Blogs in India were abuzz last week after the Times of India ran an ad – and then a news story about the ad – from a couple in Chennai who are willing to pay 20,000 Rupees (about US $388) for "IITian sperm."

An "IITian" is a student at the Indian Institutes of Technology, established by the government to train scientists and engineers. The typical payment to sperm “donors” in India, according to a 2010 article in the same newspaper, is “Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000” per sample.

The designer-sperm ad described the ideal gamete provider as "an IIT student, healthy, no bad habits, tall and fair, if possible." (In India as in a depressingly large number of other places, “fair” fetches an extra premium.)

According to the Times of India report, many IIT students were “shocked” by the ad, describing it as “insane,” “ridiculous,” and “weird.” Another news story quoted a student who called it “absolute rubbish.” And the online magazine Drishtikone responded with an account of policies and debates about “designer babies” (including a mention of the Center for Genetics and Society). The Drishtikone article concluded:

If you can order your “Just in Time” and “Customized” baby – like some order their cars now – then do you think people will stop at anything?

This could lead to a new type of apartheid and caste system, where the rich will create a community of tall, fair, blue eyed, blonde haired, and above-normal intelligent “special class.” Those without money will be a large outcaste society of the exact opposite.

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

• "Racial alchemy" - for real?
• The recession, sperm banks, and eugenics
• "What color is the baby?" Green?
  

Following last year’s Federal Court of Appeals ruling, the ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation filed a petition to take their case against Myriad Genetics all the way to the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs are challenging Myriad’s patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which are associated with elevated risk of breast and ovarian cancers. In effect, they are challenging the right to call the human genome “intellectual property.”

In support of the plaintiffs, UCLA Professor Debra Greenfield recently filed an amicus brief on behalf of several women’s health and social justice organizations (including the Center for Genetics and Society) with the primary concern that:

[R]esearch and access to quality genetic testing is restricted by these patents, thereby harming the health of women and their families, particularly those most in need of the benefits of genetic technologies. (pdf)

Myriad currently charges $3,000 for testing for variants of the BRCA genes, asserting that their monopoly and the high price do not prevent women from accessing the test.

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s closing deadline for filing amicus briefs, Myriad Genetics put out a press release to announce an audacious move: It has acquired yet another patent for a gene tied to breast and ovarian cancer risk, this one known as RAD51C. Is this bold move a sign of the impending corporatization of all of our genes? Or may Myriad have over-reached? Greenfield suggests:

The idea that Myriad is expanding upon its acquisition of knowledge relating to breast/ovarian cancer is alarming. On the other hand, it helps the public become aware of the fact that not only does Myriad exclusively control the BRCA 1 and 2 genes, but also is patenting and gaining exclusive use of other genes related to breast and ovarian cancer.

I think this will actually help our case.

• Myriad’s Molecular Monopoly to Face the Nine
• Breast Cancer Gene Case Has Another Day in Court
• Reactions to US Government "Bombshell" against Gene Patents
  

In mid-September last year at  the fourth annual European Scientific Working group on Influenza meeting in Malta, Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, gave a presentation on some experiments his lab had performed with the H5N1 virus, better known as the avian flu virus. Fouchier’s team, supported in part by U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), had been running experiments with ferrets, which, like humans, can also fall prey to bird flu.

The Dutch team’s aim was to create a more powerful and easily transmitted version of the avian flu, a goal that on the face of it seems disquieting and unnecessary: H5N1 as it occurs naturally already is highly potent when it passes from birds to humans.  According to a FAQ on Nature’s Avian Flu website, of 169 people who contracted the disease in the outbreak that roiled Asia from January 2004 to March 2007, 168 died.   Estimates of average mortality vary, but it’s generally thought that avian flu proves fatal to 50-60% of those who catch it.  By contrast, in modern times the plague kills only 5-15% of those it infects, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

It’s no wonder, then, that when H5N1 has moved out of bird populations into human ones, the WHO has issued pandemic warnings that have, in turn, spawned near hysteria among the mainstream media and public. One estimate of the economic impact of the 2004-2006 outbreak of the disease put the cost of dealing with it at $10 billion. 

It was perhaps due to harrowing memories of that multi-year effort to control H5N1 that as word of Fouchier’s work spread beyond the realm of elite virus researchers, concerns that this was not just your run-of-the-mill biological experiment began to rise. 

Read more…

Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) has released the first positive, peer-reviewed [pdf] report about a treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells. The news was called a "miracle" and a "ray of light" by a few, normally sober, newspapers. And, by an amazing coincidence, ACT simultaneously started their previously announced, closely related, UK trial. The company's stock gained 23% (albeit only to 18¢), which would be more impressive had it not lost 61% last year.

The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post had more tempered responses. And the New York Times noted that ACT "has been criticized in the past for overstating results, in part because it has been desperate to raise money to stay in business." Moreover, "it is hard to judge much from only two patients, especially when there was no control group."

Both patients are happy — one says she can now thread a needle, and the other can navigate a mall. These improvements are modest, and it's possible that only one is significant, that of the patient who improved from virtually complete lack of sight to 20/800 vision in her treated eye. (She may still be legally blind; the definition is 20/200 or worse, even with corrective lenses.) The other patient improved from 20/500 to 20/320, but may be demonstrating a placebo effect, since her untreated eye also improved.

This could be a pointer to the start of a potentially promising therapy, but it's a shame to have it over-hyped. Will ACT end up crying wolf once too often?

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

• Geron Quits the Embryonic Stem Cell Industry
• One of the Leading Scientists in the World?
• "A conspiracy of hype"
• Birds of a Feather