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Murderous Genes and Criminal Brains
Oliver Rollins, Los Angeles Review of Books | 07.06.2025
The ninth essay in the CGS-supported Legacies of Eugenics series explores how the current “science” of murderous (“bad”) genes and “criminal brains” opens a backdoor to eugenics.
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Center for Genetics and Society Receives Major Grant for “Confronting Eugenics To Build a Just Future”
07.03.2025
The Center for Genetics and Society is proud to announce a new program: Confronting Eugenics to Build a Just Future. This three-year initiative is made possible thanks to a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation. Confronting Eugenics will contribute to more accurate narratives about the legacies and current resurgences of eugenics by building a core network of scholars across fields and issue advocates across sectors, organizing a series of public events, and developing a collection of anti-eugenic pedagogical and public resources.
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The Ethics of Innovation: Disability, Technology, and Reproductive Justice – with Katie Hasson
Keith Casebonne and Jodi Beckstine, Disability Deep Dive | 07.24.2025
In this episode of the podcast Disability Deep Dive, CGS’ Katie Hasson and hosts Keith and Jodi discuss social justice and equity issues surrounding contemporary genetic technologies, including for people with disabilities, and the importance of including the voices of people with disabilities in policy discussions.
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How to Make Cloning Pay
Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 07.23.2025
Several attempts have been made to clone animals––pets, sheep, cattle, and now horses––but the ventures have generally not proved successful in generating revenue or in creating the exact same animal.
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THREE-PERSON IVF | GENE THERAPY | GENE EDITING | GENOMICS
EUGENICS | ASSISTED REPRODUCTION | VARIOUS
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A brief history of “three-parent babies”
Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review | 07.18.2025
The newly announced UK births are only the latest babies born through so-called “three-person IVF”––the same approach has been used in several countries in the past 30 years, generating controversy and debate about its safety and efficacy.
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How a third parent's DNA can prevent an inherited disease
Rob Stein, NPR | 07.16.2025
“Three-parent babies” have been born in the UK after researchers used “mitochondrial donation” techniques to try to prevent inherited mitochondrial diseases. Critics raise concerns about the safety of the techniques, and about whether they could be used in dangerous ways that support eugenic ideologies and the creation of “designer babies.”
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Sarepta, bowing to FDA pressure, pauses shipments of Duchenne gene therapy Elevidys
Angus Liu, Fierce Pharma | 07.22.2025
After initially refusing to comply, Sarepta Therapeutics has agreed to the FDA’s demand that it pause shipments of its gene therapy Elevidys, which treats Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The FDA made the distribution suspension request after multiple patients, some receiving that treatment and one receiving another Sarepta gene therapy, died.
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5 questions on Sarepta, the FDA and a Duchenne gene therapy crisis
Ben Fidler and Ned Pagliarulo, BioPharmaDive | 07.21.2025
Sarepta Therapeutics did not publicly disclose the death of a 51-year-old man from liver failure after receiving an experimental gene therapy to treat a kind of muscular dystrophy. The lack of disclosure, which came just after another of Sarepta’s gene therapies also caused patients’ death from liver failure, angered the FDA and investors.
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23andMe is out of bankruptcy. You should still delete your DNA.
Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post | 07.17.2025
23andMe is back in the hands of its cofounder Anne Wojcicki, but that doesn’t mean that concerns about privacy and consumers’ DNA have gone away. The company could still sell people’s genetic information to the highest bidder in the future.
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Plans to genetically screen newborns for rare diseases are problematic
Suzanne O’Sullivan, New Scientist | 07.09.2025
The UK’s plan to genetically screen newborns for a variety of rare diseases will bring more challenges than solutions. The plan ignores scientific unknowns around population-level genetic variation and ethical issues of informed consent of newborns and the security of their genetic information.
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The Shocking Rise of One of the Tech Right’s Favorite Posters
Noah Lanard, Mother Jones | 07.17.2025
After Jordan Lasker leaked Zohran Mamdani’s Columbia application data to The New York Times, revelations of his embrace of eugenics caused further controversy. Further scrutiny of his history shows extensive support for race science, Nazism, and white supremacist ideologies.
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Inside the Silicon Valley push to breed super-babies
Elizabeth Dwoskin and Yeganeh Torbati, The Washington Post | 07.16.2025
Orchid Health and other polygenic risk score startups are advancing their genetic screening and embryo selection technology in IVF clinics that cater to wealthy elites. There are few regulations to stop them, despite significant scientific and ethical concerns.
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The useful political lesson from Zohran Mamdani’s college application
Philip Bump, The Washington Post | 07.07.2025
The controversy around Zohran Mamdani’s self-identification of race on his Columbia application––which was triggered by a proponent of eugenics––reveals how archaic and limited constructs of race in the U.S. tend to be.
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Tech Oligarchs and the Rise of Silicon Valley Pronatalism
Maren Behrensen, Tech Policy Press | 07.02.2025
Under the guise of “saving humanity,” the Silicon Valley strain of pronatalism promotes an illiberal vision that prioritizes the flourishing of some groups, like tech elites and their offspring, to the detriment of others––like poor people, queer people, disabled people, and people of color.
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What Is Pronatalism? The Trump Admin-Backed Movement That Explains Elon Musk's Many Kids
Jamie Marsella, Teen Vogue | 07.02.2025
Trump and his allies’ pronatalist policies incentivize the expansion of some families while diminishing access to support and care for others. They reflect the toxic historical entanglement of pronatalism and eugenics fueled by anxieties about gender, race, and immigration.
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Beware the new eugenics
Joel Kotkin, UnHerd | 07.01.2025
Eugenics has found a new home in the 21st century: the tech industry. Tech elites on the right and the left are turning to reproductive technologies, gene editing, and artificial superintelligence to advance their dangerous and exclusionary vision of the future.
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Elon Musk and JD Vance Want You to Breed. A Lot.
Al Letson, Reveal | 06.28.2025
What do Silicon Valley billionaires, religious parents of six, and eugenics-curious biotech founders have in common? The belief that there’s a population crisis and that promoting pronatalism––for those they think should reproduce––will address it.
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Elon Musk Is Playing God
Charlie Warzel and Hana Kiros, The Atlantic | 06.24.2025
Elon Musk’s indifference to the suffering of people affected by the decimation of USAID exists alongside his belief that he has a central role to play in securing humanity’s future. The combination unmasks the exclusionary horrors beneath eugenic pronatalism and techno-utopianism.
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Men might be the key to an American baby boom
Lucy Tu, The Atlantic | 07.11.2025
Trump’s focus on IVF and his dubbing of himself as the “fertilization president” has exposed fault lines among conservatives regarding assisted reproduction, but the debate thus far has largely overlooked male reproductive health as a focus area for addressing infertility.
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Sperm donor app is a ‘serious risk’, warns regulator
Emma Haslett, The Observer | 07.06.2025
The HFEA is warning UK consumers about a new app launched by the controversial founder of a Danish sperm bank. By facilitating private sperm donation arrangements, “Y Factor” bypasses UK regulations and leaves donors, intended parents, and donor-conceived people vulnerable to medical and legal risks.
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The darker side of infertility
Pat Duggins, Alabama Public Radio | 06.27.2025
Diane Tober’s book Eggonomics reveals how the global marketplace for gametes can at times promote a “eugenic mission,” valuing the eggs of White donors––especially those from the Ivy League––while devaluing the eggs of donors of color and the gestational labor of surrogates.
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Lab-grown sperm and eggs just a few years away, scientists say
Hannah Devlin, The Guardian | 07.05.2025
While some researchers claim that in just a few years in vitro gametogenesis (lab-created sperm and eggs) will be possible, some are more concerned than others about the risks that the technology might pose.
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Building Decision Points Into Research’s Slipperiest Slopes
John H. Evans et al., Issues in Science and Technology | 07.04.2025
Researchers who called for a ban on the creation of mirror bacteria and other mirror organisms propose a “barrier” framework to evaluate potentially dangerous scientific technologies, avoid harms, and support “properly cautious research behavior.”
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