August 22, 2024

While our newsletter team takes a brief summer break, enjoy these stories about genetic justice in an election season and CGS’ busy year so far...

Recent Biopolitical News: Ethics, Guidelines, History, and Pure Fantasy

Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 07.31.2024

From reports of Elon Musk volunteering his sperm to seed a colony on Mars to the return of He Jiankui as China releases new regulations on heritable genome editing, it’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics.



As the upcoming presidential election looms, the eugenic thinking and pronatalism of Donald Trump, and now JD Vance, are more evident than ever. CGS continues to illuminate the links between Trump’s rhetoric, eugenics, and his Silicon Valley supporters. 

Fluctuating Fortunes of Techno-Prophets

Pete Shanks

Biopolitical Times | 07.02.2024

The Remarkable Ambitions of Peter Thiel

Pete Shanks

Biopolitical Times | 02.23.2022

Trump's “Racehorse Theory” and Why It Matters

J. Kahn, M. Darnovsky, and J. Marks

Biopolitical Times | 10.05.2020

New biotechnologies are reviving and repackaging harmful eugenic ideas. These stories are part of CGS’ work to uncover and stop the insidious legacies of eugenics in science, technology, medicine, and public health. 

Legacies of Eugenics

A new series of essays on eugenics in science, medicine, and technology launched in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The series is organized by Osagie Obasogie, and supported by the Center for Genetics and Society, the Nova Institute for Health, the Othering & Belonging Institute, and UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Obasogie’s introductory essay explores how eugenics lingers in the 21st century. In the second essay of the series, Aubrey Clayton excavates the troubling correlation between the birth of statistical methods and the history of eugenics. The third essay, just released today, is "Breeding for IQ" by Emily Merchant.

Dawn of the Silicon Valley Superbaby

Julia Black & Margaux MacColl

The Information | 07.19.2024

cites CGS' Katie Hasson

Eugenics: Still a fool's errand

Emma McDonald Kennedy Biopolitical Times | 07.11.2024

Population Bomb, Great Replacement Theory, and Pronatalism

Kyla Rosin

Biopolitical Times | 06.27.2024

Heritable genome editing is prohibited in 70+ countries, but enthusiasts are pushing to change that. CGS continues our work to raise awareness of the significant safety, ethical, and societal risks, and to bring social justice and human rights to the center of policy and public discussions.

The CGS blog, Biopolitical Times, features timely posts by CGS staff and guest contributors that bring social justice and human rights perspectives to wide-ranging topics in human genetic and reproductive technologies. Read about two of our guest contributors and their work below.

Emily Beitiks is Interim Director of the Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University and member of CGS’ Missing Voices Initiative Working Group.

• The Unexpected Plight of Whistleblowers: Reflections on The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Cost of Saying No by Carl Elliott

Biopolitical Times | 05.10.2024

Isabelle Bartram is Program Director at the Gen-ethisches Netzwerk e.V. in Berlin and member of CGS’ Gender Justice and Disability Rights Coalition on Heritable Genome Editing.

• Precious DNA: Unethical research on oppressed Uyghur population continues

Biopolitical Times | 07.17.2024

• Germline Editing: Made in Germany?

Biopolitical Times | 03.13.2024

Support CGS with a donation today!

SUBSCRIBE | WEBSITE | ABOUT US | CONTACT