News of Note this past week

~ Gender disparities persist in treatment of stroke. Guess which direction this one cuts.

~ TANSTAAFL: Pfizer to disclose payments to doctors, researchers starting in 2010. All right, let’s hear it!

~ Second Stryker sales rep pleads guilty to misbranding a medical device. A

felony.

~ Ovaries can be safely saved in some endometrial cancers.

~ 9 flawed genes found in risk of heart attack. Ah, the plot thickens!

~ Are you what you eat?: Mediterranean diet could cut risk of dementia. Quick! Get me some fish and olive oil.

~ Bone drugs may help fight breast cancer. Nice added benefit.

~ Damaged spinal cords in mice improved by transplants of neural stem cells produced with human induced pluripotent stem cells. We can rebuild them .

~ Are fears over bioterrorism stifling scientific research?

~ Naturally occurring brain protein may slow or stop the progress of

Alzheimer’s.

~ Gene therapy offers hope of cure for HIV: bone marrow transplant breakthrough.

~ GM goats raised to produce human breast milk. Just had to include this

story, in light of the one right below!

~ FDA approves drug made in milk of genetically altered goats. This is the first time such a drug has been approved. They also looked back at 7 generations of the goats to look for adverse effects on the animals.

~ Epilepsy group asking lawmakers to prohibit pharmacies from switching prescribed meds to generics amid reports of increased seizure incidence with generics over brand name epilepsy meds. Hmmm . . .thought generics were supposed to be bioequivalent. Seems that is not always the case!

~ Wacky names for newly discovered fruit fly genes. Examples? “Cheap Date,” “I’m not Dead Yet” (otherwise known as INDY). Who said scientists have no sense of humor?

[Thank you to Lisa von Biela, JD candidate, 2009, UMN, Editor of the BioBlurb, from which this content is partially taken and edited. BioBlurb is a weekly electronic publication of the American Bar Association's Committee on Biotechnology, Section of Science & Technology Law. Archived issues of the BioBlurb, as well as further information about the Committee on Biotechnology, are available here.]

BioBeer -- It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This...

Along the lines of 'Better Living Through Genetic Manipulation', scientists at Rice University have created a beer that could enhance your chances at longevity:

"BioBeer, as it's called, has three genes spliced into special brewer's yeast that produce resveratrol, the chemical in red wine that is thought to protect against diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's and other age-related conditions."

Full article accessible here in Discovery news.

I wanna know, though, how does it taste? Would you drink this?

British GMO Protests Highlight Global Divide

Our weekly guest post by Jonathan Javitt, author of Capitol Reflections:

In July, Malawi became the second African country to approve biotech crops, and as food prices continue to rise, this is a trend that will doubtless be continuing. More countries are turning to genetically modified crops for agricultural assistance.

In Britain, opposition to these types of crops is quite prevalent - nearly all of the 54 U.K. pesticide-resistant crop trials attempted in the past eight years have been attacked, according to media reports. Protesters are destroying the experimental crops to prevent biotechnology companies from spreading genetically modified organisms (GMOs) more widely in Europe and the developing world.

Thanks to this bio-vandalism, research of GMOs has been forced to come to a near-halt. European Union legislation requires research groups and facilities to let the public know the location of the trials, making it easier for opponents to locate the research sites.

GMO protests go beyond the US and the UK - 200 South Koreans protested GM crops in May, and 300 Brazilian activists attacked a farm owned by global agribusiness company Monsanto, a developer of biotechnology products, in March.

But are people getting as carried away as it might sound? One analyst believes extreme protests are overemphasized by the media, in part due to efforts by the biotech industry to discredit the opposition.

In my novel, Capitol Reflections, I note that many people are concerned that new GM techniques are developing so rapidly that there isn't an extensive enough screening process to weed out potential hazards before products hit the market. They're concerned that long-term assessments of environmental and health effects are lagging behind discoveries. This could mean – as is the case with genetically modified coffee in the book – that products are introduced to the market that appear to be beneficial, but can end up having unforeseen detrimental effects.

New Gene Research Exciting...and Risky

While news of the research has yet to be published, British scientists announced the creation of human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man. The scientists say the goal of the research is to one day obtain the ability to produce embryos free of genetic disease.

Presented at a recent scientific conference, and funded by the British Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, the researchers employed a process that basically took normal embryos with defective mitochondria in the woman's egg, and replacing it with an egg donated from a second woman with healthy mitochondria. Errors in the mitochondria's genetic code is what results in diseases such as muscular dystrophy, strokes and epilepsy, for example.

Supporters of the research say the procedure offers hope for families facing the heartache of unavoidable inherited disease. Opponents fear genetically modified babies.
Read the details of the research here:

Generations Ahead

From our colleagues at the Center for Genetics and Society:

With great pleasure we announce the growth of the Gender, Justice and Human Genetics program of the Center for Genetics and Society into a new, independent organization, Generations Ahead. The myriad uses of human reproductive and genetic technologies raise important ethical questions for social justice advocates. As we articulate shared values and develop policies to inform how we use these consequential biotechnologies, it is important that we think not only of how we use them today, but also how they will impact generations ahead.

Generations Ahead will continue working for reproductive and genetic justice through outreach, capacity-building, cross-movement collaborations, and national coalition-building on assisted reproductive and genetic technologies. Sujatha Jesudason will continue to lead this work in her new role as the Executive Director of Generations Ahead.

Congratulations to Sujatha and her new team from the Women's Bioethics Project. You can read more about the efforts of Generations Ahead here.

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.