A brand-new, well-financed genome analysis company called Orchid made a splash last week : Orchid Blooms With $4.5M Seed For Preconception Test To Determine Genetic Risks (Kudos to the doubly punning headline writer at Crunchbase .) The concept is that Orchid will analyze “100% of both partners’ genomes” and analyze the possible ways they can combine “in a future child.”…

It’s not for nothing that Time, Inc. developed its formula for telling stories—catchy lede, billboard that tells ’em what you’re going to tell ‘em, last graf that catapults them into the future. No wobbling; narrative charging right along. In the rush, the reader is propelled, questions cast aside, riding the tale you want them to believe.   Not surprisingly, Walter Isaacson,…

Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former brain (he was forced out last November), claims not to know what eugenics is. This is odd, since he’s been called out for advocating it for years (here’s our 2013 take on his fondness for technocratic eugenics).  His implausible denial came during questioning on March 17 before the UK Parliament’s science and technology committee. MP…

In recent weeks, at least four publications (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) have urged a change to the “14-day rule” that represents a widely accepted limit on in vitro research involving the cultivation of human embryos. Some call for changing the limit to 28 days , another suggests “increments of 2 or 3 days,” up to at least 18 days. The Hastings Center recently issued a Report on Rethinking…

We were shocked — shocked — to learn that 23andMe is cashing in on its customers’ spit. $3.5 billion , the company is worth, they say, now that it’s going public. That is an awful lot of $99 gene tests! Except that the business model is not, and never has been, about cash flow from individual customers. No, the big money is in leasing out genetic data to pharmaceutical companies…

“Black-footed Ferret Kits”  by USFWS Mountain Prairie is licensed under CC BY 2.0 The New York Times published on February 18 an enthusiastic article about a black-footed ferret, hailing it as “the first of any native, endangered animal species in North America to be cloned.” As we have been documenting for many years (see below), grand claims for animal cloning go back to…