In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenics’, rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each (...) other. (shrink)

The first in-depth examination of Sinyavsky's satirical side,Literary Insinuations: Sorting out Sinyavsky's Irreverence not only discusses the relatively under-analysed area of playful and provocative writing, but also ties together a number of loose ends in the fascinating and often contentious field of Sinyavsky scholarship.

This is the first of a series of reports on the research groups of the institute: Death and Dying, Behavior Control, Genetic Engineering/Genetic Counseling, the Teaching of Medical Ethics, and the subject of this report, Population Control.

The 1986 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium was on the subject of human genetics; it was the first symposium at Cold Spring Harbor on this topic since 1964. In the opening remarks for the conference, Walter F. Bodmer first summarized the progress in this field since 1964. He then described what is presently known about the functional complexity of the human genome and discussed the case for a definitive characterization and sequencing of the human genome. The following is an abridged (...) and slightly adapted version of this talk; it is reproduced courtesy of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory © 1987. (shrink)