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Email: darnovsky[AT]geneticsandsociety[DOT]org

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Groundbreaking Social Justice Principles on Heritable Human Genome Editing

By Center for Genetics and Society | 02.14.2024

Press Statement

Groundbreaking Social Justice Principles on Heritable Human Genome Editing Released by International Coalition of Advocates and Scholars

Endorsed by 70+ Individuals and Organizations

An international coalition of scholars, advocates, and social change organizations today released Social Justice and Human Rights...

Calls for Course Correction in the Heritable Genome Editing Debate: Decentering the Summit, Spotlighting Social Justice

By Center for Genetics and Society | 03.04.2023

Press Statement

Events and initiatives highlight widespread opposition to altering the genes of future children and generations

“Genetic Justice from Start to Summit” symposium now available online

The Center for Genetics and Society’s virtual symposium “Genetic Justice from Start to Summit” was...

Comment on WHO Human Genome Editing Recommendations

By Center for Genetics and Society | 07.12.2021

Press Statement

WHO committee recognizes need for global cooperation, meaningful public engagement on heritable genome editing; falls short by not calling for global ban

Today a World Health Organization advisory committee released two reports with recommendations for governance of human genome editing, the...

Should We Use Gene Editing to Create Super Babies?

By Staff [cites CGS' Katie Hasson], The New York Times Upfront | 02.17.2025

A young couple wants to have a baby, but they’re worried it’ll carry a disease that runs in the family. “There’s a solution,” the doctor says, “a technology that can alter the disease-causing gene in the egg, ensuring that the...

Bioethics

The couple who want to make America procreate again

By Anne Branigin, The Washington Post [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky] | 02.04.2025

^{Photo by TeggorMindFish via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under

the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license}

It's a new year, which, for Simone Collins, means a new pregnancy.

This will be her sixth pregnancy since 2019, and, if...

Genetic Selection

Ethics changes notwithstanding, creating genetically modified babies is still illegal in SA

By Tamsin Metelerkamp [cites CGS' Katie Hasson], Daily Maverick | 11.18.2024

The National Health Research Ethics Council (NHREC) has confirmed that heritable human genome editing (HHGE) remains illegal in South Africa, after changes in the latest version of the South African Ethics in Health Research Guidelines sparked concern among researchers that...

Genetic Selection

Articles and Commentary

Eugenics is Back: In a range of new flavors

By Anne Rumberger and Marcy Darnovsky, Science for the People | 02.29.2024

Eugenics is widely regarded as a debunked pseudoscience—developed and promoted mostly in Nazi Germany—that fell off the political radar after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed. In fact, twentieth century eugenics represented the mainstream science of its day and...

Assisted Reproduction

Scientists Still Can’t Be Trusted on Gene Editing

By Pete Shanks, The Progressive Magazine | 12.04.2023

Five years ago, on November 25, 2018, the world learned that a rogue Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, had created the first children whose DNA had been tailored using gene editing before they were born. They were twins, code-named “Lulu” and...

Human Genetic Modification

From small beginnings: to build an anti-eugenic future

By Benedict Ipgrave, Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, Marcy Darnovsky, Subhadra Das, Charlene Galarneau, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Nora Ellen Groce, Tony Platt, Milton Reynolds, Marius Turda, Robert A Wilson, The Lancet | 05.21.2022

September, 1921 was unusually hot and New York was sweltering. For the many immigrants who crowded the city's tenements and pavements, one of the few places for relief from the incessant heat was the American Museum of Natural History. That...

A "Post-Human" Future?