The creation of humanlike intelligence in a nonbiological being would be the greatest achievement in human history. Many experts believe this will happen within decades. What role should, or could, regulatory bodies play?

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has decided that female athletes with atypically high levels of testosterone must take testosterone-lowering medication in order to compete in certain events. I'm troubled by the precedent this sets.

The new indie movie William explores the question, What would it be like if a Neanderthal were born and raised in a modern, industrialized society today?

It is a truism that good ethics begins with good facts. Here are some of the facts about the ethics and politics of heritable human genome editing from 2015 to 2019.

Last month, the journal Nature published a call for a global moratorium on heritable human genome editing. Despite criticism, notably from CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna, the moratorium is just what's needed now.

In late April, a suspect thought to be the Golden State Killer, a man who had eluded police for decades after committing a string of murders and rapes in Northern California and Orange County between 1976 and 1986, was identified on the basis of DNA evidence. Although we celebrate the dogged pursuit ...

Little noticed in the United States but a big deal in France, President Emmanuel Macron announced in January that he is creating a bioethics commission to review the country’s policies on a wide range of subjects, including human reproduction, euthanasia, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. ...

Not since Rene Descartes gazed from his garret window in early 17th-century Paris and wondered whether those were men or hats and coats covering “automatic machines” he saw roaming the streets has the issue of personal identity and your cranium been of such import. Descartes feared a world that h...

For the first few years after my husband Howard died, I talked to him often. These were not ghostly, paranormal encounters; I was just thinking out loud about my life without him. Ten years later, these occasions happen less frequently, usually connected with an anniversary or a family event. In my i...

The Precision Medicine Initiative plans to collect data and biological samples from one million or more individuals in the United States and engage in internationally collaborative research. That means that genetic and other information about these people could be shared with researchers around the w...