Editorials: Of mice, jellyfish & us
STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Executive Editor: Paul Baumann Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Daria Donnelly Production Editor: Tiina Aleman Senior Writer: Robert...
...Institutional review boards in hospitals and research institutes seem ready to approve potentially effective treatments (especially for fatal conditions), leaving the risk questions to the future...
...One-third of the embryos glowed when a fluorescent light was shone on them...
...Another physician, who describes himself as "an ethical religious man," says he will include the new information in counseling patients, but "they can decide whether they want to go forward or not...
...Who wilt really say no to the market...
...Even now, one physician who does direct insertion of a human sperm into an egg acknowledges that extraneous material may enter the egg--although no infants born as a result of this technique have yet shown a tendency to unusual diseases or conditions...
...The U.S...
...Who can know before the actual experiments take place...
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...But children given modified genes at conception may be born and raised, perhaps reaching adulthood, before the full effects of any alteration or treatment can be known...
...And are there markets before physicians themselves offer treatments...
...Gene replacement therapy promises to cure our ills...
...As time passes, who can doubt that the situation will become ever more painful for the boy, for his family in Cuba as well as his family in Miami...
...Some scientists think so...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M148106 and on Microfiche from Bell & Howell, Wooster, OH 44691...
...How do scientists know their experiment worked...
...This is scientific progress...
...Commonweal 6 January 28, 2000...
...Who can doubt that when it can be done, it will be done...
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...Is this any way to approach ethical decision making in matters of novel and risky experiments that will affect not just individuals, but the whole human community and the animal and plant world that sustains us...
...Extortion-like protests in the streets of Miami and demagoguery in the corridors of Congress should have no bearing on the final outcome of this decision...
...The case of Eli~in Gonz~lez is a tragedy...
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...Who knows what children born of such techniques may have floating around as extraneous genetic or viral material...
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...But are there "treatments" before physicians and their scientific colleagues work to develop them through animal experiments...
...Yes, it presents risks...
...Why not...
...For experiments creating cloned calves and jellyfish-enhanced monkeys have become everyday science and ho-hum media events...
...Presumably this meets his ethical obligation...
...A New York Times story (December 23, 1999) reports a successful experiment in which jellyfish genes were mixed with the sperm cells of the rhesus monkey...
...If we learn nothing from the story of Adam and Eve, can we learn something from the development of the atomic bomb or the overuse of antibiotic medicines...
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...Of course, all of this lies in the future...
...Do we know nothing about the power of nature to strike back...
...A prize Japanese bull has been cloned from skin cells scraped from its own ear (New York Times, January 5, 2000...
...Four calves were produced with far greater efficiency and less expense than the cumbersome technique that produced Dolly...
...And someday inserting a modified gene into a human egg could reduce susceptibility to diseases such as AIDS or Alzheimer's...
...Immigration and Naturalization Service has made the right decision, and yet does not carry it out...
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...Technical difficulties remain to actually inserting a human gene, for example, into a mouse egg, or the even more humanly compatible pig egg...
...We are promised, however, that these techniques will help in the development of spare human organs...
...predictably, they will be beaten back by "compassionate" legislation...
...Who will stop them...
...These seemingly modest developments in reproductive technology may eventually pave the way for sophisticated programs of genetic engineering, ultimately with human genes...
...Once the technical barriers are breached, how can the risks to humans be fully known without actually transplanting cloned organs...
...Have we not learned that ethical questions are real questions...
...They require real reflection and real answers...
...Not jellyfish genes, we hope...
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...The sperm, subsequently injected into monkey eggs, bypassed the natural fertilization process, allowing the jellyfish gene to enter the monkey egg...
...Down the road, cloning human organs in monkeys or pigs will present the same round of ethical handwringing...
...In the face of uncertainty, who can give informed consent...
...http://www.commonwealmagazine.org @ M M @ M W E A !. ]mmmmnn~AvA~,~ [qk~p'/Av~u,-Bm~ Of mice, j e l l y f i s h & us O ne of the great challenges of the twenty-first century will be our response to the combined power of new reproductive technologies and manipulation of the human gene...
...The most obvious ethical dilemmas are presented in moving from animal to human genetic experimentation...
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...If the process of selection and adaptation takes eons, how can we foresee the consequences of even the simplest alteration in our genetic make-up, or that of the jellyfish and rhesus monkey...
...In a nation of immigrants, her death naturally has a deep resonance...
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...But it shows no disregard for her sacrifice, nor any naivet6 about the political life of Fidel Castro's Cuba, to say that a boy who has lost his mother is best reunited with his father...
...Consider the second story...
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...And then, of course, millions even billions of dollars are being invested in these projects...
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...in another experiment, eleven of fifty-seven mice born through the same technique had green-glowing tails...
...What is all of this doing to creation...
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...Yes, there is medical progress to be made in genetic research, but real progress also requires us to say: Stop and think...
...She has been surpassed...
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...Furthermore, it is the law, not only civil law but natural law as well...
...Two recent news stories illustrate the heart of the problem: scientists recognize they now face serious ethical problems but continue to do more or less nothing about them...
...What risks will it pose...
...Fully consenting to the risks, sick and dying people will acquiesce in the hope of renewed health and life...
...Does that mean nothing is amiss...
...More fascinating than jellyfish genes in Commonweal 5 January 28, 2000 monkey tails, then, is ethical agnosticism in the face of scientific advance...
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...Remember Dolly the clone, that singular sheep and media sensation of 1997...
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...FATHER & SON Send Elian Gonzalez home to his father in Cuba...
...Funny thing though, they are the same ethical dilemmas we've heard about for twenty-five years, and their invocation does not bring reflection or resolution...
...Yet in these stories and others like them, one thing has not changed, the invocation of ethical dilemmas...
...3, 7, 12, Baloo, Rothco...
...columnist portraits, Elaine Mills...
...Copyright 9 2000 Commonweal Foundation...
...But they haven't gotten the attention she did--where are the baby pictures...
...His mother died trying to bring him to the United States...
...The same physician also claims that he would not recommend to his patients every advance in technology, "just because there is a market for it...
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...We are all original sinners, as Sidney Callahan reminds us on page 7, but do we know nothing about hubris or heedlessness...
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...But as the jellyfish experiments showed, direct insertion of sperm into an egg provides none of the protective functions of natural fertilization that separate the sperm's outer protein coat (and extraneous matter such as viruses) from its genetic material...
...Progress and profits beckon...
...8, 10, Ray, Rothco...
...3, 20, Anthony Neste...
...This process produced monkey embryos carrying the jellyfish gene...
...Ethical handwringing might better describe what scientists say in stories announcing their successful experiments...
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...If the law is clear, as it seems to be, and if the INS has interpreted it correctly, as it seems to have done, what purpose is served in waiting for a federal judge to rule so...
...For if natural selection is part of the marvelously adaptive nature of all life on earth (see, John Haught's "Evolution and the Humility of God" on page 12), who are scientists to decide that some genes should be enhanced or modified, while others are disabled...
...Perhaps, at first, health insurance companies will say "no...
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...STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Executive Editor: Paul Baumann Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Daria Donnelly Production Editor: Tiina Aleman Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Editorial Assistant: Maurice Timothy Reidy Copy Editor: Susanne Washburn Business Manager: Gregory Wilpert Poetry: Rosemary Deen Screen: Richard Alleva Stage: Celia Wren Columnists: John Garvey, E.J...
...Attorney General Janet Reno, having disallowed the decision of a Florida state judge to grant a custody hearing to Elian's great-uncle, allows him to petition a federal court...
...The direct insertion of a single sperm into an egg is already possible and some ten to twenty thousand efforts a year are made on human eggs...
...Happy children grow up everywhere---even in Cuba...
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...Canada, $47...
...What could be more obvious or compassionate...
...But not wholly, for these reproductive techniques work their way into human medicine in the form of infertility treatments...
Vol. 127 • January 2000 • No. 2
