We are in a moment of extreme challenge for each of us and for our country's future – yet again. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many other Black men and women are recent horrors in a centuries-long history of systemic racism.
The waves of anger, grief, and protest in response to these killings offer some hope for confronting and finally ending this inhumane system. For that hope to be realized, we will have to step up, to sharpen our opposition to white supremacy and deepen our commitment to explicitly anti-racist work. Those of us with privilege and influence because we are white or have economic and social resources must listen to and learn from leaders and organizations fighting racism and all forms of oppression, and take concrete actions to achieve real social change.
The Center for Genetics and Society’s commitment to social justice includes unearthing the legacies of scientific racism and eugenics. These legacies are not curiosities of a long-buried past. They distort current endeavors ranging from biomedical research to bioethics, from genetic genealogy to DNA forensics, from assisted reproduction to general health care. They continue to dehumanize targeted groups, stratify society, and justify inequities.
To do this work, both as an organization and as individuals, means confronting anti-Black racism and white supremacy in all their forms. We will learn and do as much as possible as we work in coalition to bend the arc of history toward justice.
In solidarity,
The CGS team
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In a new post on Biopolitical Times, Pete Shanks argues that the promotion of “herd immunity” is simplistic to the point of being dangerous, while “immunity passports” are neither ethical nor practical.
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Deep Appreciations and Fond Farewell |
We extend heartfelt thanks and warm wishes to Charles Garzón, the Center for Genetics and Society's longtime Director of Finance and Administration, who left his position at CGS last month. Charles often commented that he worked "behind the scenes" to keep the office running and the lights on. The range and extent of his contributions to CGS since 2005 have been truly fundamental to our work, in ways that far exceed his formal title or that simple description. Many thanks, Charles! We wish you well in your future travels, and can't wait to hear about them. |
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Osagie Obasogie, The Washington Post | 06.05.2020
Black lives seem not to matter, which reveals an underlying eugenic ideology in the United States of letting disease and violence thin the herds of undesirable groups.
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Katie Hasson, Biopolitical Times | 06.05.2020
This one clinic in Ukraine exemplifies many of the longstanding concerns about the international fertility and cross-border surrogacy industry, including the rapid commercialization of risky, untested, and highly controversial mitochondrial manipulation techniques.
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Emily Galpern, Biopolitical Times | 05.27.2020
The COVID crisis is illuminating pre-existing problems, and highlights the need for stronger regulations that both empower each party and support family formation at no one’s expense.
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Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 05.15.2020
Facing a fiscal crisis, would California voters approve an expensive ballot initiative?
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EUGENICS | ASSISTED REPRODUCTION | GENOMICS | SOCIETY | ANIMAL & PLANT TECHNOLOGIES |
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Michele Goodwin, Ms. | 06.01.2020
Minneapolis is picturesque, peaceful, artistic, environmentally mindful—and hip. However, it is also a place of fear, hostility, passive-aggression and lack of mindfulness regarding race.
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Lois Beckett, The Guardian | 05.21.2020
As racism warps the US pandemic response, a health crisis has escalated into a culture war.
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Cassie Da Costa, The Daily Beast | 05.18.2020
The new documentary Belly of the Beast explores the epidemic of forced sterilizations within the female prison population of California.
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Lizzie Wade, Science | 05.14.2020
Similar tragedies were repeated for hundreds of years in Indigenous communities as colonial violence and oppression rendered Native Americans susceptible to epidemics.
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Alana Lentin, The Guardian | 05.12.2020
The Black, Asian and minority ethnic experience in the UK during this pandemic demonstrates how race profoundly shapes people’s lives.
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Isaac Chotiner, The New York Times | 05.07.2020
Historian Evelynn Hammonds talks about how false theories of “innate difference and deficit in black bodies” have shaped American responses to disease, from yellow fever to syphilis to COVID-19.
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Jeffrey Ostler, The Atlantic | 04.29.2020
Native communities’ vulnerability to epidemics is not a historical accident, but a direct result of oppressive policies and ongoing colonialism.
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Amrita Pande, Mail & Guardian | 05.22.2020
This is the perfect storm to challenge the neoliberal approach to reproductive healthcare, where individually accessed technological solutions have effectively depoliticised structural inequalities.
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Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times | 05.16.2020
Travel bans have prevented the babies’ parents from entering the country. One official says as many as 1,000 babies will be born before restrictions are lifted.
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Alison Motluk, HeyReproTech Newsletter | 05.12.2020
Genes from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, have been found in semen from infected patients. Should we be concerned?
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Erik Parens, Scientific American | 06.01.2020
COVID-19 has laid bare the need to develop a more realistic and forthright vision of the role that genetics can play in promoting the health of all of us.
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Rebecca Robins, STAT | 05.13.2020
Recruiting enough patients could be challenging for consumer genetics companies, which don’t have access to the same information as hospitals doing similar research.
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Tamsin Shaw, The New York Review of Books | 05.13.2020
Genomic biodata is essential for epidemiology, as well as for the development of vaccines and treatments. America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has exposed its shocking lack of preparedness for a public health emergency.
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Gregory Walton, AFP | 05.24.2020
Like other governments around the world, Qatar has turned to mobile phones to trace people's movements, but privacy concerns over Qatar's app, which is mandatory on pain of prison, have forced officials to offer reassurance and concessions.
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Ed Young, The Atlantic | 05.20.2020
The coronavirus is coursing through different parts of the U.S. in different ways, making the crisis harder to predict, control, or understand.
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Reed Albergotti and Drew Harwell, Washington Post | 05.15.2020
As states and national governments make efforts to use technology to augment their contact tracing efforts, Apple and Google's monopoly in the smartphone market has proved an obstacle.
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Francis Wade, The Nation | 05.13.2020
A conversation with the theorist about her new book, The Force of Nonviolence, and the need for global solidarity in the pandemic world.
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ANIMAL & PLANT TECHNOLOGIES |
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Erik Stokstad, Science | 05.18.2020
New regulations focus on traits, not the technology used to create them. An engineered plant won’t be regulated if it contains minor changes that could have been made through traditional breeding.
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Michael Le Page, New Scientist | 05.13.2020
Biologists have created mouse-human chimeras whose bodies were composed of up to 4 per cent human cells when the early embryos were destroyed after 17 days. The highest proportion previously achieved is around 0.1 per cent.
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