MIT Certifies Biological Engineering Major

chrisd writes "In same week that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney reitereates his opposition to stem cell research, MIT has certified its first new major in 29 years, Biological Engineering. The boston globe has a solid writeup about the biotech major."

Comments

Georgia Tech Biomedical Engineering

[ap0]

Georgia Tech has had Biomedical Engineering offered as a major for a few years now. It's a pretty popular new major.

DNA Hack

[TheSync]

For those who want to start early to get ready for this, check out DNAhack, the website for amateur genetic engineering.

Ummm...

[Combuchan]

So, MIT is essentially doing what Rice, SUNY Stony Brook, Lehigh, Rice, Syracuse, and even Mesa Community College have been doing for a very long time now?

Yes, this is MIT, and they have a potential to become the leading institution in the field, but respected universites have already established programs. When MIT comes out with something revolutionary from their new program, then I'll be interested.

Embryos and Life and Fertility Clinics

[Concern]

I have a question, I am seriously, honestly just looking for more knowledge about this.

Leaving aside your religious or personal beliefs about the rights of stem cells and embryos, about which reasonable people can disagree... and about whether federal funding should pay for something versus should it be allowed at all (another entirely lively discussion)... is it true that there is a double standard for fertility clinics?

I have been reading about fertility clinic procedures that involve activities with embryos, on quite a large scale, that should seem objectionable to RtL advocates concerned with stem cell research. But I don't perceive the same kind of advocacy against IVF activities that result in the destruction of microscopic life, as I do against stem cell research.

I am not a doctor. I know that IVF involves harvesting eggs and fertilizing them en masse, then transplanting a few back to the mother and discarding the rest.

So:

Assuming you consider microscopic human life sacred, is this morally distinguishable somehow from stem cell research?

Is it actually the case that RtL advocates do oppose IVF as much as stem cell research?

Re:Embryos and Life and Fertility Clinics

[Avallach]

Deontology is a dangerous path. The ends rarely, if ever, justify the means. I don't know how we'd master IVF without failing lots of times, yet I cannot sanction the lives lost in said failure. My point was that it's destruction of life that's critical, not the idea of IVF itself. (There are those who feel that the very idea of IVF moves into playing God, but I would respectfully disagree.)

Again, with stem cell research, I cannot sanction those forms that involved the destruction of human beings. Finding new ways to acquire stem cells that don't involve that is the way forward, and more research needs to be done here. Everyone wants to heal people and save babies, etc. It's just that we can't ethically do it at the expense of killing others.

Honestly, I view the position of modern scientific ethics as somewhat confusing. We don't permit experimentation on infants, even prenatally, unless there's an absolutely essential reason to try the treatment, often as a last ditch effort. Yet somewhere before the two week mark after conception we seem to feel that the embryo/fetus ceases to be a human being and becomes fair game for experimenting. It is difficult to reconcile those two positions ethically or logically.

Re:Embryos and Life and Fertility Clinics

[Avallach]

Not at all. Separate the idea of human life (being quite specific there) from a human being. It is at time necessary to harm human life for the betterment of human beings. I know I'm using the terms slightly differently than they're used typically, so to clear up the vocabulary a bit:

All human cells are human life. From sperm to egg to retina to skin to whatever you choose to stick in here.

Not all human life comprises a person with a sense of being. In the case of zygotes and embryos, loss of even a single cell of that life can result in the death of a human being, but I personally lose thousands of cells on a daily basis. Other ethical concerns aside, the spilling of cells in masturbation is ethically no different than shedding skin.

The ethical line that I see is where one crosses from something that has the possibility to create a human being (sperm/egg) to something which is a human being (embryo/zygote)

Finally, it's of interest to me that you assume I hold my beliefs on a religious basis. I do, but have not indicated that previously to the best of my knowledge. Is it not possible to respect human beings in all their forms from a non-religious point of view?

OT, but needs to be said

[antifoidulus]

A line from TFA: At the same time, the government, which funds most scientific research in the country,
Does anyone else see something fundamentally wrong with that? I agree that the government should play a LIMITED role in R&D ie financing the stuff that nobody else is willing to take the risk and finance, but there is somethin fundamentally wrong with this country when the government needs to finance most of the scientific research in this country.
What ever happened to private R&D? Or is this just a symptom of the long term wrath of Carly Fiorna's, Sam Walton's, and Micheal Dell's actions: You don't need to make stuff, just market stuff. That is how you will get rich!
Dangerous precedent IMO.

Still not engineers

[James McP]

Call it what you want but until they develop a reliable, reproducible, and generally accepted set of practices they still aren't engineers.

Skillfull and amazing, yes. Artisans maybe.

Engineers no.

It's the same reason ABET doesn't certify software engineering; it's still more art than science. Good engineering is science, great engineering is scientific artistry.

Re:Meh

[randomiam]

Speaking as someone who has a degree in biochemistry and chemical engineering I take issue with this statement. Biochemists are 'usually' interested in single pieces, or small sections of the whole; while engineers are more focused on systems and applications. Over the next deacade, I think there will be need for both approaches.

MIT's not alone in looking into biological engineering, either. SUNY at Buffalo's chemical engineering department changed its name to 'chemical and biological' engineering last year. While there haven't been any curriculum changes yet, I'm told that they'll start arriving once folks get a handle on what a biological engineering curriculum should look like.

Re:The motivation is religious.

[shawn(at)fsu]

If the embryo had any choice in the mater I'd bet it would opt to live. Sacrifice for the betterment of humanity isn't granted by virtue of being able to think or reason. Look how many people don't donate their organs to others once they die or donate their body to science. In these two cases they aren't even going to use them anymore. In the embryo's case the embryo could use them.

Not that I have any moral objections to any of this, I'm just thinning aloud about humanity.

Re:The motivation is religious.

[Rei]

> Without the concept of a soul, how can one feel pity/sadness for any organisms

And yet, we do. Clearly, we feel sadness for adults and children when they die. Most of us would feel sadness for a dog or cat, but not all. Some of us would feel sadness for a mouse; others wouldn't. Few of us would feel sadness for an insect. And almost none of us would feel sadness for an arbitrary glob of cells, even human cells, unless they saw them as a "person".

We feel sadness when something dies that we view as having (to some degree) the trait of "humanity". Without a "soul" in an embryo, it is hard if not impossible to apply that trait to what is otherwise a small cluster of minimally differentiated cells. It doesn't look like a human; it doesn't think like a human; etc.

Certainly, there is no "absolute meaning", no "absolute reason" to apply sadness to the loss of something showing "humanity"; however, there is no "absolute meaning" to anything in the world unless you're religious. Everything is as one defines it, and it's hard to find a person who defines their worldview in such a way that the loss of things with "humanity" is no big deal. Even the most brutal of dictators generally thinks that they're saving more humanity by destroying some of it.

Re:Before someone starts about "the ban"...

[Gob Blesh It]

Not only are existing lines contaminated, but there just plain aren't enough of them to keep research progressing smoothly. Also, it's not just "we won't pay you to do (thing)", it's "if you do (thing), we'll cut off your funding for all ongoing projects, whether they're related or not." For institutions like research universities and labs who derive significant funding from the federal government, this is tantamount to depriving them of oxygen. (It's the same tactic Congress used with transportation funding to get states to adopt a minimum drinking age of 21.)

If I'm wrong about any of the above, I'd appreciate corrections.

Over in Canada...

[UlfGabe]

At Guelph University, we have had biological engineering for quite some time.

It is focuses on two streams, bioreactions, and biomedical.

The Bio-reactions would deal with:

membranes
bio reactors(beer creation!)
remediation techniques (this is a mix with enviro eng)
food creation / processing

Bio Medical:
Custom Prosethetics
Imaging technologies
Different therapies (gene, radiation, chemical, natural)
Cyborg creation 101
Android Manipulation (must be taken with AI*4503)

ect.

Guelph is largly a non traditional Engineering school, there is no Civil/mechanical/other standard engineering programs, very cool.

Re:Before someone starts about "the ban"...

[American AC in Paris]

While it's all well and good to disagree with various politicians on a topic or two, people are pretending there's an outright ban on something, when it's really a "we won't pay you to do (thing) in (mode) with (condition)" situation.

Technically, no, it is not an outright ban. You won't get thrown in prison for doing it; it's not in violation of the law. You could use only non-federal funds and perform this research with impugnity.

When the federal government pays the lion's share of your lab's bills with a big grant, though, you can be damned sure that to do anything that might cost you that funding is, quite simply, professional suicide. The minute you use a single dollar of federal funds--say, some disposable plastic pipettor tips paid for by a federal grant, or five minutes' time of a lab tech whose salary is paid for by a government grant--the government can withdraw every penny of that grant. Goodbye, lab, livelihood, and years' worth of hard work.

...so, what do you do--carefully sequester your new stem-cell research and hope and pray that one of your postdocs doesn't accidentally grab a reagent from the wrong shelf, or that your first-year rotation student doesn't unknowingly save a dataset to a shared volume on a server paid for by federal funds? Hell, no. Not if you like having a lab, care about your research, and want your fifteen-odd researchers to stay productive and employed.

Re:Ethics

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we experiment on the homeless

In some ways of looking at this, it could be more ethical. Give the homeless a choice: We'll put you up for a while in a clean warm place, giving you food and medical care in exchange for the ability to test on you. Nobody ever gave the current lab animals a choice.

I could see this going a long way to help solve many mental health/drug addiction problems that currently afflict mankind.

Note: I am not saying that this is ethical, but in some ways is no less ethical than testing on animals. As long as that element of choice is there. This also assumes that the "choice" isn't forced on the sunjects through intentional social pressures.

Note 2: I'm not really against limited animal testing either, as long as adequate care is taken to ensure that there is no needless suffering endured.