Avatar: The Future of Bioethics is Now

Avatar, the recently released big budget movie by James Cameron, has taken the entertainment industry by storm. Normally “not to be pleased” film critics cannot find enough complimentary words to print. With a $300 million price tag to produce, Avatar has become an instant “cult hit”. Audiences leave theaters in awe of the computer generated special effects that reportedly have transformed the movie viewing experience to a state of virtual reality. In addition to achieving ultimate moviemaking technology, the story line is a compelling account of a science fiction that may be less fiction than it is real science.

The story of Avatar explores the ability of a human to inhabit the mind and control the body of a lesser being created by science to accomplish tasks considered too dangerous for the human to engage in. The manufactured humanoids are sent to an inhospitable planet where war is being waged for control of the universe. Sound like a better way to wage war? Sound far-fetched? Perhaps science is far more capable of creating this fantastic world than most moviegoers would expect.

The word “avatar” derives from a Hindu word representing the embodiment of the god Vishnu in typically lesser forms of being some of which are god-like and others much less so, including turtles, fish, boars or lions. Vishnu was embodied in countless life forms all created for specific purposes to achieve the intent of the god who engendered them. 

The word came into popular American culture through the language of Internet gaming in which players created virtual selves to live, play and potentially die to live again in the game “Habitat” first created in 1986.  As players created their “online persona” they lived vicariously through their surrogate in playing the game by engaging in virtual activities which hopefully they would never choose to participate in “the real world”. Their avatars could murder, maim, deceive and steal with impunity.

How could this fiction possibly be realized through science? It is much closer to reality than we might wish to admit. The science of transgenics has accomplished amazing feats in the laboratory which movie makers could only wish to recreate for the big screen. Truth in fact is stranger than fiction.

Would you like to manufacture a natural fiber much stronger than steel? How about combining the genetic code of a spider with that of a goat to create goat’s milk with the strength characteristics of a spider’s web? Outlandish, you say! Done. BioSteel® is the product of a Canadian company which comes from its “spidergoat” created by combining the genomes of spiders with those of goats.

Barnyard experimentation is one thing, but human experimentation is something entirely different. Right? Wrong. In Amherst, Massachusetts genetic engineering company Advanced Cell Technology created hybrid embryos resulting from the injection of human cells into cows eggs. South Korean research company Maria Bio-Tech created a “hu-mouse” by injecting human stem cells into mouse embryos The living altered embryos were implanted into to a mouse womb with a litter of healthy “hu-mice” delivered thereafter. And just for the fun of it, Cambridge University researchers created “she-male” hermaphrodite human embryos by implanting male genes into female embryos. These chimeras (part one life form and part another) are scientifically capable of creation in infinite varieties.

Make no mistake about it, as a human born with a bi-cuspid aortic heart valve, I am very interested in creating a pig which would carry my own genetic code so if the time arrives that a valve replacement is medically necessary, I can harvest a perfect body part for the task. But because I can, should I?

More critically, because we might be able to create human-like forms in the lab for the purpose of conducting warfare, scientific experimentation or medical therapy should we?

At present, no federal laws in the US prevent these outcomes. Only human restraint does so (if in fact such experimentation is being restrained rather than simply not reported).

All significant human scientific advances raise ethical concerns. The time has long passed for us to seriously consider and engineer the ethical limits, conditions and consequences of genetic experimentation. Only a multi-disciplinary dialogue will provide the breadth and depth of discourse necessary for this critical conversation. Scientists, ethicists, lawyers, physicians, policy makers and the public must be invited into this discourse lest one segment of society hijacks the possibility of a reasoned outcome.

In all the debate and diatribe surrounding health care reform, dialogue concerning bioethics has been noticeably absent. For the sake of humans, avatars, chimera and other life forms capable of being “born” in our laboratories, the time to convene this dialogue is now.

[Larry Bridgesmith is a guest blogger for the Womens Bioethics Blog; you can see more about his background here. ]

Panayiotis Zavos: I've Cloned a Human!

Whether the news stories on Panayiotis Zavos’ latest efforts to clone a human embryo are a hoax or not, there is no doubt that a tremendous amount of scientific progress has been made since the 1997 announcement that a sheep had been successfully cloned; cloned primates and pets and the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells and human-nonhuman chimeras are just a few of the scientific discoveries that get us closer everyday to the prospect of a cloned human being. The ability to radically alter human reproduction raises fundamental questions regarding the nature of our humanity and the character of our society.

Thousands of scientists, scholars, journalists, religious leaders, and policy makers have debated and discussed the ethical implications of a wide range of reproductive technologies, citing ethical concerns from safety, kinship disruption, and the commoditization of reproduction to concern for genetic diversity and the threat of eugenic application. While the benefits of many reproductive technologies – genetic testing, therapeutic cloning, genetic germline modification, and chimeric modeling, to name a few – are still being debated, reproductive cloning is nearly universally opposed. Most believe it currently poses unacceptable safety risks.

The opposition to reproductive cloning has led to a growing effort to ban the practice at a state, national, and international level. All this activity led us to consider the question: Is there a consistent theme in the ethical language used to justify banning reproductive cloning? Does the language reflect the moral values and common goals of the world community or does it unwittingly set the stage to undermine procreative liberty and scientific progress by appealing to vague ethical principles that serve a broader political agenda?

Before we support a worldwide ban on cloning, we need to carefully examine the ethical language used and be sure it reflects the common good. We must watch carefully as human dignity is employed to ban human reproductive cloning, for it can set the stage for banning other reproductive technologies such as IVF, genetic testing and genetic modification as well as therapeutic cloning.

You can read our full analysis here.

This Looks Familiar...

Perhaps, sometimes, at the long end of a night spent counting sheep in a futile effort to get to sleep, your mind wanders from sheep to Dolly to cloning, and you find yourself wondering whatever happened to the people behind Genetic Savings and Clone. Well, thanks to an end of 2008 article by the New York Times, you'll no longer have that distraction as you count your Dolly's. It seems that Lou Hawthorne, the man behind the Missyplicity project as well as Genetics Savings and Clone, is back again with a new company. This one is named BioArts, and it started off with five public auctions for dog cloning services. And if I'm reading the NYTimes article correctly, while the company is located in the California Bay Area, actual cloning services are being provided by Hwang Woo Suk's South Korean laboratory, also answering the "what is he up to now" question regarding the disgraced doctor, who appears to be the chief geneticist for Hawthorne's latest venture.

The article itself is full of the usual over-the-top promise of cloning-as-identical-pet/personality, but also has interesting comments from Hawthorne's mother, who doesn't think the clones are anything like her beloved original, Missy. Unfortunately, the final quote of the article, from Ed Otto (who paid $155,000 to have his dog Lancelot cloned) likely still accurately expresses the average person's perceptions of what cloning means: “Cloning means you could have the opportunity to have the same dog with you for your entire life."

It would seem that the "that's not quite what cloning is" side needs to step up their educational efforts. Perhaps someone should make a shiny website?
-Kelly Hills

A Little Bit Closer to Jurassic Park

I fully admit that I am typically the first skeptic in line when people make proclamations like "oh, we're getting close to Jurassic Park!" After all, as fantastical as the book (and movie) was, it was fantasy, and it got as much, if not more wrong, than right. So needless to say, it was with a bit of chagrin that my first reaction to reading that scientists believe that they can regenerate a woolly mammoth for around USD $10 million was, indeed, along the lines of "oh wow Jurassic Park!" In fact, my thought process, in pretty rapid succession, went something like this:

1. Ooooooh neat!


2. $10 million isn't really that much...


3. Huh, yeah, it'd definitely raise ethical issues to do this to a Neanderthal, but why wouldn't it be ethically questionable for a mammoth?


4. $10 million isn't that much at all, especially when you consider the kind of money the top philanthropists throw at science projects.


5. Oh man, it's gonna be Jurassic Park, isn't it? Some rich philanthropist is going to go buy an island and...

Right. I do acknowledge not only being a geek, but being rather medicated to the gills on cold medicine right now, too. At least, that's gonna be my excuse!

With less levity and more seriousness, this is an interesting break, both in where the found and how they sequenced the DNA, but also for the very idea of replicating extinct species. What does it mean to be extinct, then? Does this alleviate our environmental concerns? "Oops, just wiped out the last Bengal tiger, let's go grow a new couple!" How close of a genetic match do you need to make before the animal being born now is the same animal that was last born hundreds, if not thousands, of years before?

And more in my own areas of interest: do we really have the right to bring something back from the dead? Can we assume that it died for a reason, and we might really be mucking with things to undo that? If we regenerated a mammoth today, would it have the right foods to eat? How would its immune system handle common viruses? Would the climate be right? Where would it live? Are they herd animals, or can they be solitary?

The temptation to play God is always great, especially when science allows us to do - and undo - so much. But I wonder if, this time, it might take going too far to see just where that line is.
-Kelly Hills

As a total aside, I nominate naming the first one Snuffleupagus.

Got $100k? Enter to Win a Canine Clone

Do I hear $100,000?

$150,000?

$200,000?

For the right price, a California biotech startup will clone dogs for five lucky bidders in the world’s first commercial dog cloning program. BioArts International opens a series of online auctions June 18, when people around the world can bid to have their four-legged friends “duplicated.” Bidding starts at $100,000.

BioArts chief executive Lou Hawthorne, who recently succeeded in a decade-long quest to clone his family dog, spearheads the program. Hawthorne (pictured with his cloned dogs) partners with Hwang Woo-suk, a South Korean scientist who led the effort to produce the world’s first canine clone in 2005. Hwang is also known for a series of embezzlement and bioethics law violations linked to fake stem cell research.

News of the BioArts auction is sure to spark debate among dog owners for both its controversy and opportunity. One one hand, the Humane Society argues that commercial pet cloning has no social value and may lead to increased animal suffering. On the other, Hawthorne views biotechnology as path to happiness for pet owners.

But can the scientists at BioArts duplicate an animal’s personality? When I was young, my family’s dog passed away after a long battle with cancer. I was devastated; I had grown up with Sam around, and his unique personality was a big part of our family. Even if cloning were possible at the time, I doubt the process could have replicated Sam the way we knew him.

The debate over pet cloning also raises the issue of homeless animals. The Humane Society makes a strong case for animal adoption over animal replication. Wouldn’t pet owners be doing society (and the animals involved) a favor to adopt animals from shelters rather than pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into an attempt at producing a genetic duplicate?

Will Hawthorne and his team at BioArts oversee an international bidding war of dramatic proportions in June? Or will the price of cloning prove to be too high for an untested market? Whether pet owners have $100k to spare or not, the auction will surely get people thinking—and arguing—about the ethics of pet cloning.

More on BioBanking

According to BBC news, the UK may allow researchers to clone cells from human tissues donated for research purposes ... without the express consent of the donor.

Supporters assert that being able to clone cells from diseased tissue (eg, from tumor or other pathology samples) would allow researchers to learn more about those conditions -- and could speed the translation of basic-science research into clinically beneficial knowledge and treatments.

Opponents comment that sidestepping informed consent -- particularly for cloning, which creates copies of the donor's cells -- is a plain violation of research participants' rights to decide whether to participate in such studies. And, given the range of public opinion regarding cloning, it is conceivable that some research participants would oppose the use of their donations for this purpose.

This is another version of the question I've blogged about with regard to biobanking: just what should be the scope of allowed activities under a "blanket" or "one-time" consent? Also, should the research imperative (and perhaps the common good) outweigh individuals' preferences ion such cases?

Questions for Our Leaders

Yesterday, we wrote about our call for a presidential debate on science policy. When pulling together potential questions for the debate, I came across a compelling series titled “American Values and the Next President” in the Los Angeles Times (December 12, 2007, Part A; Pg. 30.) It touches on a few of the incredibly important issues our political leaders need to be prepared to address:

An excerpt from the "Life" essay:
…Last month's news that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin had modified adult skin cells to behave as embryonic stem cells seemed at first to have resolved this issue, but that's only true if you believe that the debate over stem cells, cloning and genetic modification is a subset of the debate over abortion.

It is not. It is, or could become, the central life debate of our time, and depending on your perspective, the questions it raises are either exhilarating or horrifying. If you could ensure that your children would never get melanoma, should you do that? How about nearsightedness? Should we be modifying humans in hopes of making them more fit for survival in a warming climate? How about for handling complicated technology, or space exploration?

If these ideas seem excessively science-fictional, consider that when Leon Kass, the conservative University of Chicago professor who would later serve as head of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, wrote a 1972 screed against the then-novel science of in vitro fertilization, he warned that it could someday make mothers of "single women, widows or lesbians." Yesterday's absurdity is today the mainstay of many lives.

Given the expected level of discourse in a presidential campaign, we may be lucky that the candidates are not keen to explore the frontiers of life. Still, it's a missed opportunity...

I would expand the life debate beyond reproductive technologies. Advances in nanotechnology, neuroscience, and robotics, to name a few, will also play an important part in defining "what is life."

My wish for the New Year is that we get beyond paralyzing partisanship, over the top religious rhetoric and the trivializing sideshow antics of the last year and focus the debate on how we can work together to achieve social justice, equity, human dignity and cultivate a critical optimism towards science in order to shape a better future for all.

On Cloning Monkeys: Quote of the Day

From the Onion this morning: " "I'd better hold my praise until some opinionated monk calls himself a bioethicist and weighs in." For more opinions on cloning monkeys, click here.

Story of the Week: Primate Cloning

A few years ago, a Korean scientist defrauded the world and scientific community by claiming to have cloned human embryos -- but this week, researchers in Oregon say that they have cloned the embryos of macaque monkeys to derive embryonic stem cells. Listen to the NPR story here and then take a look at what our colleague Art Caplan had to say about it on MSNBC:

"For quite some time many important and influential people have been freaking out over the prospect of cloning a human being. When Dolly the cloned sheep’s existence was revealed to the world 10 years ago, panic ensued. World leaders — including the president, the pope and numerous prime ministers — condemned Dolly’s creation as a regrettable and dangerous step toward cloning a human being. " Read the rest of the commentary here.