Playing God with Monsters

Howard writes "Horrified by "There Be Monsters Here" tales, some members of Congress called for a ban on DNA research in the mid '70s. Because those calls were rejected, millions of people around the world can now hope for DNA-based vaccines against AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases that have destroyed lives, communities and nations. Here's an illustration: The name of Joseph DeRisi keeps coming up in connection with deadly diseases. No, he's not a modern-day Typhoid Mary. Just the opposite. The University of California, San Francisco researcher is using his own custom-built DNA microarrays to look inside the "minds" of some serious serial killers. The "minds" are genes, and his home-brewed gene chips helped solve the SARS mystery earlier this year. Now, DeRisi has chosen malaria as his next victim. For the complete commentary, please go to Howard Lovy's NanoBot."

Comments

Stem cell research

[knodi]

Perhaps some observant legislator will draw a parallel between the benefits of DNA research that have already been reaped without any of the scary "uber-monster" side effects, and use that to help lift the ban on human stem cell research?

(hint hint)

Re:Stem cell research

[the_flatlander]

Our Fearless Leader told us stem-cell research and human cloning would be morally wrong. (Dropping bombs on Afgan and Iraqii civilians, well, that's okay.) The first thing moralist do is attack any new science. Galleo wound up in trouble for proposing that the Earth orbited the sun. (Oddly, eventual wide acceptance of that information did not lead to the fall of the Church.) It is the [unpleasant] duty of scientists to ignore the politicians, and pursue the clues Nature provides.

Re:Stem cell research

[sharky611aol.com]

You know, for all the stink everybody makes about how the "ban" on stem cell research will hinder progress, I for one haven't noticed any change in my research practices since the "ban".

I work in the Developmental Neurobiology Dept. of a large children's cancer research hospital (which shall remain nameless, but let's say it rhymes with "paint food"). I use stem cells on a regular basis (human embryonic kidney 293 cells (or HEK-293 for short)). And ya know what? I've never had the guv'ment come take my cells away.

Any legitimate researcher can get stem cells with little or no effort. Thus, all the fuss is quite pointless.

That being said, the "ban" is fairly pointless as well (although most researchers regard it as the purely political move that it was). There is a lot of potential to be had in this field, and the government shouldn't be stepping on any toes.

Re:Stem cell research

[Ded Bob]

You are comparing apples and oranges. Are you not? The ban on human stem cell research using federal money (private still allowed?) from embryos is due more to morals than fears about monsters.

Didn't they recently find that stems cells from baby teeth worked just as well? This should solve any moral arguments.

Re:Stem cell research

[dreadnougat]

"Oddly, eventual wide acceptance of that information did not lead to the fall of the Church." Oddly, not everything has to be taken absolutely literally. Have you ever heard of a metaphor? While I don't want to get into a long debate about the veracity of my beliefs, suffice it to say that I doubt that stone age people would've understood a literal account of creation. "The first thing moralist do is attack any new science." That's right, generalize! I can be punished for another person's actions simply because I subscribe to a similar set of beliefs! "Our Fearless Leader told us stem-cell research and human cloning would be morally wrong. (Dropping bombs on Afgan and Iraqii civilians, well, that's okay.)" I for one want a leader with the balls to stand up for what s/he thinks is right. Whether or not the people decide to keep himm/her in office is up to them. I'll just leave the Afghanistan/Iraq issue. Nothing good will come out of that argument.

Re:Stem cell research

[Rostin]

Actually, it was Copernicus that first championed that idea, and he was not condemned by the church for it. In fact, the majority of the people who didn't like the idea, the people who Galileo continued to contend with, were academics who held that the earth had to be the center of the universe because of their adherence to Aristotelean philosophy. Galileo did have a run in with the church, but it had nothing to do with geocentrism, and it was a far cry less serious than has been popularly portrayed. The story about Galileo, representing Science, vs Big Bad Irrational Religion, protrayed by the Catholic Chruch, is a myth. I leave you to speculate as to why it is such a popular one.

Re:Stem cell research

[rjmx]

> Actually, it was Copernicus that first
> championed that idea, and he was not
> condemned by the church for it.

...probably mostly because he wouldn't let his book detailing his theories be published till he was on his deathbed.

Safer that way.

Re:Stem cell research

[Ken Broadfoot]

"I for one want a leader with the balls to stand up for what s/he thinks is right."

It would be nice if "what s/he thinks is right" had ANYTHING to do with reality. In our case, we (USA) are fscked. I feel sorry for the Brits too.

--ken

Re:Stem cell research

[Khomar]

With the very real possibility of earning a flamebait or troll....

The moral issue with stem-cell research and cloning cannot possibly be compared with Galileo. The science Galileo offered threatened the misguided establishment at that time that taught that earth was the center of universe. It isn't the "new science" that is problem. It is the known facts and the resulting concerns for the sanctity of human life that are at issue.

Cloning is very much in its initial stages of development, and it's early results with animals have been very questionable. Most animal clones either die quickly or are found to be deformed. Given the current track record, to attempt to clone a human would be to produce an individual whose life would be filled with pain and probably an early death. It is these very considerations that require massive amounts of testing on animals for any medical products to protect human lives.

Stem-cell research is questionable due to the source of the material: abortions. While not composing all of the source of stem-cells, it certainly is a contributor. In this country where close to half of the population opposes abortion, I think it is reasonable to restrain public money from going toward something that so many find objectionable.

When comparing these two issues with the war against Afganistan and Iraq, let me ask you a question. Is it better to attack aggressive nations and cruel dictators or to inflict suffering and death upon innocent children with unproven science? While there are certainly some who fear these developments for more dogmatic reasons, it does not mean that there are not rational arguments against them.

Re:Stem cell research

[dreadnougat]

In that case, feel free to try to vote him out next time and let democracy work instead of whining.

Re:Stem cell research

[cens0r]

Stem-cell research is questionable due to the source of the material: abortions. While not composing all of the source of stem-cells, it certainly is a contributor. In this country where close to half of the population opposes abortion, I think it is reasonable to restrain public money from going toward something that so many find objectionable.

I would agree if people were having abortions just to provide stem cells, but that isn't the case. No one is repeatedly getting pregnant and having abortions just to provide stem cells for research. The abortions are going to happen anyway. It just doesn't make sense to throw away the stem cells when they have value.

Re:Stem cell research

[cens0r]

I agree, but the problem is that it adds some legitimacy to abortion: "Well, at least some good comes out of it." The fear is that by having this extra "excuse", more people will find reason to choose abortion as opposed to other options (raising the child, adoption, etc.)

That might have an effect on whether someone decided whether or not abortion should remain legal, but I gurantee that it rarely if ever enters the mind of someone contemplating an abortion themselves. That is going to be the least of things on a woman's mind when she is considering an abortion.

Re:Stem cell research

[dan dan the dna man]

For a biologist you don't seem to know much about stem cells. Last time I looked in a tissue culture flask you couldn't differentiate HEK293's into anything other than cancerous kidney cells which is what they are... The point of a stem cell is that it can differentiate into other cell types.

Re:Stem cell research

[Rostin]

Off topic though it may be: 'From 1613, however, Galileo unambiguously asserted that the earth literally moves around the sun and popularized his views in snappy Italian rather than the arcane Latin of the universities. This put his work at the top of the seventeenth-century bestsellers list, but it did not endear him to his academic colleagues. Galileo was first and foremost opposing Aristotle, not the Bible, and for the majority of early-seventeenth-century astonomers, this put him on the fringes of "science"; his was not a cutting-edge theory but and ancient Pythagorean view that had been discredited by Aristotle. On the other hand, Galileo's relations with the Church were cordial. The orthodox story tells us that his telescopic discoveries "gave unbounded alarm to the Church. By the low and ignorant ecclesiastics they were denounced as deceptions or frauds." But this is not so. Far from being constantly harried by obscurantist priests, he was feted by cardinals, received by Pope Paul V and befriended by the future Pope Urban VII who, in 1620, wrote an ode in his honor. The historican George de Santillana observed in 1958 that "it has been known for a long time that a major part of the Church intellectuals were on the side of Galileo, while the clearest opposition to him came from secular circles."' 6 Modern Myths About Christianity and Western Civilization, Phillip J. Sampson, pg 37.

Re:Stem cell research

[quantaman]

I for one want a leader with the balls to stand up for what s/he thinks is right.

I do too, I just don't like it when they impose their views on their country. Recently the mayor of Edmonton Bill Smith had a press conference. He was very emotional and went on about how he felt homosexulality was morally wrong and went against everything he was brought up to believe in. He then said it was his duty as mayor to have gay pride parades. Similarly with gay marriages quite a number of officials from the Catholic church said that any politicians who allowed gay marriages would burn in hell. Prime Minister Cretien said that his first duty was as Prime Minister and is in the process of allowing them (well the courts already did that parliment is drafting legislation now, it's a long story). The thing is that in both cases the leader stated their beliefs and stood up for them but did not impose that belief upon their constituents, that's the kind of leader I feel most comfertable with.

Re:Stem cell research

[Lars T.]

Very nice. Now for some facts. [Excerpt]

In 1632, Galileo completed his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems -- Ptolemaic & Copernican. This publication, a twelve year effort, presented all the arguments for and against the two great world systems--the Copernican (sun centered) and the Aristotelian or Ptolemaic (earth centered). Galileo also warned the Church of a trap they were walking into:

"Take note, theologians, that in your desire to make matters of faith out of propositions relating to the fixity of sun and earth you run the risk of eventually having to condemn as heretics those who would declare the earth to stand still and the sun to change position--eventually, I say, at such a time as it might be physically or logically proved that the earth moves and the sun stands still."[16]

The Roman Catholic hierarchy and their Aristotlean-Ptolemaic advisors did not heed this advice. The Roman Curia promptly banned and confiscated Galileo's monumental work; and it became the basis for his second trial, censure, and lifetime house arrest by the Holy Office of the Inquisition in 1633. The Roman Catholic Church convicted him of breaking his agreement of 1616 and of teaching the Copernican theory as a truth and not a hypothesis. They suspected him of holding heretical opinions condemned by the Church, which they ordered him to abjure [abandon a false opinion]. Seven of the ten Cardinals presiding signed his condemnation.[17]

The Holy Tribunal in Galileo's condemnation states: "The proposition that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world and immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically, and theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith."[18]

Sure, compared to burning him at the stake, this was a nice treatment. And not only was he on "at the top of the seventeenth-century bestsellers list", but also on the Roman Church's Index of Prohibited Books until 1835. Last but not least, it took the Roman Catholic Church until 1981 to finaly pardon Galileo. Sure, some church officials including the Pope liked him - yet they didn't do much to help him, nor did they prevent that no Catholic was allowed to read his work for 200 years.

Re:Stem cell research

[sam_handelman]

Let my bias and background be clear - I am an ethnically Jewish atheist/humanist in graduate school in molecular biology.

Obviously - I am not concerned about the welfare of balls of cells roughly a millimeter in diameter. The creation of blastocysts, using in-vitro fertilization, to make clonal stem cells, does not trouble me in and of itself. No different from tumors or flakes of skin.

However, when this is done, women need to undergo egg donation. The health effects of this procedure may be severe; study has been inadequate. If we do find a medical application for this technology, economic pressure on young women to donate eggs, which can already be considerable, could increase. In underdeveloped nations, unscrupulous individuals could collect eggs using highly unsafe techniques.

If it were possible to grow entire organs in isolation, using these clonal stem cells, that would be my sole concern. In fact - I outright predict that this will be possible for some applications, and that blastocysts will be produced for this purpose.

As a result of stem cell research, we might figure out how to grow a Kidney in a tube from a single cell (or induce regeneration of bits of Kidney in a healthy adult, or what-have-you).

Otherwise, the way to get clonal organs would be to implant the blastocysts in a mother and bring the resultant embryos to term and then harvest the clonal individual for organs.

If the stem cell research which the pro-life crowd opposes is not done, or is not successful, this will be the only way to grow organs. Since I think there is a real, moral, distinction between early abortion and infanticide, I wish to avert this possibility.

Horror upon horror - It ought to be feasible to deliberately introduce horrible birth defects (especially if we can figure out how to fast-grow embroys in vats) such that the clonal individual didn't develop a brain. If you only needed to make a Kidney, you might kill all the embryo's nerve cells or something. Raise your hand if you think this is no worse than flushing a fertilized ovum down the toilet.

In addition to being gross, such technology, if widely adopted, would I think lead to the devaluation of human life; a charge which has been leveled, baselessly, against the practice of abortion, but which has real force in this case.

At this point in the discussion I would like to remind everyone - the original articles discusses applying molecular biology to the study of PARASITES, not people. While it might be possible to use clonal stem cells to fight malaria somehow, that is in no sense the technology that is being used.

Here's an explanation of what DNA microarrays (the technology being used in the original article) actually do.

Re:Stem cell research

[zenyu]

To summarize, if Galileo had said "The Earth revolves around the Sun" and left it at that, he probably would have been ignored by the Church. Instead he said "The Earth revolves around the Sun, which contradicts Church doctrine, so the Church is full of idiots who are utterly, completely wrong about this, wow, look how stupid they are!" Big difference.

This is overstating the case in the other direction. He simply wrote his book as a Socratic arguement. One voice would ask a question or make a statement based on "common sense" and the other would decimate the "common sense" idea based on logical arguement based on simple facts both accepted. Some people in the church thought the common sense character represented them. Galileo said it didn't, it represented his own arguements and the logical arguements were just mouthing Copernicus as a devil's advocate. Obviously this didn't didn't hold much water since anyone reading the book knew the "common sense" was nonsense and Copernicus was right. Galileo thought he could get away with speaking the truth because he was friends with the pope who very much liked science and Galileo's ideas. He thought the pope would intervene on his behalf, but the pope was in the middle of a political war and dropped him as quick as Mr. Clinton dropped Dr. Joycelyn Elders for speaking another unpopular truth.

In other words he just had terrible political timing. We all know politics still effects science as much as we wish it didn't. That Jesuit probably did some good things to deserve the honor, just like some usually incomprehensibly idiotic seeming politicians sometimes do even today.

Galileo was nothing but political road kill.

Besides if it weren't for the Inquisition, my City of New York wouldn't have had it's first mass immigration of Jews and Muslims, and we wouldn't have had the Flushing Declaration (of human rights for all taxpayers) affirmed by the Dutch, and so we my have never had that freedom loving language in the Declaration of Independence or even the Bill of Rights.

Re:Stem cell research

[captainktainer]

Respectfully, I disagree. I think Chretien's approach, and Bill Simon's, is entirely consistent with moral behavior, even though homosexuality may be (is, in my opinion) wrong. Why? Separation of church and state. If it is your belief that governing on the basis of strict Christianity or another religious framework is wrong, and that the rule of law is paramount, then it is vital that you govern according to that rule of law. Bush and the Republican party are not governing by rule of law- they are governing by rule of Christianity.

It may tear at a leader's heart to know that the people he represents are looking at pornography, having homosexual sex, swearing, and expressing beliefs that don't accord with his own... but it is that leader's paramount duty to maintain the freedom of the people to make choices, even when those choices seem wrong to him. It is not man's role to come between man and God.

Re:Stem cell research

[DocDendrite]

use stem cells on a regular basis (human embryonic kidney 293 cells (or HEK-293 for short)).

Uhhhh, check your facts....293s are most definately NOT stem cells. They are a cell line derived from embryonic kidney cells. They have been severely fucked with to make them grow in cell culture. They are immortalized (probably by introducing an oncoprotein which abrogates the limit on number of cell divisions) and are severely mutated. All these modifications may even cause them to have extra chromosomes. They are a fairly common laboratory cell line and have zero therapeutic benefit.

Stem cell lines are rare. Perhaps only a dozen exist and they are not immortalized. They were cultivated from human embryos and are pluripotent. That is, they are not already differentiated into kidney cells. In fact, they have the ability to differentiate into any other tissue type like neuronal, dental, or muscle. This could translate into disease treatments which benefit mankind significantly.

The Bush Administration has made it difficult to work with stem cells since they banned the culturing of new lines. Therefore, the few existing lines have to be doled out by a handful of laboratories. This is very difficult for just a few labs and requires a lot of paperwork. Furthermore, since the lines aren't immortal the supply is tightly regulated.

-DD

Re:Stem cell research

[rhodak]

I beg to differ. The HEK293 cell line can hardly be considered a "stem cell". It is transformed by adenovirus DNA, i.e., it is a tumor cell, and is not diploid, hypotriploid according to the ATCC. You seem to be confusing embryonic and stem cell. Embryonal stem cells are diploid and are not cancerous.

http://www.atcc.org/SearchCatalogs/longview.cfm? vi ew=ce,916189,CRL-1573&text=hek293&max=20

HEK293 was derived in 1977 or thereabouts from the kidney of a human embryo (I assume because of the name). To immortalize the cells, Graham et al made the cells incorporate (eat, transfected) DNA isolated from an adenovirus that they knew caused tumors. You almost never heard about scientists chopping up human embryos back then.

Embryos have become much more valuable and interesting due to stem cell technology. An explosive growth in the use and storage of stem cells poses novel legal issues in addition to ethical issues. Hence the current political interest in the use of embryos. The current limitations are quite restrictive and resemble limitations imposed when recombinant DNA technology became possible. The limitations on rDNA research lasted about five years, the dark ages (73 to 78 or 79). They were pretty much abolished by the mid 80s. I suspect that the enormous health benefits possible from stem cell research will lead to a swift (>5 years) relaxation of the restrictions.

Re:Stem cell research

[Golias]

"Obviously - I am not concerned about the welfare of balls of cells roughly a millimeter in diameter."

Pardon me for asking, but why is it obvious that an athiest/humanist would hold that position? I would think that there are probably a lot of athiests out there who feel very strongly that all human life, which faces total annihilation upon the moment of its death, should be cherished and protected. In fact, abortion might be seen as far worse than murder to a person who does not believe in the existence of some kind of eternal "soul" or "spirit", because the aborted person is not even being allowed to live long enough to even actualize their existence.

Likewise, there are probably a lot of religious people who believe in some "better place" that the unborn fetus is going to, who figure that some people are better off going straight to the Promised Land anyway, and aborting them may very well be doing them a favor.

Far be it from me to start a flame war here. I've seen the futility which is an on-line abortion debate, and I'm one of those "between" people that the grandparent post was talking about anyway, but I'm just curious why you seem to believe there's an automatic correlation of atheism/humanism and the opinion that the fate of a zygote doesn't matter.

Re:Stem cell research

[danguyf]

Similarly with gay marriages quite a number of officials from the Catholic church said that any politicians who allowed gay marriages would burn in hell.

Not true. The Catholic Church does not tell people they will burn in Hell; quite the contrary, it decrees that the afterlife is entirely up to God and entirely unknowable by the living (short of that rare divine revelation where God appears to tell you personally that you're going to burn).

What the Church said was that (A) Catholics should take it upon themselves to understand their belief system well enough to comprehend the validity of its arguments for why homosexuality is a disordered state and (B) Catholic politicians have an obligation to vote their conscience and not according to popular opinion. The implication being, obviously, that a Catholic politician will not vote to advance same-sex marriage.

As for the seperation of church and state, the Church views it as a complete non-issue, unrelated, because Catholic theology in such matters (it claims) is based on "a right understanding" of the universe derived from examining life rather than from scripture. For the Church, then, its anti-SSM stance can be expressed as purely philosophical.

Re:how about artificial hearts?

[Hayzeus]

I think you might be thinking of the baboon-to-baby heart transplant (mid-80s?). In any case, that operation was a failure (as predicted), and never really led anywhere as far as I know.

Doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

you speak of the availablity of genetic research as being of benefit to humans.
But that same genetic research, without a doubt, will ensure that humans will be genetically engineered into another species vastly more advanced than us, thereby meaning our own de-facto extinction.

I have learned to be sceptical when people speak of 'progress' - progress to what? You wish to eliminate all human discomforts? You will eliminate humanity in the process.

genetics revolution

[chloroquine]

I am a molecular biologist. I regularly read the news about criticisms of genetic engineering and stem cell research. I think that perhaps I should spend more time talking to my non-science friends about the positive things that have come from genetic engineering - insulin, the genetic testing (Tay Sachs screening is a good example), and so on. It is nice to read of more good examples in a not-completely biology setting.

Monster me!

[RocketRay]

God, shmod, I want my monkey-man!

Banning Research

[darkstar949]

With any luck these advances can be pointed out to those whom want to ban various froms of research in the future. Hopefully, people can come to realise that no research is "bad" or "evil", it just depends upon how the research is applied.

Re:Banning Research

[GlassHeart]

no research is "bad" or "evil"

I disagree. Modifying DNA is a dangeurous matter.

Dangerous does not imply "bad" or "evil", so I don't see how you're disagreeing at all.

*Where* there be monsters?

[watchful.babbler]

While it's true that Congress wanted to ban (or sharply curtail) genetic research in the 1970s, it was the self-policing of the scientific community (at the Asilomar Conference) that convinced Congress not to enact legislative bans on the research. Asilomar showed that scientists were concerned about the ethical and public policy effects of their research, rather than being the Dr. Frankensteins so many members of the press and the anti-scientific left painted them to be.

What we lack today is the same kind of scientific consensus-building process in ethical and policy matters. The inability of the research community to show that it cares about the moral, legal, political and social effects of its work has led to greater political scrutiny of that research, and acts such as the Executive Order limiting research into stem cells.

So, to raise the obvious question, what chance do we have for another Asilomar? Can the scientific establishment convince the public that it's not hell-bent on progress at any price, or is modern bio-science too fragmented, too much a creature of academic, corporate, and social specialization to speak with a united voice again?

Re:*Where* there be monsters?

[clary]

The problem now isn't ethics when it comes to genetic research, as those have been already established.

That's just a little bit bold, don't you think? I don't know what you mean by "established" but if it includes having any general agreement on what is right and wrong on issues like cloning, human genetic manipulation, harvesting stem cells from embryos, etc., then I think you still have a bit of work to do.

On the other hand, if you mean that you have all the answers to ethical questions when it comes to genetic research, then that sounds very much like one of those "strong opinions" you mention later. You'd better be ready to supply very good arguments for your ethics if you expect to be taken seriously.

A third possibility is that you mean that the ethics of genetics has been addressed in academia. I don't pretend to have read the latest journal articles on the subject. However, I will say this: Ethics is a domain for every person. Each of us is responsible for his own ethical decisions, right or wrong. Ceding that responsibility to authority figures, whether scientists or priests, is not good.

The problem is that people representing the religious right stay in power by scaring the prudish masses they represent into taking strong opinions on issues they don't understand.

I'm not in the religious right (I don't think), but I don't consider all of these ethical issues closed. In fact, some of my opinions are a bit tentative, precisely because I don't want to have strong opinions on issues I don't understand.

I suggest that to paint all people who do not approve of everything being done or proposed in genetic research as prudish masses, afraid of Tokyo-destroying monsters, is to prop up a nice strawman just so you can knock it down.

Cancer article at Wired

[john_smith_45678]

There's a good article at Wired about the current state of affairs in the battle against cancer.

The End of Cancer (As we Know it)

Diagnosis. Chemotherapy. Radiation. Slow painful death. No more. A new era of cancer treatment is dawning. Meet three scientists who are using the revelations of the Human Genome Project to reshape medicine.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/cancer.ht ml?pg=2

They talk about micro-arrays, among other things.

Speaking as a representative for seial killers

[Ryvar]

Speaking as a representative for seial killers everywhere, I for one find the wording of this post offensive. No mere simple biological 'machine' could replicate the beauty and artistry of my vast bodies of work in the field of serial killing.

I for one hope Slashdot's editors issue an apology and a retraction.

Finally...

[Guano_Jim]

...the world will know the glory of the FIVE-ASSED MONKEY!

Or maybe not. Call your congresspeoples and demand your five-assed monkey.

Re:how about artificial hearts?

[WTFmonkey]

The baboon-to-baby heart transplant caused a small ruckus; it was the "red-assed-baboon-to-baby" ass transplant that was the real fiasco.

What is humanity?

[TuringTest]

Is humanity determined by the specific genotype you happen to have now? Any more that by your fenotype? If you do a aesthetic surgery, you are changing yourself into something that you couldn't naturally be. That too would make you less human?

Changing your life habits to live longer and healthier don't make you less human. If that goal is achieved by changing your genes, would it be different? Or if you are made physically stronger so you don't need a fork lift truck to carry packages and now can do it manually, is that so important?

Re:What is humanity?

[dreadnougat]

Oh come on now. Haven't you ever played deus ex? You don't need genetic engineering for super human strength! :)

Artificial Heart Valves?

[macdaddy]

How about artificial tissue-based heart valves? This topic is fresh on my mind because my grandfather had open-heart surgery to replace his aortic valve replaced a week ago. They elected to go with 1 of the 3 mechanical options instead of a tissue-based replacement. The available tissue replacements consisted of two options: pig or human. Pig heart valves have an average life of 7-9 years (in part due to the average lifetime of a pig). Human valves last much longer; however the human donors are usually elderly and their valves have already seen their fair share of mileage. Finding a young human donor isn't as common as finding an elderly human donor. Since heart disease runs in my family, I'm quite interested in any and all medical advancements in this arena. Genetically engineered hearts sounds quite promising.

Re:Artificial Heart Valves?

[lostinchicago]

just a little interesting fact about these mechanical heart valves, my dad got one 2 years ago and it was the size of a quarter, made of titanium, and to this day makes a faint ticking noise. I shit you not. in a quite room you can hear him ticking from not to far away.
worthless but interesting information

Re:Artificial Heart Valves?

[Lil'wombat]

Actually, the pig heart valves (and human ones as well) suffer from calcification. When the valves are removed they are process with a fixitive to perserve them. Once implanted, the valves begin to calcify (harden) and slowly begin to fail to work. To be honest the mechanical ones scare the hell out of me. When they fail, the fail quickly causing you to die unless you can get to a hospital immediately.

Re:Artificial Heart Valves?

[The_dev0]

Here's a word of advice then; NEVER send him anywhere via post.

Care to bet?

[Henry V .009]

Anybody willing to make a bet with me on whether more people will be killed by genetically engineered weapons than are saved by genetically engineered cures during the 21st century?

Re:Care to bet?

[phriedom]

Yeah, I'd put money on genetic cures, I'd even give you 2:1 odds.

I don't want to belittle the danger posed by biological weapons, especially in this day and age where air travel can spead a pathogen far and wide in short order. Man continues to increase the efficiency and speed at which war can kill. However, the number of people killed by disease every day, during peace or war has historically dwarfed the number of people killed by war, so I think progress is more likely to have a larger impact there. Did you know 6,000 people are killed every year in the USA alone by tainted meat, far more than were killed on 9/11, yet we aren't spending billions of dollars to improve the purity of our food supply. Did you know more people died in the 1918-1919 flu pandemic than died in enemy action in WW1?

Now the biggest flaw in my argument is that most of the people in 3rd world countries that die of diease, die of preventable or curable diseases, but lack adequate medical care. So even if science develops "miracle" cures for malaria, dengue, the flu, AIDS, SARS, etc. why would that have any effect on poor Africans?

I'm not sure if that makes me an optimist or not, but it is a suckers bet, since if you win I probably won't be around to pay you.

Metaphor Cuisinart

[meeotch]

DeRisi found that the secret to malaria's success is its simplicity - regulated by only 10 genes compared with, say, 141 in yeast and more than a thousand in human cells. So, malaria is not the brightest bug in the biosphere, but it does its job with a single-mindedness, turning on each gene just before it's needed - like an assassin pumping his rifle.

I bet it would take a long time to snipe someone to death with an air rifle.

thwap!

OW - Quit it.

thwap!

OW - Quit it.

thwap!

We nearly eradicated malaria, remember?

[Ensign Regis]

This guy shouldn't have to waste his time on curing malaria. It could have been dealt with years ago. We had a prevention for it: DDT. At least, we did until environmentalists used bad science and hype to stop the use of DDT, an action which has killed millions of people.

Re:We nearly eradicated malaria, remember?

[barawn]

Borneo is not bad science. Nor is it hype. Nor is it something that someone can claim "ooh, the big bad environmentalists did it to us!"

It's an ecology lesson, that's what it is.

For those who don't know the story, here's the short:

Yah, DDT killed mosquitos. It also raised DDT levels in caterpillars. Which raised DDT levels in geckos, making them slow and easy to catch. Which raised DDT levels in cats, which killed them. Which brought in the rats.

Which brought bubonic plague.

Which kills many more, and much worse, than malaria.

So the WHO, which sprayed DDT in the first place, parachuted cats into Borneo (hence the name of the children's book, "The Day They Parachuted Cats Into Borneo". This isn't a joke - there are about a billion resources on the Web to back this up.

So what, you might say. At least they got rid of malaria. Yah. Sure. Except afterwards, their thatched huts caved in as well, because all the geckos - which ate the caterpillars - were dead. (Plus the fish in the rivers were dead, killing the livelihood of many people there, and much more...)

The WHO made a decision because one exercise of DDT went horribly, horribly wrong. You have no idea what introducing DDT into ecosystems would do. "Ecological engineering" is one thing that we just plain do not know how to do. We're awful at it.

DDT is a very powerful killer, and it can be useful. But we are simply far too bad at ecosystem modeling to use it. We chose to not use DDT because we don't understand ecosystems, and it was a good choice. You can only look back and say "ah, if only we had used DDT, life would be happy, and rainbows would spread over all tropical regions!" Sorry - Murphy's Law would've intervened, so the WHO smartly said "look, this stuff is powerful, and we're not smart enough to use it." Good choice.

Came a bit too late for Borneo, though.

RACIST editing

[macdaddy]

The parasite, a single-cell organism known as a protozoan, goes through different phases in both its mosquito and nigger hosts. Yet it has developed a very simple control system for governing at least part of this complex cycle. If this system could be disrupted, the sand coon's thousands of genes would lose their tightly choreographed coordination.

I went through all the pages linked to in this article and the racist remarks were NOT in any of the copies of the article but this one.

Mod this racist jerk down. Don't forget to add this jerk to your foe list so you don't have to read any more of his racist remarks.

Well, that's nothing

[default luser]

Thanks to the power of modern genetics, we can provide something the world really needs. ...like a monkey with five asses!

Re:Well, that's nothing

[fucksl4shd0t]

Thanks to the power of modern genetics, we can provide something the world really needs. ...like a monkey with five asses!

Neil Young and Pearl Jam already gave us this, but I forget what the album's called.

Re:Well, that's nothing

[Ken Broadfoot]

"we can provide something the world really needs. ...like a monkey with five asses!"

We have...

Monkey: George Bush
Ass #1 -- Donald Rumsfeld
Ass #2 -- John Aschcroft
Ass #3 -- Tom Ridge
Ass #4 -- Dick Cheney
Ass #5 -- Colin Powell

There are actually a bunch more asses than this but here is five.

--ken

Poor Malaria

[SpamJunkie]

Poor Malaria, I knew you well.

Heh, uh, I mean, I didn't know you at all... *cough*. Nervous laughter.

Well, then, good riddance.

An informed opionion

[rowanxmas]

So I am also a biotech person, and I have used Microarrays extensively in my research. I will say that they are a very cool, high-throughput tool, that enables insight into celluar function. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, a means to "human programming".
While I like Microarrays, they have a number of drawbacks:

1. Noisy, the signal to noise ratio is almost unusable, unless you have REALLY BIG changes in RNA expression ( which is what they are measuring ). In the case of SARS I imagine that the differences were pretty high, so that it was relativley easy to detect the affected genes.
2. Sequence, in order to make an array, or "chip", one needs to do a whole-cell extract for the target organism, extract the RNA, reverse-transcribe it, sequence it, figure out where on the sequence it is, make sure it isn't a spliced form of some other gene, then spot it onto a slide. Basically you get the EST library. Not easy to do, still kinda unreliable.

All accounted for, I don't think that anyone is to the point of making monsters or playing god. In order to do that, we first need to figure out how to get cells to change their DNA which we are still at least 50-75 years away from doing.

Re:What an unbalanced pile of propaganda!

[glwtta]

All of these claims are completely unproven, and man has a track record of blowing stuff up when given the opportunity. Military people are already talking about bioweapons engineered to only kill one person or maybe a certain ethnic group. These monstrosities maybe don't look like Godzilla, but they are reality, unfortunately.

Oh, so it's only the scary, bad scifi movie stuff that's proven, not the benefits?

I only have two questions for you: one, what is your relationship to the pharmaceutical industry? You seem to know an awful lot about us. And two, what exactly is it that you are proposing? That we forget what genetics is?

Sad, that.

[No Such Agency]

They killed a perfectly good baboon (of which there are few) to temporarily prolong the life of a human infant (of which there are very many).

Yes, but

[charon_on_acheron]

if it was your human infant, you may have a different concern.

Re:DDT

[barawn]

Are you the same kind of person that would use nuclear power everywhere, simply because we've only ever had 1 (recorded) nuclear meltdown in history, and "well, it seems safe now!" Nuclear power is about the analog of DDT: it's extremely powerful, and extremely dangerous. Actually, it's about the analog of nuclear power in the 1970s, when we DIDN'T know that much about how to control nuclear plants. Today, we still don't know how to deal with ecosystems well. Honestly, we suck - we're awful. The world is full of examples of how bad we are at managing ecosystems (Look at the outbreak of the aquarium decorative plant in the Mediterranean Sea for a recent example. Aw, it's just a pretty aquarium plant - that is rapidly turning the once-healthy Mediterranean into a single-species lawn, just ripe for a virus to come and wipe out a huge amount of oxygen producers).

There is a single, peer-reviewed, study showing adverse effects of use of DDT. Borneo, when the WHO decided to spray DDT to kill the mosquitos there. It made their lives MUCH worse than when the mosquitos - and malaria - were there. Careful - you didn't say "direct" effect, because ecology

Not using DDT now is like when people fought against using nuclear power everywhere when we weren't really that good at controlling it. It's intelligent. It's admitting "damn, this is powerful, and we really have no freaking clue how to make it not dangerous as hell."

Widespread use of DDT could cause a lot more damage than 300 million dead. A lot. Like, massive ecosystem destruction.

The main problem with ...

[burgburgburg]

destroying the whole Universe (I'm assuming you mean in one fell swoop and not piecemeal) is that it leaves you no place to stand poised before your defeated enemies and let forth with a mighty "Mwuhahahaha!!!"

It also gives you no opportunity to confront those who had scorned you back in grade school/high school/college/grad school/job/life and let loose with your well deserved "Who's a loser now, huh?"

Don't get me wrong. Sure Universe destroying has it's attractions. But all in all, I'll stick with world domination, thank you very much.

Stem Cell Research based on false. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

assumptions.

According to the work of Robert O. Becker, the assumption that regular cells cannot dedifferentiate is in fact not just a false belief, but one which has been shored up at great expense by orthodox medicine. The phenomenon of normal cell dediferentiation, (a skin or bone cell into a 'stem' cell) can be observed at the site of tissue wounds in not just salmimanders, (which can regrow whole limbs), but in humans as well. (Who, even though they cannot, do not for extremely interesting reasons.)

Apparently, vanishingly small micro current DC electricity is used by complex organisms to tell cells what to do during various stages of growth and tissue repair. --I came upon Becker's work while reading up on Electromagnetism and its effects on human neurology.

I was blown away by what he had discovered over his long and lettered career. Becker is one of the 'real' ones. Look him up.

-FL

genetics revolution - fight the power

[chloroquine]

You know, if I'm honest about this with myself, I'm not really interested in the miracle cure or the horror story. I am, like many people, in a field that is in the news on a fairly frequent basis. The media does its little dance of distortion and turns research into something mystical that Men In White Coats do (and a few women too) that has Important Results. I just want to see some responsible reporting and I'd like people other than my friends to have an idea of what it means to do research in my field.

I'm not trying to ignore the ethics debates, which are important in their own right, I just want one of those smiling, talking heads to come into my lab and maybe learn how to run a gel. Learn how to purify some plasmid DNA, know how we feel as we trudge through the boring bits just to get to the exciting data. And then understand how far we are in basic research from "curing cancer". I want someone to understand the man hours involved and what we have invested in this stuff.

You know, I don't work with human stem cell lines. I don't work with cute fluffy animals. I do happen to work in a lab which does breast cancer research, but we don't all go around wearing little pink ribbons all the time.