News

Bay Area Startups Want to Make Genetically Engineered Babies. What Could Go Wrong?

By Grace Won, KQED Forum [with CGS' Katie Hasson] | 12.02.2025

In the U.S., it’s illegal to edit genes in human embryos with the intention of creating a genetically engineered baby. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Bay Area startups are focused on just that. It wouldn’t be the first...

Genetic Selection

Developments in gene-editing technology raise new ethical questions

By [cites CGS' Katie Hasson], KCBS Radio | 11.19.2025

This is Ask An Expert, where every weekday at 9:20am, KCBS Radio is giving you direct access to top experts in various fields. Today: Gene-editing technology allows scientists to work with DNA in unprecedented ways, but there are larger scientific...

U.S. Federal

Genetically Engineered Babies Are Banned. Tech Titans Are Trying to Make One Anyway.

By Emily Glazer, Katherine Long, Amy Dockser Marcus, The Wall Street Journal | 11.08.2025

For months, a small company in San Francisco has been pursuing a secretive project: the birth of a genetically engineered...

Genetic Selection

Who Gets to Procreate and Parent? A Black Feminist Critique of the Pronatalist Agenda

By Jallicia A. Jolly, Sydney Curtis and Nicole Sessions, Ms. Magazine | 10.17.2025

Pronatalism is an old idea with roots in eugenics and nationalism, that is now fashionable among far-right influencers and policymakers. They talk...

U.S. Federal

US Capitol Building with blue sky and clouds in the background

Push for Military Coverage of I.V.F. Faces Challenge in Congress

By Megan Mineiro and Caroline Kitchener, The New York Times | 10.05.2025

Kathleen Whipple and her husband had dreamed of a big family, but struggled to conceive.

Upon his return from an...

Policies

The Trump administration’s approach to autism is tangled up with ableism, eugenics, and pronatalism

By Shoumita Dasgupta, STAT | 10.03.2025

President Trump and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have characterized the rise in autism diagnoses in recent years as...

Bioethics

Chinese flag on flagpole with blue sky and clouds in background

A Surrogacy Silk Road: Chinese Parents Head West for Babies

By Emma Belmonte, ChinaFile | 10.03.2025

On the popular Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, an account called “Georgia Notes” (@格鲁吉亚小纸条...

Other Countries

Here’s what the review of the IVF industry said should change – and what it missed

By Karin Hammarberg, Alex Polyakov, Catherine Mills, and Karinne Ludlow, The Conversation | 10.03.2025

Reports of several cases of embryo and sperm mix-ups have put the Australian fertility industry in the spotlight for all...

Policies

The REPAIRome: A catalog of DNA scars sheds light on a path to fighting cancer resistance

By Jessica Mouzo, El País | 10.03.2025

DNA is the molecule of life: this double-helix structure, present in every cell in the body and organized into fragments...

Genomics

A mysterious surrogacy mansion. A drug- plagued property. And a criminal known as ‘Dragon'

By Matthew Ormseth and Summer Lin, Los Angeles Times | 10.02.2025

The father of some 22 children discovered by Arcadia police in May also owns a property in El Monte where...

U.S. States

Fertility treatments impacted by donor limit mix-up can proceed under NSW Health exemption

By Paige Cockburn, ABC News | 10.02.2025

On Thursday afternoon, NSW Health announced a temporary exemption to the donor limit would come into effect in mid to...

Society

Robots are learning to make human babies. Twenty have already been born.

By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Zoeann Murphy, The Washington Post | 10.01.2025

MEXICO CITY — When she walked into an IVF clinic in June, Alin Quintana knew it would be the last time she...

Assisted Reproduction