Biopolitical Times
Virginia to compensate victims of 20th-century eugenic sterilization program
Lawmakers in Virginia have agreed to pay compensation to people who were forcibly sterilized between 1927 and the early 1970s ...
Is UK’s ‘3-parent IVF’ approval up to ethical standards?
A lengthy and consequential policy process in the UK has now come to an end. Despite what could turn out ...
Has three-person IVF put us on the slippery slope of germline genetic engineering?
On Tuesday February 3, the UK House of Commons voted in favor of legalizing mitochondrial donation. The British press headlined it ...
Fit to be cloned: Making case for reintroducing extinct species
De-extinction raises a host of questions: ethical, practical, philosophical. But for advocates, there’s a rhetorical question as well: How do ...
In retrospect, Obama’s personalized medicine initiative is nothing new
In the State of the Union speech delivered on January 20, President Obama made the first announcement of what seems ...
FDA intensifies discussions on medical and ethical issues of mitochondrial replacement therapy
On January 27, 2015, a newly appointed committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) will hold the first in a ...
Three parent babies: Social and ethical implications
Nuclear genome transfer for preventing the transmission of mitochondrial disease – also known as “3-person IVF” – is a form ...
Custom DNA advocate rejects regulation of synthetic biology
Austen Heinz of Cambrian Genomics has been trolling hard lately, as blogger Josh Cunningham notes. That is, he's been spouting ...
Bio-hack makes vaginas smell like peaches? Controversy over probiotic supplement
Austen Heinz and Gilad Gome, of biotech start-ups Cambrian Genomics and Personalized Probiotics, announced at November's DEMO conference, "New Tech Solving ...
Critics of ‘three-person’ IVF: Media oversimplifies role of mitochondrial genome
If you’ve read anything at all promoting 3-person IVF, you’ve no doubt seen the analogy that the cellular organelles called mitochondria ...
Media cycle helps pepetuate misleading ‘gene of the week’ cycle
Science writer David Dobbs has definitively described the voracious appetite of the “selfish gene” meme, pointing out that the notion ...
UK Parliament begins discussion of “3-parent IVF”
The British government continues to move toward legalizing a form of inheritable genetic modification that would combine eggs or embryos ...
Could genetic testing make having a disabled child immoral?
The summer's "ice bucket challenge" has brought an extraordinary amount of attention to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease ...
Examining California stem cell agency’s shady business ties
Alan Trounson, until very recently president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), has accepted a position on the ...
Call for integrity for stem cell research amid global controversy
Scientists around the world are campaigning in favor of sensible regulation of stem-cell therapies. We have two reactions: (1) kudos ...
Bum knees? Sports stars like CC Sabathia find success in experimental stem cell treatments
CC Sabathia, a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees, is making $23 million this year, and the same or ...
What’s ethical when cops use DNA to find a suspect in a crowd?
A “DNA sweep” or “DNA dragnet” refers to the practice of police officers asking large numbers of people to voluntarily ...
Can Amanda Knox’s appeal overturn ‘guilty’ verdict based on contaminated DNA evidence?
The Knox defense team asked for an independent analysis of all of the forensic data, but the judge denied the ...
FDA to hold public meeting about a form of human germline modification
On October 22-23, an advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will hold a public meeting on "oocyte ...
Sex-selective abortions becoming hot button issue in UK and US
On September 5, the London Daily Telegraph ran not one, not two, but seven stories about sex-selective abortions (1, 2, ...
Next-generation sequencing, with love
Last week, researchers at the University of Oxford announced that the first baby had been born after undergoing a technique which can ...
Genetic tests: Should doctors tell all?
The following is an edited excerpt. In March, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) released a report ...
Is the media storm around Angelina Jolie raising awareness or increasing misunderstanding?
The following is an excerpt. Angelina Jolie’s New York Times op-ed about her preventative double mastectomy continues to generate news ...
Predicting the IQ of future people
The following is an excerpt of a longer story. Jason Richwine was forced to resign from the Heritage Foundation by ...
Made-to-order embryos: You want to sell what?!
This is an excerpt. With political dividing lines carved deep into the collective consciousness, wading through the ethical minefield of ...
“World’s first GM babies born” — 12-year-old article continues to cause confusion
The following is an excerpt. An undated Daily Mail article that is actually over a decade old continues to spread misinformation about ...
Confusion reigns on genes, race, and Alzheimer’s
The following is an excerpt. Wildly divergent headlines about a study of Alzheimer’s disease vividly illustrate the depth and breadth ...
Who decides what patients need to know?
The following is an excerpt. The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) released a report on "incidental findings" in genetic ...
