New Jersey’s Department of Health is considering new regulations for egg and embryo storage facilities. The rules would require biobanks to be licensed and to comply with standards for recordkeeping, adverse event reporting, and quality management.

Genomics companies selling polygenic prediction of children’s futures would almost certainly disavow eugenic commitments to “race betterment” and racial hierarchies. 1/2

Monash IVF has suspended treatment for patients using donor gametes in New South Wales after receiving clarification that donor sperm or eggs can be used by a maximum of five families globally rather than in the state. 1/2

Trump’s obsession with eugenics and his history of ableist statements set the tone for his press conference on autism. Trump, RFK Jr., and their allies framed autism as something to eliminate, rejected autistic self-advocacy, and excluded the voices of autistic people.

Surrogacy is growing in popularity in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere), but remains largely unregulated. A recent viral story shows how the lack of regulation of surrogacy arrangements can leave surrogates vulnerable when complications arise.

CBP agents took DNA samples from about 2,000 US citizens and shared them with the FBI for storage in a database used for criminal investigations, according to a new report from Georgetown. The report calls the practice a “flagrant abuse of power” with no legal justification.

Drug companies often discard gene therapies for rare diseases even after successful clinical trials because of the high costs of developing treatments and getting regulatory approval. 1/2

From He Jiankui’s recently announced return to gene editing to Julian Savulescu’s vocal support for “polygenic editing,” some researchers and philosophers seem intent on trying to push heritable genome editing forward despite global consensus against it.

Surrogacy is growing in popularity in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere), but remains largely unregulated. A recent viral story shows how the lack of regulation of surrogacy arrangements can leave surrogates vulnerable when complications arise.

From He Jiankui’s recently announced return to gene editing to Julian Savulescu’s vocal support for “polygenic editing,” some researchers and philosophers seem intent on trying to push heritable genome editing forward despite global consensus against it.

Drug companies often discard gene therapies for rare diseases even after successful clinical trials because of the high costs of developing treatments and getting regulatory approval. 1/2

In a proposed update to its guidelines, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence retains its recommendation of three NHS-funded IVF cycles for those eligible under 40 and critiques unproven IVF add-ons. The draft is open for consultation until October 21.

In the past 6 years, several gene-edited animals have been approved for consumption in Japan, the US and several S. American countries. Similar meat products could be sold in Australia without thorough regulatory testing or labels indicating what DNA changes have been made.

By excluding potential gamete donors who are neurodivergent or have a family history of neurodivergence, fertility clinics and gamete banks reinforce societal assumptions that neurodivergence is a deficiency rather than a difference.

The fertility company Kindbody’s tech startup approach led to millions in VC and private equity funding, but it came at the cost of good patient care. A new investigative series digs into the unregulated fertility industry and shows what went wrong in Kindbody clinics.

New gene therapies clash with old models of insurance and reimbursement—and patients are paying the price. The US healthcare financial infrastructure can catch up to new gene therapies by treating (and funding) them as essential, lifesaving treatments, not luxuries.

Eliezer Yudkowsky, a Silicon Valley techno-rationalist and “AI doomer,” has been warning of AI “doomsday” scenarios for decades. His new book predicts the death of humanity due to AI, which he hopes can be prevented w/ an “effective international treaty shutting AI down.” 1/2

Jesse Gelsinger’s death from an experimental gene therapy 26 years ago revealed serious misconduct in gene therapy experiments, leading to lawsuits, reviews, and significant changes in how gene therapy trials are conducted. 1/3 www.livescience.com/health/genet...

The conservative group behind Project 2025 has a new plan for “saving the American family.” The Heritage Foundation is urging Trump to issue executive orders to institute pronatalist policies that encourage married heterosexual couples to have more children. 1/2

Chinese scientists transplanted a gene-edited pig lung into a brain-dead man, but the experiment didn't show whether the lung could sustain life on its own. Researchers emphasize how gene edits and animal organs only intensify challenges of already-tricky lung transplants.

Top Republicans, rightwing organizations and even White House officials have recently begun to rally behind “restorative reproductive medicine,” an alternative to IVF that purports to treat the “root causes” of infertility without IVF. 1/2

A secret audit of the Queensland Fertility Group, a major fertility clinic in Australia, revealed that 99% of its donor sperm frozen before 2020 was at “high risk” of not being from the person on the label.

Simone Collins, a prominent pronatalist with ties to tech elites and the far right, drafted (with the help of AI) the executive order that pitched pronatalist policies, including the much-discussed “motherhood medals” to the Trump administration.

South Africa’s National Health Research Ethics Council has removed a controversial section on heritable human genome editing from their new research ethics guidelines. 1/2

An Australian IVF clinic’s sperm bank partner did not perform crucial checks to match the sperm donor with their sample, which led to a couple having a child from an embryo made with the wrong donor’s sperm. 1/2

Denmark’s prime minister apologized for the first time for the forced contraception scandal in which thousands of Greenlandic girls and women were fitted with contraceptive coils without their permission or knowledge from the 1960s up to 1992.

The latest review from GMWatch scrutinizes new biotech developments including gene drives, CRISPR babies, lab-grown sperm, and immortality projects. 1/2

A recent grad from George Church's lab has co-founded a startup, which has raised over $2M, to continue attempts at in vitro gametogenesis. They claim they'll "get to an egg in two years," but other researchers foresee complex problems ahead –– or a potential "dead end."

From designer babies to designer(-ish) jeans, it seems we’re now on the verge of a eugenics gold rush. 1/2

A recent podcast episode demonstrates how high healthcare costs in some countries influence women’s choices to travel to other countries to freeze their eggs. It also raises questions about the fate of far-away frozen eggs in the future, as most frozen eggs go unused.

As job applicants and employers use AI in the hopes of speeding up job search and hiring processes, many are concluding that it is actually in-person human interaction that leads to better outcomes.

Professor of health policy and bioethicist Leigh Turner explains how professional athletes’ use and promotion of experimental stem cell treatments lend credibility to unproven, often risky procedures – a concerning trend in a political climate encouraging deregulation.

Media coverage of pronuclear genome transfer (sometimes called “mitochondrial donation”) celebrated that the children were born “healthy,” overlooking both present unknowns about mitochondria in their organs and future risks that they may develop mitochondrial disease.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is conducting a major public dialogue to explore public views and priorities on potential changes to the 14-day rule on human embryo research.

With the federal government’s recently announced decision to terminate grants funding mRNA vaccine research, the implications of RFK Jr.’s dangerous and unfounded vaccine skepticism have become global and long-term.

A new report published by the National Women’s Law Center explores “the pronatalist movement, their history of eugenics and racism, the Trump administration’s concerning ties to the movement, and what we should be doing instead to support women and families.”

Some Silicon Valley parents are increasingly enamored with technology that purports, without convincing evidence, to give them “smarter babies.” Some are willing to pay upwards of $50,000 for technologies that claim to screen embryos for IQ. www.wsj.com/us-news/...

Silicon Valley’s “Rationalists,” w/ links to effective altruism and AI gambits, operate as a fundamentalist techno-religion, convincing adherents to “ignore their common sense about problems in the here and now in order to focus their attention on some fantastical future.”

The birth of the “world’s oldest baby” from a 30-year-old frozen embryo shows how reproductive technologies are changing how society understands identity, genetics, family, and time – and the need for regulations to help manage these significant shifts.

The biotech company Gameto has raised millions in venture capital funding to test its technique for maturing eggs outside the body, using stem cells that have been engineered into ovarian support cells. 1/2

GMWatch has published a series of interviews conducted in March 2002 with the late scientist Dr. Arpad Pusztai. He describes the results of – and the political fallout from – his landmark 1999 study that found GM insecticidal potatoes had toxic effects on rats.

Ethics committees in Denmark allowed genetic data collected at birth from 150,000 Danish people born b/w 1981-2008 to be used in research studies on psychiatric disorders without those individuals’ knowledge or consent. 1/2

Despite objections from parents and advocacy groups and the varied outcomes children with trisomy 13 and 18 experience, healthcare providers are frequently trained to think of these conditions as “uniformly lethal” and to withhold care. 1/6

The UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology announced plans to publish a POSTnote – a briefing document for members of Parliament – based in part on stakeholder submissions on surrogacy law in the UK and internationally. 1/2

A proposed update to embryo model research guidelines would advise scientists not to use human embryo models for ectogenesis – the development of an embryo outside the human body via the use of artificial wombs. Are voluntary guidelines sufficient?

American Eagle’s ad campaign attempts to boost their flagging sales by appealing to a dangerous and popular “all-American” ideology: eugenics.

Trump’s attempts to end birthright citizenship seem unlikely to survive legal challenges, but UK intended parents w/ ongoing surrogacy arrangements in the U.S. are preparing for possible legal issues that would result for their U.S.-born children if Trump were to succeed.

Ads don’t just sell products; they sell values. American Eagle’s ad campaign isn’t just selling jeans, it’s also selling eugenics, race, and genetic determinism.

With Trump’s support for IVF fizzling, conservative anti-abortion groups and MAHA fans hope he’ll fund “restorative reproductive medicine” instead. 1/2

Researchers and conservationists have made their skepticism – or outright rejection – of Colossal Biosciences’ de-extinction claims clear. Colossal's combative responses to critiques undermine their repeated reassurances of their respect for scientific research and scrutiny.