Biopolitical News of the Year 2013
For better and worse, 2013 has been a year in which several related
issues familiar to those who follow human biotechnology moved into the
wider sphere of public discussion. Many involve genetic testing — at
every stage of life — and some explicitly raise issues of inheritable
genetic modification. The legacy of eugenics past, the horror of
sterilization abuse in the present, and the advocacy of genetic
selection for intelligence and other traits in the near future all hit
the headlines.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of
important and yet strangely incomplete rulings whose implications are
still being unraveled. The commercialization of synthetic biology and
other newly developed technologies proceeded apace, with well-financed
businesses, partly crowd-sourced ventures and a number of outright
scams. The assisted reproduction industry continued its global spread,
and there were encouraging signs of academic interest in analyzing its
processes.
After the jump, much more on:
- Testing, Testing …
- “Three-Parent” Babies and Inheritable Genetic Modification
- Eugenics: Past and Present as Prologue
- IQ and Genetics and Education and Immigration
- A Glowing Push for Synthetic Biology
- The Global Assisted Reproduction Industry
- California: Women's Eggs, DNA & Police Databases, the Stem Cell Agency
- The Supreme Court Dives In
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