We have found that the capabilities of medical science\r\nto detect the existence of, or risk for, genetic disorders— though already impressive—will be greatly magnified in the coming decade. To illustrate the ethical as well as the scientific and logistical issues involved, we devote a chapter of the Report to examining the potential for screening for cystic fibrosis, the most prevalent lethal genetic disease in our country.\r\n\r\nGenetic screening, when coupled with appropriate education and counseling, can provide people with information of enormous value.

Although our study has done nothing t o decrease our estimation of the importance of this subject to physicians, patients and their families, we have concluded that the cases that involve true ethical difficulties are many fewer than commonly believed and that the perception of difficulties occurs primarily because of misunderstandings about the dictates of law and ethics.

This is the Commission's report on the nature and extent of the research involving living fetuses, the purposes for which such research has been undertaken, and alternative means for achieving such purposes.

It last happened about 3.6 billion years ago. a tiny living cell emerged from the dust of the Earth. It replicated itself, and its progeny replicated themselves, and so on, with genetic twists and turns down through billions of generations. Today every living organism—every person, plant, animal and microbe—can trace its heritage back to that first cell. Earth's extended family is the only kind of life that we've observed, so far, in the universe.\r\n\r\nThis pantheon of living organisms is about to get some newcomers—and we're not talking about extraterrestrials.

It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule.

Scientists say they have reached an important milestone in a quest to build a life-form from scratch. They have synthesized a bacterium's entire chromosome from its chemical building blocks.\r\n\r\nSoon, they hope to activate those genes and create living, multiplying bacteria. Eventually, synthetic organisms may help produce fuels, chemicals and medicines.\r\n\r\nThis effort is part of a whole new field that's starting up, called synthetic biology.

A publication about the ethical parameters of synthetic biology in the United Kingdom.

Paul Berg reflects on lessons he learned from 1975's Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA

In From Counterculture to Cyberculture Fred Turner details the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network.