On Nov. 28, He Jiankui claimed to a packed conference room at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong to have edited the genomes of two twin girls, Lulu and Nana, who were...

Our society seems to have accepted that gaining weight is an inevitable consequence of growing up in a place with easy access to calories and where physical activity plays a declining role in our...

Scientists working on the frontiers of medicine fear the uproar over the reported births of gene-edited babies in China could jeopardize promising research into how to alter heredity to fend off a...

Early last year, a little-known Chinese researcher turned up at an elite meeting in Berkeley, California, where scientists and ethicists were discussing a technology that had shaken the field to its...

I mentioned to a friend, a gay man nearing 60, that World AIDS Day, which has been observed on Dec. 1 since 1988, was almost upon us. He had no idea that World AIDS Day still exists. This lack of...

Brazilian doctors are reporting the world's first baby born to a woman with a uterus transplanted from a deceased donor. Eleven previous births have used a transplanted womb but from a living...

Leading scientists see even more reasons to worry and have more questions than answers after a Chinese scientist attended an international conference Wednesday and repeated his claim to have helped...

 ‘Tis the season when the conversation shifts to what you’re thankful for. Gathered with family and friends around a holiday feast, for instance, people may recount some of the...

It appears that researchers in China have facilitated the birth of the first “designer baby” – actually babies, twin girls who are supposedly genetically resistant to HIV. The...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls cigarette smoking “the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S., accounting for over 480,000 deaths per year.” The...