 2019
(The Guardian) – Midsommar seems to hark back to the horror film’s eugenicist beginnings. It’s no coincidence that the monstrous tropes of horror’s mainstream began to be configured during the rise of eugenics in the United States. Identified as one … Read More
June 19, 2019
(The Atlantic) – Paternity traces the long history of how society got here, to a place where biological paternity is a patently knowable fact that’s apparently fair game to ask a stranger about. As Milanich explains in the book, certainty … Read More
May 21, 2019
(Smithsonian) – The post-war era saw scientists on the right-wing fringe find ways to cloak their racist views in more palatable language and concepts. And as Angela Saini convincingly argues in her new book, Superior: The Return of Race Science, … Read More
May 3, 2019
(NPR) – We all know that the world is changing. Fast. But do we know where it is going? Not exactly. That being the case, how can we control where it is going? And who is the “we” in control? … Read More
April 26, 2019
(Smithsonian) – It really feels to me like the world of science fiction and science fact are, in many ways, converging,” says Jamie Metzl. The polymath would know—he’s an expert on Asian foreign relations who served in the State Department, … Read More
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