Washington, D.C.: I find the whole notion of people creating half-human half animal embryos totally frightening. I think the risk of this work being being misused by those of evil or selfish intent is so great it defeats any usefulness that might result from it.

Noel Schwerin: There are a lot of people who agree with you. But supporters of cross-species research will point out that many people said the same thing about human organ transplantation and in vitro fertilization a few decades ago. People disagree about whether new reproductive and genetic technologies put us the edge of totally new kinds of dilemmas, or whether they simply make us revisit old, still unanswered ones such as what is our role in shaping mankind? How do we participate in evolution?

There is no question that these new reproductive and genetic technologies allow us to make and manipulate human life in startling new ways, and that they stir strong visceral reactions in people. I believe that these gut reactions matter—and need to be considered in public policy–because they point to the ways in which fundamental principles are challenged by science. What makes me hopeful is that we all care about these fundamental ideas—ideas about what it means to be human, to belong to a family, to have rights—and that while we may disagree about what should be permissible and what should be regulated, many of us care deeply about what kind of human legacy we are creating. The challenges new biotechnologies raise create a very real kind of moral anxiety that is not just a function of ignorance. In many cases we know just what technology can do, and we are still worried.

Another thing to consider here is that however we as a society decide to manage these technologies, we cannot control how they are used in other societies. And the challenge, even in our own pluralistic culture, is how to take advantage of the stunning advances of biomedical research and still honor the deeply held beliefs of a diverse people. Indeed many people argue that we face an especially big challenge in the United States because reproductive and genetic technologies in the U.S. are not heavily regulated and are frequently market-driven. And the dangers of commerce driving science are manifold, from the commodification of the body or so-called "designer babies" to commercial interference in the free exchange of ideas and in the motivation of researchers.

________________________________________________

washingtonpost.com: Apologies. This discussion will continue at 2 p.m. ET.

________________________________________________

Baltimore, Md.: You can't patent something that already exists (it's called "prior art") and there's definitely "prior art" as far as the half-human/half-chimp goes -- in the form of my college roomate Joe. I just know that hairy troglodite who set his alarm for 6 a.m. and then kept hitting the "snooze" button 'till 8 a.m. was conceived by an over-enthusiastic Jane Goodall wannabe on an anthropological expedition to Madagascar. How do I contact the Patent Office to challenge the patent in question? Should I just mail them a picture of Joe from the yearbook?

Noel Schwerin: The questions, then, about your friend are: Is he novel? Is he useful and is he written up the right way? As you know, these are the criteria for a patent, and many people are surprised that they are so simple. In fact, they don’t require an inventor to have tried to make his or her invention, just to demonstrate that it is reasonably possible. And in the 19080’s researchers created a "geep," an animal that was part sheep and part goat. Since then, chicken/quail, human/mouse and other "chimeras" have been made. In biology, a chimera is an animal formed from two different animal embryos. The word chimera comes from the Greek for goat—a reference to the Greek mythological creature with a lion’s head, goat’s body and serpent’s tail. Formerly the stuff of myth, science fiction and fantasy, real chimeras can now be created. In 1984, British scientists created the "geep" by combining the embryos of a sheep and goat. As you also know, the ability to create chimeras underscores how similar species are genetically. Researches expect to find that the human genome is up to 98.5% similar to that of chimpanzees and between 85% and 90% similar to that of mice.

You can reach the patent office through their web site at uspto.gov.

________________________________________________

Alexandria, Va.: How can any corporation possibly validate conducting experiments on its workers? Are the workers asked prior to exposure? How is this different from something like the Tuskegee experiments?

Noel Schwerin: Your point is well taken, in that there is universal ethical (and medical for that matter) consensus that consent is the cornerstone of any medical or research protocol. (And that it is necessary if people are going to have faith in—and participate in—any medical research. Many people believe Burlington Northern was on a "fishing expedition" to find someone else to blame for workplace conditions, and agree with you, that it was really a research program that should have adhered to clear and strict human experimentation guidelines promulgated in the so-called "Common Rule" and other federal guidelines.

In the Burlington Northern case, the employer claimed a right (legal in most experts’ opinion) to look into the cause of injuries reported in workman’s comp clams. The question in this case was did the testing violate informed consent and medical testing provisions in the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission argued that it did. To learn more about when some experts believe there is a legitimate use of workplace testing, see the Making Precedent Cases (in employment) on the www.pbs.org/bloodlines web site.

________________________________________________

Washington, D.C.: Dear Noel,

I was lucky enough to catch a snippet of a preview of a "Bloodlines" segment at AAAS a few weeks ago.

You are clearly a gifted producer/writer to be able to display so eloquently the emotion behind controversial issues like genetic testing.

In your opinion, where does the balance between scientific research and public safety lie? Is it a matter of educating the public about the benefits of genetic research, or a matter of public policy to stop "scary" scientific practices altogether?

Thanks.

Noel Schwerin: Balance is a delicate and difficult dance! But I do believe it is incumbent on us, as participants in a pluralistic democracy, to think about how we can foster human flourishing, both by protecting people and by taking advantage of promising technology. I don’t think there is such a dichotomy as you suggest ("Is it a matter of educating the public about the benefits of genetic research, or a matter of public policy to stop "scary" scientific practices altogether?"). I might suggest that the "scariness" of these new technologies is directly related to the challenges they make to our understanding of ourselves and our connection to each other and the world around us. So, the need, in my opinion, is not so much "to educate" from the outside (though that is critical!), but to more systematically explore from the inside what we value, what we consider valuable (or transgressive or sacred or…) and how we want to proceed. I think we have an obligation to both protect and help people. What in the end do we want our human legacy to be?

________________________________________________

Washington, D.C.: Great topic and I am glad we are asking the questions now instead of waiting to see the half chimp/half human walking down the streets of New York.

My question: How much of this is about money and what would there be to gain from it?

Is it about saving lives... medically that is?

Noel Schwerin: There is no question that new genetic and reproductive technology have the potential to help people.There is no question that new genetic and reproductive technology have the potential to help people. And BLOODLINES (tonight on PBS @9pm) provides some examples of how that can be the case. But as you point out, money plays a big role. (Take a look at the "Commerce" theme on the home page and timeline of www.pbs.org/bloodlines) Biotechnology is about a $17 billion industry, and the federal government contributes a significant amount to that. Many people have concerns about the role of commerce in these technologies—from the commodification of the body to the affect on the scientific enterprise—and as you know, genetic and particularly reproductive technology are market driven in this country.

________________________________________________

Chicago, Ill.: Arguably, chimeras are not new in medicine. However, with this new technology what will determine the "lineage" to be matched if the combined human/animal needs organ transplantation, blood or other body replacements?

Noel Schwerin: You raise a very interesting question. Are we creating a new species? And even more fundamentally, what is the meaning of species when historical (both social and biological) boundaries are crossed. Take a look at Making Precedent for a role play exercise about just these issues.

________________________________________________

Whitesboro, N.Y.: Have you found that the experiences your interviewees had made them more or less interested in legislation surrounding legal parentage? There are so many extenuating circumstances surrounding each case, I wonder if it makes sense to try and legislate a "one size fits all" ruling about reproductive issues or if they should be decided on a case by case basis.

Noel Schwerin: This is a very interesting question. As I think now about the various stories I tell in BLOODLINES, it occurs to me that there is a big range. This does not surprise me, as how we feel about the possibilities—good and bad—of new biotechnologies usually has a lot to do with our personal experience, background and moral framework. In general, peole in the legal field tended to want more legislative guidance; people in the medical and science world tended to want more freedom. The more "ordinary" folks—the infertile couple, the Parkinson’s patient, the surrogate—all made use of technology and tended to support it. The people in the genetic testing case are very much in support of more legislation.

You are right that it is very difficult to legislate around these technologies, but that is not only because each case is different (if you look at cases in the courts, they are full of equally "extenuating" circumstances), I believe. There are many forces at play: the technology is moving so fast that laws cannot anticipate what will change, and most laws end up being written too narrowly; politics around issues at the beginning and end of life in this society has left little room for discussion at the middle; regulation has the very real potential of foreclosing on avenues of research that cold prove very beneficial; industry resists such legislation in many cases; people don’t understand the science; Americans don’t like their rights restricted, particularly when it comes to making families and getting medical help…the list goes on.

________________________________________________

San Francisco, Calif.: It seems like the ethical issues with genetic technologies only arise in very unusual cases. Do these questions really apply to all of us in everyday life?

Noel Schwerin: It may seem like these cases are only at the outer frontier of technology and have little to do with our lives, but think about the fist story in BLOODLINES. An infertile couple contracts with three other people to create a baby, and then the infertile husband files for divorce weeks before a child is finally born, claiming there are "no children of the marriage." When the trial judge ruled that that child had no legal parents, he was saying that he had no guidance from the law about what constituted parenthood. Our laws are all over the map about whether biology or "intention" or some other criterion should matter most in making families. And without that guidance, the decisions about what kinds of families there should be, what kind of children there should be and what kind of society we are building, may happen at the doors of individual clinicians.

________________________________________________

Harrisburg, Pa.: You have grabbed my attention. Would you please tell us more about the patent application for a half chimp/half human? What exactly are they proposed to do to achieve this, and is science getting close enough to accomplish this, if such research would be permitted?

Noel Schwerin: The technique for making chimeras has been in the literature for some time, and there is a very active debate right now about using mouse/human chimeras to test for the pluripotency of stem cells. I am not a scientist so this will be simplistic (but hopefully not too off base): embryos can be combined at very early stages—when they are still small balls of undifferentiated cells—and coaxed to "cooperate" and be implanted in the womb of a surrogate animal to grow to term. The cells coexist and together make the whole organism, so that every cell in the organism’s body would be from one or the other organism (different from transgenic or hybrid animals). When and if ir reproduced, it would only give rise to one species. Geeps, from sheep and goats, were made as early as the 1980s.

________________________________________________

Washington, D.C.: What, if any are the positive aspects of this kind of experimentation between humans and animals? I can understand that it would be immensly beneficial to medical research, however, no matter how similar we are genetically to certain animals, we are obviously not completely the same, which I think would lead to immense problems when trying to cross-breed between humans and animals.

Noel Schwerin: If you watch BLOODLINES tonight, you will see the case of a man whose life was saved by xenotransplantation, that is, cross species transplantation. Some estimates out the number of people who could be helped by transplanted organs at 60-80,000. Considering there are orders of magnitude fewer human organs available, scientists have been working for years to overcome the rejection problems of cross species transplantation to create an abundant supply of organs for use in humans.

In addition, we are morally—and legaly—prohibited from conducting certain kinds of research in humans. Animal models have long been our stand in when testing drugs, procedures, etc. The closer we can model such an experimental animal on a human, the more likely it may be that the experiments are useful.

________________________________________________

Mt. Lebanon, Pa.: Since ethcial conduct and big bucks go together like champagne and spam [the pork product] there doesn't seem to be much room in biotechnology for moral considerations especially given that money and science are helically intertwined. If the U.S. doesn't do it someone else will. Science will not be denied the thrill of the next unknown; capitalism will not be denied the high from the next technological gusher. With these considerations in mind, if ethics was a species it'd be on the critically endangered list. Your thoughtful rebuttal, please. Thanks much.

Noel Schwerin: I really encourage you to visit the web site (www.pbs,org/bloodlines) and explore the Commerce theme (on the home page, in Making Precedent, and in the Timeline). One thing to keep in mind around these technologies is that scientists are human (mostly!) and that they have an equally high investment in what that means as the rest of us do. I have been continually surprised by the degree to which moral perspectives play a role in the scientific enterprise, even if sometimes the confidence (hubris?) of the enterprise can muddy the ethical waters. As a culture we tend to value progress and scientific advancement—this is not just a value of actual researchers. Hand in hand with that, in my opinion, come particularly weighty moral obligations to protect people and to further human happiness. But as citizens, we play a role in the support of science and new technology. The human genome was mapped with our tax dollars, and many of us sure would like to see it help our lives.

________________________________________________

Fargo, N.D.: Very much looking forward to viewing this show tonight. Especially the portons on "choosing" sexes for your baby, and any other fertility related portions. I'm not sure how I feel about the day that will come when you can order your baby's features off a "menu" so to speak. It just seems to be removing nature and God from the creation. To be able to say okay, make it a boy with red hair and green eyes seems to take all the mystery out of it. I do however support sex choosing when it relates to genetic diseases, as I have a cousin who recently died of Hunter's Syndrome, and his two sisters are both carriers, so would prefer not to have sons, as only males can get the disease.

Noel Schwerin: You have a very important perspective in the sense that you straddle some of these ethical dilemmas. You wear two hats. The individual need for medical technology is almost always compelling—see BLOODLINES—but the social cost or harm that may be created by the excessive, unintended or even unscrupulous use of that technology can be at least as compelling—see BLOODLINES again! Like any liberties, the ones you want yourself may be abused by others, and we are in a constant struggle in this country to find a reasonable middle path.

________________________________________________

Automatically Update Page    |   Get New Responses   |   Submit Question