Stem Cell Trial for Stroke: Is It Cannabilizing Human Beings?
By Julian Savulescu
Reneuron has today announced the first transfer of stem cells in the UK to treat stroke. This follows quickly from Geron’s recent trial in spinal cord injury.
This is a historic moment which may be viewed in the same way as the first attempts to use antibiotics. Stem cells offer the door to entirely new form of medical treatment called regenerative medicine. When cells (the building blocks) or tissues of the body are damaged, they are generally not replaced. The dead tissue is replaced by scar that holds the rest of the organ together. So when a person has a stroke (or heart attack) a blood vessel to an area of brain is typically blocked and that area of the brain dies, being replaced by a scar that is functionless. Stem cell therapy offers the hope of replacing that dead or damaged tissue and cells with functioning new cells, in this case nerve cells. This trial is the very first stage to see if the transfer can be done safely.
Palmistry for the genome: genetic fundamentalism fights on
by Charles Foster
A recent paper in Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience has the self-explanatory title Investigating the genetic basis of altruism: the role of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism. 1. The German authors aren’t as cautious in their claims as they should have been. They should have noted, nervously, the reception given to the infamous ‘God gene’ hypothesis,2 and entitled the paper something along the lines of ‘Some not very statistically significant correlations (from which we can’t begin to infer a causative relationship) between the COMT Val 158 Met polymorphism and some behaviour that might be markers of, amongst other things, being nice, whatever that means, ignoring other non-correlations with other more plausible markers of being nice.’
Are some temperaments “better” than others?
by Alexandre Erler
Jerome Kagan’s latest book, The Temperamental Thread, is – as usual with Kagan – a fascinating read. It draws on the three decades of research done by Kagan on the topic of human temperament. In a famous series of studies, Kagan examined the way infants reacted to unfamiliar or unexpected events. He found that about 20 per cent of these infants were unusually responsive to such events, exhibiting vigorous motor activity and frequent crying. He calls these infants “high reactives”, and found after following their evolution during their subsequent years that they were biased to become timid, subdued toddlers and shy adolescents who become uneasy when they cannot predict or control the future. About 20 per cent of these high reactives proved unable to cope with their temperament and were subsequently diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, depression, or both. By contrast, another other group of infants showed a high threshold of excitability to the same events. Kagan calls them “low reactives”. They tended to become outgoing, relatively fearless children and relaxed adolescents who like risk and challenge [3]. In the wake of Kagan’s earlier work The Long Shadow of Temperament, The Temperamental Thread paints a rich and detailed picture of the differences between these two psychological types.
Should we rid the world of carnivores if we could?
by Alexandre Erler
In a provocative piece for the New York Times, Jeff McMahan remarks that cruelty pervades the natural world: he stresses the vast amount of suffering and the violent deaths inflicted by predators on their innocent victims. He then invites us to consider a daring way of preventing such suffering and deaths: “Suppose that we could arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones. Or suppose that we could intervene genetically, so that currently carnivorous species would gradually evolve into herbivorous ones, thereby fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy. If we could bring about the end of predation by one or the other of these means at little cost to ourselves, ought we to do it?” McMahan’s conclusion, which he describes himself as “heretical”, is that we do have a moral reason to desire the extinction of carnivorous species, and that it would be good to bring about their extinction if this could be done “without ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation”.
Competing against Mutants
Introduction
In a recently broadcasted documentation about gene-doping, multiple award winning Swiss science journalist and author, Beat Glogger, reflected the issue of gene-doping in a sensitive and objective manner. In this Swiss-German co-production Andy Miah, a bold British Bioethicist, argued that gene-doping is supposed to be a natural friendly method of performance enhancement, whereas many other practices in the past weren’t. Simultaneously, he considered athletes no more as natural creatures by arguing: “We have to get rid of the imagination, that athletes are natural human-beings” (freely re-translated from the German version). Despite the fact that this statement is rather an anti-thesis than a substantiation for his strident position, I have to admit that the current development in gene technology tends to construct a sort of athletic hybrid. No doubt, this is a serious future issue we have to face. Nevertheless, Andy Miah’s declaration implies that athletes might kind take on a pioneer role regarding the subject of genetic enhancement. Therefore, is that an issue worth considering or even to achieving?
The Age of the Genome – on BBC radio tomorrow night
Genetic tests at birth, designer babies, synthetic life and resurrected mammoths. In the final part of this series, Richard Dawkins talks to Craig Venter and other leading scientists about the potential powers of genome science in the future.
The program also includes an interview with Julian Savulescu and others about the ethical implications of these developments
You can listen to the program at 2100 tomorrow 14th July on radio 4 in the UK, or listen online on the BBC website after that time.
Will you live to 100? Should we tell people that they have (or lack) the genes for long life?
In the news today – scientists have identified a cluster of longevity genes. From the Daily Mail
A genetic test which tells whether you will make it to your century has been developed by scientists.
The computer program will give individuals their odds of reaching the age of 100 – and tell them whether their chances are higher or lower than average.
Its inventors, from the respected Boston University in the U.S., say it will allow those not blessed with the cocktail of 'centenarian genes' to make changes to their lifestyle to maximise the time they have.
Professor Julian Savulescu, an Oxford University ethicist, said: 'I believe it is highly in your interests to have this information because even if there is nothing you can do about it, it can help you plan your life.
What do you think? Is it a good thing to know if you are predisposed (or not) to long life?
What if this discovery led to many of us being able to live to 100? Would that be a good thing?
other reports: New York Times
Is “playing God” just a meaningless phrase?
In a
recent piece for Prospect magazine, Philip Ball denounces the “playing God” objection, often made
against some proposed uses of biotechnology, as a “meaningless, dangerous
cliché”. More specifically, Ball mentions the objection in relation to Craig
Venter’s creation – already discussed on this blog – of the first microorganism
with a wholly synthetic genome. Though many people from the press have raised
the “playing God” issue in their coverage of Venter’s achievement, “no one”,
Ball writes, “seems in the least concerned to enquire what this phrase means or
why it is being used”.
Today we lost the drug war
What does synthetic biology mean? Quinn Norton argues it means the end of the drug war: synthetic biology might be able to do the wonderful things (as well as the dangerous things) envisioned by Venter and others, but it definitely can produce drugs. It is also much easier to produce chemicals than fix the environment or make bioweapons. As Quinn notes:
project is to make it easier. Who will be motivated to put in the work
to make it happen? Especially if it’s so bad for organized crime? Drug
addicts, frankly. You think they look like street junkies with DTs, but
a fair number look like scientists, because they are. Drugs will
finally be p2p, and governments and drug lords alike will find out what
it’s like to be media companies and counterfeiters in a world of
lossless copying and 100Mb pipes. Junkies will be victims of their
success, and if we don’t get serious about treating addiction instead
of trying to fight chemicals, it’s going to look a lot more bloody and
horrid than the RIAA’s lawsuit factory. This is just one vision of what
this kind of disruption looks like when people get a hold of it."
Eugenics or ‘reprogenetics’? Call it what you will, but let’s do it
As The
Times recently
reports:
“British couples are to be offered a groundbreaking genetic test that
would virtually eliminate their chances of having a baby with one of more than
100 inherited diseases. The simple saliva test, which identifies whether
prospective parents carry genetic mutations that could cause life-threatening
disorders such as cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy or sickle-cell
anaemia in their children, is to be launched within weeks in Britain… If the
procedure, which will cost about £400 per person or £700 for a couple, is
widely adopted, it could dramatically reduce the incidence of 109 serious
inherited conditions that collectively affect one in every 280 births.”
Surely we should be delighted at such great news?
Surprisingly, not everyone agrees. Some experts object that the test, devised
by the Californian company
Councyl, could lead to “back door eugenics”.
They also argue that the
diseases it detects are too rare for most people to need screening, and that it
will cause needless alarm. Finally, they fear that it will raise demand for
embryo screening and abortion.
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