May 14, 2024
(The New Atlantis) – It’s pretty simple. People want children who look like them, who will be healthy and succeed in life,” said Lillian Tara, a master’s student at Harvard University who offers fertility education to young women. More specifically, … Read More
May 9, 2024
(Slate) – Having a baby via IVF first requires creating an embryo in a Petri dish. Embryonic testing can reveal secrets like genetic disorders. That allows it to serve as a screening tool for parents who carry genes for rare … Read More
April 29, 2024
(The Guardian) – Founded in 2005 and lauded by Silicon Valley, the Nick Bostrom’s centre for studying existential risk warned about AI but also gave rise to cultish ideas such as effective altruism. Two weeks ago it was quietly announced … Read More
April 10, 2024
(Wired) – God help the babies! Or, absent God, a fertility startup called Orchid. It offers prospective parents a fantastical choice: Have a regular baby or have an Orchid baby. A regular baby might grow up and get cancer. Or … Read More
April 9, 2024
(New York Times) – A new article in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the oldest and most esteemed publications for medical research, criticizes the journal for paying only “superficial and idiosyncratic attention” to the atrocities perpetrated in … Read More
March 11, 2024
(New York Times) – For decades, China harshly restricted the number of children couples could have, arguing that everyone would be better off with fewer mouths to feed. The government’s one-child policy was woven into the fabric of everyday life, … Read More
February 12, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – China’s baby bust is happening faster than many expected, raising fears of a demographic collapse. And coping with the fallout may now be complicated by miscalculations made more than 40 years ago. The rapid shift under way … Read More
January 8, 2024
(Atavist) – An ob-gyn in Virginia performed unnecessary surgeries on patients for decades. When his victims learned the truth, they fought back. Of the more than 80 births Perwaiz billed Medicaid and Tricare, another insurer, for in 2019, at least … Read More
January 2, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – With the number of babies in free fall—fewer than 10 million were born in 2022, compared with around 16 million in 2012—China is headed toward a demographic collapse. China’s population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely … Read More
December 22, 2023
(Businessweek) – A startup called Minicircle wants to reprogram human genes—and is enlisting biohacker Bryan Johnson as a human guinea pig in its unproven approach. (Read More)
November 10, 2023
(Science) – All health care students worldwide should learn the history of medicine during the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, according to a report published Wednesday by The Lancet. The journal formed a commission in 2021 to explore how the … Read More
November 7, 2023
(Axios) – AI could help people get pregnant. Why it matters: As doctors deal with overwhelming demand for fertility services, machine learning tools are offering ways to help streamline the IVF process. (Read More)
November 1, 2023
(TIME) – President Xi Jinping underscored his concerns — and more conservative social views — about China’s shrinking population in a speech calling on a key women’s organization to help bolster the nation’s birthrate by promoting a “culture” of childbirth. … Read More
October 30, 2023
(Undark) – The companies commercializing these techniques have largely escaped regulatory scrutiny, despite doubts about the health benefits their analyses can provide and worries about the risks they could pose to customers, health care systems, and society at large. The … Read More
October 30, 2023
(Wall Street Journal) – Getting the egg out of the female body was a revolution, says Vardit Ravitsky, president of the Hastings Center, a bioethics institute. IVF, introduced more than 40 years ago, severed the connection between eggs and motherhood. … Read More
October 27, 2023
(National Post) – The federal government seems poised to legalize medically assisted suicide for drug users next spring — a move that addiction physicians and harm-reduction advocates are condemning as “eugenics.” Their anger is entirely reasonable, as it is appalling … Read More
October 20, 2023
(Vice) – Canada will legalize medically assisted dying for people who are addicted to drugs next spring, in a move some drug users and activists are calling “eugenics.” The country’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) law, which first came into effect … Read More
October 3, 2023
(BBC) – A group of 67 women from Greenland are seeking compensation from the Danish government over a campaign of involuntary birth control. At least 4,500 women, some teenagers, were fitted with coils to limit birth rates among the indigenous … Read More
September 29, 2023
(Associated Press) – The Canadian government says it is urgently trying to end the forced sterilization of Indigenous women, describing the practice as a human rights violation and a prosecutable offense. Yet police say they will not pursue a criminal … Read More
August 31, 2023
(Wired) – At the heart of biologism is the question of whether it is permissible to consider a child’s genetics when deciding to become a parent. Our improving ability to genetically screen embryos and the continued development of assisted reproductive technologies … Read More
August 29, 2023
(Reuters) – A county in eastern China is offering couples a “reward” of 1,000 yuan ($137) if the bride is aged 25 or younger, the latest measure to incentivise young people to get married amid rising concern over a declining … Read More
July 13, 2023
(Fox News) – It’s been shown to detect cancer, pinpoint cavities and answer medical questions — and now, artificial intelligence may help fertility doctors select the ideal embryo for in-vitro fertilization (IVF). With one in every five U.S. adult married … Read More
July 12, 2023
(ABC News) – Decades after many other rich countries stopped forcibly sterilizing Indigenous women, numerous activists, doctors, politicians and at least five class-action lawsuits say the practice has not ended in Canada. A Senate report last year concluded “this horrific … Read More
June 20, 2023
(BBC) – Two nine-year-olds were among the 25,000 people forcibly sterilised in Japan under its post-World War Two eugenics law, a parliament report has revealed. The law, in place for 48 years, forced people to undergo operations to prevent them … Read More
June 8, 2023
(NPR) – He Jiankui announced nearly five years ago that he had created the first gene-edited babies, twin girls named Lulu and Nana. The news sent shockwaves around the world. There were accusations that the biophysicist had grossly violated medical … Read More
