News

Are Home Genome Tests a Step Away from Eugenics?
Annalee Newitz, AlterNet, November 29, 2007
New companies claim to reveal the secrets of your DNA, but will the information cause more harm than good?
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Activists Want Goethe's Name Removed From Park
Todd Milbourn, Sacramento Bee, November 9, 2007
The name Charles M. Goethe has already been dropped from an arboretum and scrubbed from a middle school. Now a group of activists wants it wiped from a Sacramento park, arguing that Goethe's controversial views on race besmirch one of the region's recreational jewels.
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Play Probes Problems of Playing God
Dan Pearson, Pioneer Local, October 18, 2007
Opera, ethics and eugenics collide in the Apple Tree Theatre production of "Twilight Of The Golds," running Oct. 17-Nov. 11 in Highland Park, Illinois.
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"Personalized" Embryonic Stem Cells for Sale
Emily Singer, Technology Review, August 30, 2007
A company in California called StemLifeLine has announced that it will offer a service to generate stem cells from excess frozen embryos stored after in vitro fertilization (IVF).
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Indiana Apologizes for Role in Eugenics
Ken Kusmer, Newsday.com, April 13, 2007
An Indiana official publicly apologized for the state's role a century ago in the state-sponsored sterilization of those deemed unfit.
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The Lost Girls
Douglas A. Sylva, The Weekly Standard, March 21, 2007
The Bush Administration introduced a resolution condemning the killing of girls, because they are female. Such acts include old-fashioned infanticide, as well as the increasingly popular use of technology to identify and eliminate female embryos before they are born - using what is called "sex-selective abortion."
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Apology Asked for Sterilizations State Required
Jeremy Redmon, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 2, 2007
Some Georgia lawmakers are calling on the state legislature to apologize for a state-sponsored program that sterilized prisoners, mental patients, and others as part of the pseudoscientific eugenics movement in the 20th century.
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Expand Prenatal Gene Tests, MDs Urge
Carolyn Abraham, The Globe and Mail, February 6, 2007
Recommendations raise fear of having only "perfect" babies.
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Girl or Boy? As Fertility Technology Advances, So Does an Ethical Debate
Denise Grady, New York Times, February 6, 2007
The medical profession is divided about health care personnel aiding parents in choosing their baby's sex.
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Idea of 'Designer' Babies with Defective Genes Stirs Ethics Questions
CNN.com, January 19, 2007
Creating made-to-order babies with genetic defects would seem to be an ethical minefield, but to some parents with conditions, such as deafness or dwarfism, it just means making babies like them.
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