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Congressmen Introduce Bill to End Gene Patents
Posted by Osagie K. Obasogie on February 28th, 2007
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Patenting genes has become a burgeoning biotech business model, with over the 20% of the human genome already in privately owned hands. Thankfully, Congress is starting to look into this matter. Representatives Xavier Becerra (CA-31) and Dave Weldon, (FL-15) recently introduced a bill in the United States House of Representatives aiming to end patents on human genes. Congress would be wise to debate this matter seriously and move swiftly before this human genome gold rush by biomedical 49ers privatizes more of our common humanity. Click here for a thoughtful essay by Lori Andrews on rethinking this area of patent policy.
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| CIRM grant process reveals deep flaws
Posted by Jesse Reynolds on February 22nd, 2007
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Last week, the California stem cell research program awarded its first research grants. Although the media coverage was universally laudatory, this milestone was not without significant shortcomings.
First, this round of grants represents the first public funding of cloning-based stem cell research in the US. (Two such grants were funded, at Stanford and Burham.) Yet the program's research standards remain inadequate. Oversight of the research will be left in the hands of institutionally-formed, institutionally-affiliated boards that are dominated by researchers themselves.
Second, the grant review process remains deeply flawed. The members of the grant review panel are still not required to publicly disclose their personal financial interests, leaving the door open for conflicts of interest. (The agency, however, did take the step of indicating which members of the review panel were recused from which application review.) This panel is supposedly advisory, because the program's governing board, the ICOC, is required to give final approval of the grants. But in fact, the ICOC voted on many of them in blocks and did little more than demarcate a funding line in the ordered rankings of the "advisory" review board. This makes the grant review panel a de facto decision-making body, which by California law must disclose personal financial interests.
What's more, the program is not releasing the names or institutions of the applications that were denied funding. By only knowing part of the story - the funded part - it's impossible to see any biases.
Finally, during the most high-profile meeting of the ICOC since the inception of the stem cell research program, the board struggled to maintain a quorum. It was not met at all on the first day of the two-day meeting, during which grants were approved by "provisional votes." These were confirmed en masse the next day, when there was barely a quorum. This is embarrassing. The ICOC needs to adopt attendance standards.
Although the stem cell research program may have made significant progress since its clumsy and arrogant inception, this is still no way to manage a $300 million per year agency.
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| Cloning human beings? The “inevitability” power play
Posted by Marcy Darnovsky on February 22nd, 2007
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It's one thing to hear about the "inevitability" of human reproductive cloning - or of any technological application, for that matter - from kooks like Rael, the top-knotted cult leader whose posturing about creating human clones won him media headlines and Congressional appearances in 2003. But from the editors of Nature?
An editorial published in that journal today opened with a declaration that "human reproductive cloning seems inevitable" and closed by asserting that it is "an eventual certainty." In between are several tangential paragraphs, and a cursory dismissal of the social consequences and ethical considerations that lead most commentators - and more than 90% of Americans in survey after survey - to support laws against cloning human beings.
This is deeply disturbing and more than a little disappointing. Where is the thoughtful engagement with social issues and the responsible scientific leadership that this preeminent scientific journal should be demonstrating?
The assertion of technological inevitability is a discursive power play. It attempts to stifle deliberation, instill passivity, and make dissent appear futile. Fortunately, in the face of near-unanimous opposition to human reproductive cloning, it is unlikely to succeed.
Read the editorial.
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| CGS’ Hayes on ‘Our Biopolitical Future’
Posted by Osagie K. Obasogie on February 15th, 2007
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Check out the latest edition of WorldWatch, where CGS Executive Director Richard Hayes maps out four different scenarios for the biopolitical future between 2007-2021. The scenarios are:
* Libertarian Transhumanism Triumphs
* One Family, One Future
* A Techno-Eugenic Arms Race
* For the Common Good
Here's how one scenario begins:
"The opening years of the 21st century were marked by controversy over cloning, stem cells, and human genetic modification. Opinion surveys showed strong support for the development of genetic technology for medical purposes, but controversies involving blackmail attempts using stolen sperm donor records, the deaths of clonal primates at a lab in Oregon, and shady financial practices by leading bioethicists began to raise doubts. Although the new genetic technologies attracted many sincere, socially responsible researchers, by 2009 the field was increasingly dominated by dismissively arrogant scientists, unscrupulous fertility clinic operators, traffickers in clonal embryos, and out-and-out racist eugenicists."
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