Bioethics in Daily Life

C. Mulligan, Copyright 2011All rights reserved

Bioethics in Daily Life

Day 6Prof. Connie J. Mulligan

Department of Anthropology


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


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


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


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


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.



Example of natural recombination (i.e. sex) vs somatic cell nuclear transfer

• http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/scnt.html


Clone a mouse

– http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/clickandclone/


Videos of enucleation and nuclear transfer

• http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/


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?



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?



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)



Realities of human cloning

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


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.



How to assess the accuracy of information


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


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?


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


How to read a journal articleHow to read a journal article


Parts of an article Parts of an article – some of this information is very field-specific and – some of this information is very field-specific and

may not be true outside Bioanthropologymay not be true outside Bioanthropology

• What is an abstract?What is an abstract?

• What information goes into an Intro?What information goes into an Intro?

• What information goes into Results?What information goes into Results?

• What information goes into Disc?What information goes into Disc?


How to read a journal articleHow to read a journal article• Note year of publicationNote year of publication– Anything more than 5 yrs old is fairly old in my fieldAnything 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 Can use an old article as a starting point, but look to see what

has been published more recentlyhas been published more recently• Note authorsNote authors– Have you read anything else by this lab?Have you read anything else by this lab?– AuthorAuthor et al. et al. YearYear is the best way to refer to a paper is the best way to refer to a paper

• Refer to articles this way in Questions/Comments, Journal Analysis, Refer to articles this way in Questions/Comments, Journal Analysis, exam, etcexam, etc

• General strategy for reading an article General strategy for reading an article – Read Abstract, then Intro and then DiscRead Abstract, then Intro and then Disc– M&M is usually too complicated unless you want a specific M&M is usually too complicated unless you want a specific

piece of infopiece of info– Results is generally pretty cut and driedResults is generally pretty cut and dried– Re-read abstract after you read paperRe-read abstract after you read paper

• See what authors presented as the take-home messageSee what authors presented as the take-home message

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