If you missed John Oliver's “Last Week Tonight” this past Sunday, you missed one of the best (and funniest) explanations of the gene editing revolution ushered in by the advent of CRISPR six years ago. And no, it doesn't stand for Crunchy Rectums In Sassy Pink Ray-Bans, unfortunately) Here's video of the segment: Oliver (who…
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So-called designer babies are in the news again, just in time for the 40th anniversary of the birth of Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby (although there was no test tube involved).
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Guest post by Denise Howell After finishing “Biohack,” I was standing at my Newport Beach yoga studio this morning, surrounded by all the other local businesses dedicated to "perfecting" us, and was struck by just how many ways people might genetically modify their kids if they had the chance, given the expense and extremes we…
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A toddler in Ukraine has three genetic parents. An NPR report from Rob Stein tells the story of a 31-year-old woman in western Ukraine who went through years of IVF treatments before finding a trailblazing fertility clinic.
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Ipromised in my new thriller "Biohack" that I'd do something rarely seen in crime fiction: provide a bibliography-like list of resources I relied on during the months I spent researching the science behind the novel. I'll do that below, and in part two I'll also include a list of bioethics experts who've begun wrestling with…
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If you've had the feeling that DNA has been in the news a lot in recent weeks, you'd be right. The latest sensational use of a new generation of genetic technologies occurred late last month when the person suspected of being the Golden State Killer was ensnared by a relative's use of a genealogy site.…
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