Podcast Review: Your Best Baby
A review of the podcast Your Best Baby examines the growing commercialisation of PGT-P and the ethical questions raised by selecting embryos based on predicted traits and disease risks...
BioNews
Eugenics
Seeking to change a population, to increase the occurrence of chosen characteristics that are believed to be both heritable and desirable.
125 articles
Podcast Review: The Queer Family Podcast – 'We bought sperm four months in'
Robert and Shannon share their journey to parenthood through donor conception, speaking candidly about fertility, trans healthcare, and raising their daughter in an intentionally queer family...
Image by Matthew Daniels via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts human cells, showing the stages of cell division.
From nuclear bombs to nuclear genomes
Professor of stem cell science, Dusko Ilic, discusses concerns raised by the plans of a US-based startup – the (new) Manhattan Project – to create genome-edited babies…
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
Depopulation – a view from 1896
Professor Rachel Bowlby, author of a new book about the French novelist Émile Zola, discusses falling birthrates with a comparison from 1896...
Image by K Hardy via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human embryo at the blastocyst stage (about six days after fertilisation) 'hatching' out of the zona pellucida.
What Is the Embryo's Special Status in the Lab?
The second session of the PET 2024 Annual Conference, 'What Is the Embryo's Special Status in the Lab?', focused on the opportunities and challenges presented by using human embryos in research...
Image by Matthew Daniels via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts human cells, showing the stages of cell division.
The continued impact of the CRISPR revolution
This piece by Vanessa Burns, exploring the impact that CRISPR-based genome editing will have over the next 25 years, won the second prize in the inaugural Marcus Pembrey BioNews Writing Competition...
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
Event Review: Polygenic Embryo Screening – The promise and perils of selecting our children's traits
A timely conversation focused on the bioethical concerns wrapped up in the clinical use of polygenic embryo screening...
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
Podcast Review: Orchid's Noor Siddiqui – Super-babies
Do we need to prepare for a technology that may put into question the very nature of being human? Noor Siddiqui, the founder of Orchid Health, discuses how the company is using gene technology so people can 'have healthy babies'...
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
Detail of an engraving by Johann Christoph Sysang, depicting the mythical figure of Daedalus escaping from the Labyrinth he has constructed. From the 1749 book Sammlung Geist- und Sinnreicher Gedancken, by Joannes Oppelt.
FILM: The First Transhumanist? Haldane's 'Daedalus' 100 Years On
This film documents a lecture by Sandy Starr – deputy director of PET – about the life and legacy of JBS Haldane, who at one time was the best-known scientist in Britain and who helped to pioneer the idea of IVF...