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Eugenics is Back: In a range of new flavors
Anne Rumberger and Marcy Darnovsky, Science for the People | 02.29.2024
Anti-abortion forces manipulate eugenic ideas and profess concern about racial equity in order to further their agenda. Meanwhile, among the Silicon Valley techno-libertarian elite, some embrace new reproductive technologies to engineer genetically superior children.
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Hunting Cloned Sheep and Other Post-Modern Biotech Absurdities
Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 03.19.2024
A Montana entrepreneur was convicted for creating hybrid sheep from a cloned endangered animal, and scientists at Colossal Biosciences made progress toward a hybrid “designer elephant.” Rich people continue to seek immortality and anticipate the singularity.
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Germline Editing: Made in Germany?
Isabelle Bartram, Guest Contributor, Biopolitical Times | 03.13.2024
Researchers are advocating for overturning Germany’s law prohibiting embryo research, some so that they can pursue heritable genome editing research. The law is grounded in “pro-life” arguments, but German feminists point to a range of concerns about the social consequences of overturning it.
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Can 23andMe Survive?
Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 03.07.2024
After a severe data breach and a series of PR missteps in response, 23andMe is struggling. Will this crisis bring the direct-to-consumer genetic testing company––and its practices of selling consumers’ genetic data––to an end?
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GENE EDITING | EUGENICS | GENOMICS | GENE THERAPY
ASSISTED REPRODUCTION | SURROGACY360 | VARIOUS
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Engineering the Microbiome: CRISPR Leads the Way
Mariella Bodemeier Loayza Careaga, The Scientist | 03.15.2024
Researchers are using CRISPR to genetically engineer microbes, but scientific understanding of microbes’ genomes and their role in human health is still in its infancy.
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CRISPR Will Likely Not Solve Bird Flu
Carol Cardona and Michelle Kromm, Scientific American | 03.11.2024
Using CRISPR to try to make chickens more resistant to bird flu carries several risks, including encouraging viral mutations that make avian flu more deadly.
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We Keep Our Data Safe
Juliet Kunkel, yes! | 03.04.2024
New technologies aren’t simply neutral tools; they’re created by and for existing power structures. When they’re used to criminalize, coerce labor, and extract profit, can they be repurposed or should they be dismantled?
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“Ridding the Race of His Defective Blood”—Eugenics in the Journal, 1906–1948
Paul A. Lombardo, The New England Journal of Medicine | 03.02.2024
William Mayo, for whom the Mayo Clinic is named, embraced eugenic ideals and advocated for forced sterilization programs and other eugenic practices. He was one of many prominent advocates of eugenics featured in the NEJM in the 20th century.
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Humane genomics education can reduce racism
Brian M. Donovan et al., Science | 02.22.2024
Most US high school students aren’t exposed to information that explicitly counters essentialist views about race. At best, instruction fails to challenge genetic essentialist beliefs; at worst, it could unintentionally lead students to construct them.
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Sickle Cell Patients Face a Tough Choice: Be Cured or Have Kids
Gerry Smith, Bloomberg | 03.12.2024
Patients who undergo gene therapies for sickle cell disease must take a toxic drug that can leave them infertile. A parent of a child with sickle cell disease commented, “It’s a potential cure for a lifelong illness that he has. But at what cost?”
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Doctors Can Now Edit the Genes Inside Your Body
Betsy McKay, The Wall Street Journal | 03.11.2024
Experimental “in vivo” gene editing therapies, which edit cells inside a person’s body, may be cheaper and less invasive. They could reach more patients with cardiovascular and other diseases, but there are remaining risks and unknowns.
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Egg freezing patients ‘misled’ by clinics
Anna Collinson, Maryam Ahmed and Bella McShane, BBC | 03.12.2024
BBC analysis found that 41% of private clinics offering egg freezing services in the UK did not make clear in their advertising materials the relatively low chances of success for using those frozen eggs to have a child in the future.
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Scientists move step closer to making IVF eggs from skin cells
Ian Sample, The Guardian | 03.08.2024
The radical procedure, a version of the cloning technique used to make Dolly the sheep, has only been tried with mice. It involves merging the nucleus from a skin cell with an egg that has had its nucleus removed.
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Alabama IVF ruling draws attention to technology’s unregulated frontiers
Daniel Gilbert, The Washington Post | 03.07.2024
Critiques of the Alabama ruling underscored widespread support for IVF, but also renewed debates about more controversial practices within assisted reproduction that remain unregulated in the U.S., such as embryo selection based on sex or genetic screenings.
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Alabama governor signs IVF bill giving immunity to patients and providers
Liz Baker, Debbie Elliott, and Susanna Capelouto, NPR | 03.06.2024
In response to public outrage, Alabama state lawmakers passed legislation that will allow patients and clinics to restart IVF treatments immediately without fear of legal repercussions if embryos are damaged or destroyed. But the stop-gap law does not address many of the issues posed by the ruling.
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The massive legal fallout from Alabama’s IVF ruling is just the beginning
Mary Ziegler, Naomi Cahn, and Sonia Suter, MSNBC News | 02.22.2024
The fallout from the Alabama decision will likely be felt well beyond its borders. It opens up new civil and criminal liabilities of all kinds––individuals who discard their embryos or donate them to research could risk facing liability for wrongful deaths.
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Accidents, Lax Rules and Abortion Laws Now Imperil Fertility Industry
Azeen Ghorayshi and Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 02.22.2024
Fertility clinics’ pattern of errors in storing and preserving embryos has taken on new gravity as the anti-abortion movement aims to extend “personhood” to IVF embryos, arguing to an increasingly polarized judiciary that they are “unborn children.”
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International Approaches to Surrogacy Regulation
Julia Englebert, Carson Turner, and Narintohn Luangrath, The Regulatory Review | 03.02.2024
In the absence of an international legal framework, country-specific legislation on surrogacy spans a spectrum. This article summarizes a range of perspectives on the benefits and risks of surrogacy and features research analyzing various approaches to regulation.
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A.I. Is Learning What It Means to Be Alive
Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 03.10.2024
Scientists report that A.I. models fed large amounts of biological data are making novel discoveries in gene and cell development, but they also raise privacy and security risks, including the prospect of new bioweapons.
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