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Fourth Summit on Genome Editing Emphasizes Ethical and Societal Concerns
Biopolitical Times | 05.29.2025
A departure from the science and tech focus of previous summits, the Global Observatory for Genome Editing’s international summit featured discussions of the potential social and eugenic consequences of heritable genome editing. CGS Associate Director Katie Hasson’s presentation focused on the importance of including civil society advocates representing social justice and human rights perspectives, a practice that CGS’ side event, “Bringing Excluded Voices to the Table” enacted through a panel of scholars and advocates discussing how to truly include missing voices.
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Trumpian “Common Sense” and the History of IQ Tests
Pepper Stetler, Los Angeles Review of Books | 05.08.2025
From the latest essay in the Legacies of Eugenics series: “We are witnessing a horrific return to a eugenicist ‘common sense’ even though history shows us that the way test scores register intelligence is far from objective science, and that competence is not biologically ingrained in white, able-bodied men, as the Trump administration—atavistically—would like us to think.”
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The Emperors’ New Clothes
Pete Shanks, Biopolitical Times | 05.29.2025
Adam Becker’s More Everything Forever debunks some of Silicon Valley's favorite ideologies, including longtermism and effective altruism, but it doesn’t fully connect the dots between these pernicious ideas and “techno-eugenic” uses of reproductive and genetic technologies.
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Can doctors test embryos for autism? And should they?
Brittany Luse, Liam McBain, and Neena Pathak, NPR | 05.28.2025
One of the risks of polygenic embryo screening, says CGS’ Katie Hasson, is its assumption that genes determine social outcomes. This belief will further “justify and reinforce the inequalities that we already have…, which then undermines any arguments for making social changes to improve equality in the world.”
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USA : la politique pro nataliste de Trump et Musk
M. Genries, A. Cohen, and L. Mareschal, Franceinfo | 05.03.2025
CGS’ Katie Hasson explains the right-wing strain of pronatalism in the U.S., and its associations with anti-immigrant sentiments and White Christian nationalism.
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GENE EDITING | GENOMICS | PRONATALISM | EUGENICS
SURROGACY360 | ASSISTED REPRODUCTION | VARIOUS
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At a major genome-editing summit, spotlight turns to the value of human life
Megan Molteni, Stat | 05.27.2025
While the Global Observatory for Human Genome Editing’s international summit on heritable genome editing followed three similar international summits in name and topic, the focus was different: instead of leading with technology and leaving ethics to the side, this summit facilitated conversation on key concepts and values among a wider range of participants.
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Meet Cathy Tie, Bride of “China’s Frankenstein”
Caiwei Chen and Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 05.23.2025
He Jiankui’s attempted comeback is playing out in an ever more absurd fashion on X, thanks to his new wife, Cathy Tie. A controversial bio-hacking figure in her own right, she is now encouraging He’s gene-editing aspirations–which may have stymied their attempts to reunite in China.
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Global Observatory Gathers to Expand Debate on Human Genome Editing
Kevin Davies, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 05.21.2025
Alongside the recent international summit in Cambridge, MA hosted by the Global Observatory for Genome Editing, the CRISPR Journal is publishing a series of essays that foreground genome editing and explore the meaning of being human and of social progress.
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Nobel Prize winners convince court to revive CRISPR patent dispute
Blake Brittain, Reuters | 05.12.2025
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board will reconsider the CRISPR patent case after an appeals court concluded that federal law was misapplied in awarding the patent to the Broad Institute. The reconsideration revives the University of California and University of Vienna’s bid for the patent rights.
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Could gene therapy improve my life as an adult with sickle cell?
Oluwatosin Adesoye, Sickle Cell Disease News | 04.30.2025
A doctor with sickle cell disease isn’t excited about gene therapy: “it is neither affordable nor accessible to most people living with sickle cell disease.” While it might be helpful for children, some adults may decide that the physical and financial costs of the therapy outweigh the uncertain benefit.
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Why Deleting Your 23andMe Data Is a Political Imperative
Katie Sagaser, The DNA Exchange | 05.27.2025
In our current political climate, it’s not hard to imagine how a vast genomic dataset could be used to identify, profile, or even segregate people based on their neurotype, ancestry, or perceived productivity. Deleting your 23andMe data isn’t just a personal decision, it’s a political one that resists corporate violations of privacy, public health, civil rights, and democracy.
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The GOP’s Resurgence Of Pro-Natalism Looks A Lot Like The Past
Alanna Vagianos, Huffington Post | 05.09.2025
Trump’s interest in “baby bonuses” and other pronatalist incentives echoes past fascist and authoritarian regimes’ efforts to increase the birth rate for “desirable” populations while relegating women to the home and childbearing.
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They say they want Americans to have more babies. What’s beneath the surface?
Lisa Hagen, NPR | 04.25.2025
Some vocal pronatalists, including those behind the “NatalCon” conference, are eager to dissociate their advocacy from early 20th century eugenicists, but as Alexandra Minna Stern points out, the “underlying, driving ideologies… of genetic determinism and who is more fit or less fit” persist.
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From fringe to federal: The rise of eugenicist thinking in US policy
Donald Earl Collins, Al Jazeera | 05.23.2025
Some of Trump’s eugenicist collaborators believe in “longtermism”––a philosophy that they interpret to mean that humanity’s survival depends on allowing a significant number of present-day humans to die off to protect a distant future.
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Tears of Blood: Eugenics, Disposability, and the War on Children
Henry Giroux, CounterPunch | 05.23.2025
Hard eugenics is historically linked to overt violence, policies of sterilization, genocide, and forced elimination of those deemed “undesirable.” Soft eugenics operates through policies embedded in the legal and economic structures of society.
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Will Utah Compensate Victims of Forced Sterilization?
Jonathan Michels, Jacobin | 04.29.2025
Utah was particularly aggressive in its campaign to forcibly sterilize people with disabilities throughout the 20th century. The practice remains legal in the state. Researchers investigating the scope of Utah’s eugenics campaign are asking the state to compensate survivors of forced sterilization who are still living.
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Control and Salt Curses: Surrogacy and Migration
Polina Vlasenko, COMPAS | 05.02.2025
Intermediaries in Georgia’s surrogacy industry not only facilitate migration of surrogates from other countries in Central Asia to Georgia, but they also serve as the supervisors of surrogates for clinics. They respond to surrogates' needs, but they maintain tight control over their lives.
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A Gold Mine for Georgia? Surrogacy and Migration
Polina Vlasenko, COMPAS | 04.30.2025
Georgia has become a destination for surrogacy, especially following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Clinics recruit people from other countries in Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, to come to Georgia to work as surrogates.
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Lesbian mothers win legal status in Italy IVF ruling
Reuters | 05.22.2025
Italy's Constitutional Court struck down part of a 2024 law and ruled that same-sex female couples who use IVF abroad can both be legally recognised as parents, even if one is not the biological mother. The ruling was celebrated as a victory against Italy’s far-right, anti-LGBTQIA+ government.
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Spain bans its embassies from registering babies born through surrogacy
Aitor Hernandez-Morales, Politico | 04.30.2025
Spain has banned its embassies and consulates from registering children born via surrogacy in foreign countries––a change that removes a loophole in its surrogacy ban, which up until now allowed Spanish courts to recognize foreign courts’ parentage rulings.
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With No Real Policy, Trump Asks Drugmakers to Lower U.S. Prices
Margot Sanger-Katz and Rebecca Robbins, The New York Times | 05.12.2025
Pharmaceutical stocks rose in response to Trump’s new executive order, which asks drugmakers to voluntarily reduce the prices of key medicines in the U.S. without citing legal authority to mandate lowering of prices.
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