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Why does female fertility end in middle age? Nicole Shanahan and Sergey Brin’s struggle to start a family launched a new era in scientific research. The goal: End menopause.

The genetic caste system that Hawking predicts is just a function of next-gen economic disparities — an evolved, scientific iteration of what already happens when people with money have the means to improve themselves and their namesakes.

Fifteen million babies are born pre­maturely each year. Stephen Quake’s daughter, Zoe, was one of them: she arrived via emergency C-section after Quake and his wife, Athina, made a middle-of-the-night dash to the emergency room, a month before Zoe was due. She spent her first night in an incubator, and her father, a bioengineer then at Caltech, wondered why birth couldn’t be more predictable. 

RECENTLY, TWO eminent groups of scientists and health and medical experts made a startling statement: Under very limited circumstances, it could be permissible to edit the genes of human eggs, sperm, or embryos. This marked the first time that a scientific organization has so explicitly acknowledged this possibility.

Doctors are increasingly able to diagnose medical conditions in utero that may affect a child’s entire life. Science journalist Bonnie Rochman joins us to talk about the many ethical questions that arise from the knowledge gained by pre-birth testing. She writes about the topic in “The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies are Changing the Way We Have Kids – and the Kids We Have” (Scientific American).

Prenatal testing has offered up a lot more information—but that information comes with serious ethical questions.

Testing every newborn for a raft of known genetic risks is technologically feasible. Some worry the results could do more harm than good.

Diana Bianchi championed tests that find Down syndrome early in pregnancy. Now can she find a way to treat it?

A new approach uses openness and humor to make
“The Talk” less dreadful for parents and children alike.

Women expecting a baby or planning a pregnancy are being pitched a fast-growing array of tests to check if they are carriers for hundreds of mostly rare genetic diseases.

To prevent a disease that kills a woman every two minutes in the developing world, start with a headlamp....

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