Bioethics in Daily Life

1. Bioethics in Daily Life Day 6 Prof. Connie J. Mulligan Department of Anthropology

2. This week • Cloning • What is cloning? • Can we clone humans? • Are two genetically identical humans really the same individual? • Reading • Bioethics at the Movies (BAM) • Chpt 7 (Multiplicity: A study of cloning and personal identity) • Chpt 8 (Is ignorance bliss: Star Trek: Nemesis, Cloning and the right to an open future) • http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml - Cloning fact sheet • http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/dolly/ - Dolly, the first famous clone (a sheep) (read the 5 links on the website) • http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7858566.stm - pet cloning • Video – Multiplicity • Oral presentations – Gene therapy

3. Next week • Robots/personhood/personal identity • What rights do robots/clones/unborn babies have? • What does it mean to be human? • Self-replication – Organisms and DNA • Reading • Bioethics at the Movies (BAM) • Chpt 3 (Homo sapiens, robots, and persons in I, Robot and Bicentennial Man) • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg - Wikipedia entry on cyborg • http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v4/n7/pdf/nnano.2009.163.pdf - Relationship between humans and technology • Video • Oral presentations - Cloning

4. Types of cloning • Recombinant DNA technology, or DNA cloning • Putting a piece of DNA into a self-replicating DNA vector • Reproductive cloning • What everyone thinks of as cloning • Therapeutic cloning • Used to isolate stem cells to study human development and treat disease

5. DNA cloning • DNA recombinant technology, DNA cloning, gene cloning, molecular cloning • Transfer of a DNA fragment from one organism to a self-replicating genetic element, e.g. a bacterial plasmid. Now your DNA can be copied and propagated in a foreign host cell • This technology has been around since the 1970s, and it has become a common practice in molecular biology labs today. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

6. Reproductive cloning • A technology used to generate an animal that has the same nuclear DNA as another currently or previously existing animal. • Uses a process called "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT) • Genetic material from the nucleus of a donor adult cell is transferred to an egg whose nucleus, and thus its genetic material, has been removed. • The reconstructed egg containing the DNA from a donor cell must be treated with chemicals or electric current in order to stimulate cell division. • Once the cloned embryo reaches a suitable stage, it is transferred to the uterus of a female host where it continues to develop until birth. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

7. Example of natural recombination (i.e. sex) vs somatic cell nuclear transfer • http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/scnt.html

8. Clone a mouse • http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/clickandclone/

9. Videos of enucleation and nuclear transfer • http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/

10. Reproductive cloning, cont • An other animal created using nuclear transfer technology is not truly an identical clone of the donor animal. Only the clone's chromosomal or nuclear DNA is the same as the donor. • What other kind of DNA is there? http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

11. Reproductive cloning, cont • Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned from adult DNA on July 5, 1996 • 1 success in 276 tries • What was unusual about the cells used to make Dolly? http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

12. Risks of cloning • Reproductive cloning is expensive and highly inefficient • > 90% of cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring • > 100 nuclear transfer procedures could be required to produce one viable clone • Cloned animals tend to have more compromised immune function and higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders • Japanese studies have shown that cloned mice live in poor health and die early • ~ 1/3 of the cloned calves born alive have died young, and many of them were abnormally large. • Many cloned animals have not lived long enough to generate good data about how clones age. • Appearing healthy at a young age unfortunately is not a good indicator of long-term survival. Clones have been known to die mysteriously. For example, Australia's first cloned sheep appeared healthy and energetic on the day she died, and the results from her autopsy failed to determine a cause of death. • In analyzing more than 10,000 liver and placenta cells of cloned mice, researchers discovered that about 4% of genes function abnormally (Whitehead Inst for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA, 2002) http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

13. Realities of human cloning • http://news.discovery.com/videos/tech-human-cloning.html

14. Therapeutic cloning • Also called “embryo cloning“ • Referred to in Chpt 7 as possible in contrast to cloning a human being • Use of human embryos to isolate stem cells to study human development and to treat disease. • Stem cells are uniquely important because they can be used to generate virtually any type of specialized cell in the human body. • Stem cells are extracted from the egg after it has divided for 5 days. The egg at this stage of development is called a blastocyst. The extraction process destroys the embryo. • Many researchers hope that one day stem cells can be used to serve as replacement cells to treat heart disease, Alzheimer's, cancer, other diseases, and organ transplants. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

15. How to assess the accuracy of information

16. What can you do to learn more?How to evaluate the literature • Internet is often unreliable because of lack of peer review • Check to see if internet claims are supported by peer-reviewed journal articles • Wikipedia can be great resource for peer-reviewed resources, i.e. use Wikipedia to explain a point and look up articles that are cited • Books can be unreliable for the same reason • Vanity press • Popular press books • Bioethics at the Movies, Chpt 7 – “Scientists tell us that over a period of seven years, every molecular in the human body is replaced” – is this true? • Check that authors reference their claims • Should reference sources other than themselves • Data should be presented • Tables, figures, numbers, methods, etc

17. Example - How to evaluate the literature • Race: Evolution and Behavior, by J. Philippe Rushton (Univ. of Western Ontario), 1999, Transaction Publishers, NJ • “Race is more than ‘just skin deep’. The pattern of Oriental-White-Black differences is found across history, geographic boundaries, and political-economic systems. It proves the biological reality of race. Theories based only on culture cannot explain all the data shown in Chart 1” • Lots of so-called ‘data’, but no references except the author • Qualitative measures are not real data • Where are the numbers?

18. Peer-reviewed journal articles • Gold standard for scientific results • In 2nd half of semester, must include 1 peer-reviewed journal article per group project • For final paper, must include 3 peer-reviewed journal articles

19. How to read a journal article

20. Parts of an article – some of this information is very field-specific and may not be true outside Bioanthropology What is an abstract? What information goes into an Intro? What information goes into Results? What information goes into Disc?

21. How to read a journal article Note year of publication Anything more than 5 yrs old is fairly old in my field Can use an old article as a starting point, but look to see what has been published more recently Note authors Have you read anything else by this lab? Author et al. Year is the best way to refer to a paper Refer to articles this way in Questions/Comments, Journal Analysis, exam, etc General strategy for reading an article Read Abstract, then Intro and then Disc M&M is usually too complicated unless you want a specific piece of info Results is generally pretty cut and dried Re-read abstract after you read paper See what authors presented as the take-home message