|
| |
Stumbling Toward the End of an Era
Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 03.25.2025
After almost 20 years of publicity stunts and dubious claims, we may have reached the end of 23andMe. The company's bankruptcy leaves the fate of its DNA database––and all its customers’ data––uncertain.
| | | | |
Eggonomics: A conversation with author Diane Tober
CGS and the Othering and Belonging Institute are co-sponsoring a conversation with Diane Tober on her new book, Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them on Friday, April 18 from 12-1:30 pm PT. Register here.
| | | | |
Reproductive Justice Futurisms Think Tank
CGS Associate Director Katie Hasson and CGS Consultant Emily Galpern joined members of the CGS Advisory Board, ART Working Group, and colleagues for the Reproductive Justice Futurisms Think Tank convening at Smith College, organized by Loretta Ross and Jallicia Jolly. Participants discussed how reproductive justice frameworks can respond to new eugenic applications of reproductive and genetic technologies and how we can propose alternative reproductive futures.
| | |
| |
Sociogenomics and polygenic scores
Peter Wehling, Tino Plümecke, and Isabelle Bartram, Biopolitical Times | 03.26.2025
A start-up promises to use genomic tests to select the ‘most intelligent’ embryos. What might sound like pseudoscientific nonsense is only the tip of the iceberg of current research into the genetic prediction of social characteristics.
| | | | |
On Woolly Mice, Resurrecting Mammoths, and Tech Bros
Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 03.17.2025
De-extinction efforts and cloning claims continue to be overhyped in the headlines. The motivations behind these efforts, and those fueling related attempts to edit human embryos, deserve skepticism and further scrutiny.
| | |
| |
23andMe’s DNA database is up for sale. Who might want it, and what for?
Anumita Kaur, The Washington Post | 03.25.2025
CGS’ Katie Hasson explains why 23andMe’s bankruptcy is a privacy risk for consumers: “Genetic information is permanent. It’s also sensitive. It reveals information about your health, your purported ancestry and relationships far beyond what you may be aware of yourself.”
| | |
| |
Center for Genetics and Society, et al. vs. Rob Bonta, et al.
ACLU | 03.20.2025
A California superior court rejected the state’s defense in this long-standing lawsuit challenging the state's retention of genetic samples and profiles from people who were never convicted of a felony. The court asked the state to submit a plan for automatically destroying the DNA of the hundreds of thousands of people who are legally eligible, but California will appeal.
| | |
GENE EDITING | GENOMICS | EUGENICS
ASSISTED REPRODUCTION | SURROGACY360 | VARIOUS
| | |
Chinese Scientist Ostracized Over Gene-Edited Babies Seeks Comeback
Liyan Qi and Jonathan Cheng, The Wall Street Journal | 03.26.2025
Despite gaining a criminal record and losing the trust of the scientific community (and his passport), He Jiankui is trying to stage a comeback with another risky, controversial gene editing project––this time on Alzheimer’s disease.
| | |
We Need to Talk About CRISPR
The Medicine Maker | 03.21.2025
In a new book edited by Neal Baer, The Promise and Peril of CRISPR, researchers, philosophers, bioethicists, and geneticists (including CGS’ Katie Hasson and Marcy Darnovsky) explore the ethical implications of possible uses of gene editing techniques.
| | |
A New Scientific Field Is Recasting Who We Are and How We Got That Way
Dalton Conley, The New York Times | 03.13.2025
Polygenic indexes are sometimes seen as a kind of genetic FICO score, or simple blueprints we could tweak like an app setting. But genes and environment aren’t separate forces; they impact each other in a feedback loop. This should call into question attempts to predict outcomes from either genetics or environment alone.
| | |
Opinion: Trump and MAGA want to make eugenics great again
Loren Johnston, Portland Press Herald | 03.15.2025
Between Elon Musk’s tech pronatalism, Trump’s comments that immigrants’ “bad genes” are “poisoning” the U.S., and JD Vance’s support of Germany’s far-right party, eugenics has become the MAGA mainstream.
| | |
US natalist conference to host race-science promoters and eugenicists
Jason Wilson, The Guardian | 03.03.2025
A “natalist” conference will bring together self-described eugenicists and peddlers of race science to promote natalism and techniques including IQ screening in the IVF process. It will be held at a venue operated by the public University of Texas, Austin.
| | |
‘The basis of eugenics’: Elon Musk and the menacing return of the R-word
Justin Kirkland, The Guardian | 03.03.2025
A faction of right-wing conservatives, including Elon Musk, are embracing the “R” word as a slur to insult opponents. Historically used in efforts to eliminate people with intellectual disabilities, its use now is one of several ways the far-right is bringing back eugenic ideas.
| | |
Forced Sterilization of Disabled People Isn’t a Relic of the Past
Julia Métraux, Mother Jones | 02.28.2025
30 states allow disabled people to be sterilized against their will, even as many of them, including Massachusetts and Oregon, affirm reproductive rights generally. Legacies of eugenics contribute to the discounting of disabled people’s reproductive autonomy.
| | |
What Do We Owe This Cluster of Cells?
Anna Louie Sussman, The New York Times | 03.25.2025
Some researchers are advocating that rules limiting embryo research to the first 14 days be changed in order to better understand miscarriage and embryo development, but others raise ethical concerns about removing guardrails on the development of embryo models.
| | |
Tennessee Senate passes bill to protect access to IVF
Natalie Richardson, PET | 03.24.2025
A bill to protect IVF in Tennessee, which was proposed by two Republican state legislators, unanimously passed in the Senate and now goes to the House Health Committee. The bill clarifies that existing state abortion laws do not prohibit access to IVF and contraception in the state.
| | |
U.N. Accuses Israel of Targeting Reproductive Health Facilities in Gaza
Nick Cummings-Bruce, The New York Times | 03.13.2025
A UN report found that Israel has targeted hospitals and other health facilities in Gaza that provide reproductive services, including an IVF clinic where thousands of embryos were destroyed, in what it called an effort to prevent Palestinian births.
| | |
| |
Wombs for Hire: Inside Europe’s Underground Surrogacy Networks
Seda Karatabanoğlu and Zeynep Yüncüler, Ms. Magazine | 03.02.2025
Inconsistent laws and regulations governing surrogacy in different countries have led to underground operations that enable unethical practices and exploitation––including in Turkey, Georgia, and Northern Cyprus.
| | |
Ethically sourced “spare” human bodies could revolutionize medicine
Carsten T. Charlesworth, Henry T. Greely, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi, MIT Technology Review | 03.25.2025
Some researchers envision a future in which pluripotent stem cell techniques are used to create human “bodyoids” that could be used for research and as a supply of organs without harming existing people or animals, but ethical issues with the idea––if it is even possible––are plenty.
| | |
China’s Autonomous Agent, Manus, Changes Everything
Craig S. Smith, Forbes | 03.08.2025
China’s AI agent “Manus” goes beyond ChatGPT by initiating its own instructions and following them. The move to make AI an independent actor raises many additional ethical and regulatory questions.
| | | | |
