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US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’
Hannah Devlin, Tom Burgis, David Pegg and Jason Wilson, The Guardian | 10.18.2024
Embryo screening for IQ “normalises this idea of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ genetics” said CGS’ Katie Hasson. The rollout of such technologies “reinforces the belief that inequality comes from biology rather than social causes.”
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The New Artificial Intelligentsia
Ruha Benjamin, Los Angeles Review of Books | 10.18.2024
From the fifth essay of the Legacies of Eugenics series: “The artificial intelligentsia is dragging us into an archaic future where intelligence is quantified, fixed, and ranked, and smartness is fetishized. We would do well to remember that IQ is, above all, a eugenic concept.”
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Trump’s Eugenic Fantasies
Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 10.08.2024
The widespread slap-down of Trumpian eugenics and race science is heartening, but it’s remarkable that it took so long. Critics, including CGS, have been calling out his “racehorse theory” of breeding for years, though mainstream media has been reluctant to focus on it.
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Super-expensive startup “screening” parents’ embryos for IQ
Maggie Harrison Dupré, Futurism | 10.19.2024
Embryo screening companies sell the idea that they can screen for intelligence, even though both the concept of IQ, and its supposed genetic links, are highly questionable. CGS’ Katie Hasson points out that use of these screening tools, even if inaccurate, reinforces eugenic ideas.
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What Do You Risk With At-Home DNA Test Kits?
Ashleigh Wyss, Listnr | 10.09.2024
On the podcast The Briefing, CGS’ Katie Hasson explains how DNA testing companies' business model involves “amassing a giant database of genetic information…[T]hat is where the value is: in the data that comes from the spit that everyone is sending them.”
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GENOMICS | GENE THERAPY | EUGENICS
ASSISTED REPRODUCTION | SURROGACY360 | VARIOUS
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‘Anonymous’ genetic databases vulnerable to privacy leaks
Helen Kudiabor, Nature | 10.14.2024
A study has raised concerns that single-cell genetic databases, which are increasingly popular with researchers, could be exploited to reveal the identities of their participants, or link private health information to their public genetic profiles.
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In Genetic Data, Gaps That Affect Indigenous Communities
Claudia López Lloreda, Undark | 10.02.2024
Clinical tools created using genetic databases, which disproportionately include data from people with European ancestry, do not work as well for indigenous communities in Latin America whose ancestors lived outside Europe.
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Life Without Sickle Cell Beckons Boy Who Completed Gene Therapy
Gina Kolata, The New York Times | 10.21.2024
After 44 days in the hospital, Kendric Cromer, the first sickle cell patient to receive Bluebird’s commercial gene therapy, is going home. His parents say that nothing prepared them for the difficulty of watching him go through intense chemotherapy and its painful, debilitating side effects.
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Testing for desirable embryos inconsistent and unreliable, new study says
Tomoko Otake, The Japan Times | 10.17.2024
Although screening embryos during the IVF process to select those deemed desirable has faced ethical scrutiny, the testing remains available in many clinics. New research suggests that calculation methods used to produce polygenic risk scores are unreliable: embryos that one method ranked highly were ranked lowest using another method.
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What Drugmakers Did Not Tell Volunteers in Alzheimer’s Trials
Walt Bogdanich and Carson Kessler, The New York Times | 10.23.2024
The drugmaker Esai genetically tested volunteers to identify which were at higher risk of Alzheimer’s and of developing brain bleeding or swelling from the drug, but they did not disclose the results to participants—some of whom later died from brain bleeds after taking the drug.
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