"Victimless" leather, and yet, there's still regret
Here's something you don't see every day -- or, you know, ever: a living coat made out of mouse stem cells. Yep, really.
The coat was part an exhibition at MoMA called Design and the Elastic Mind. Here's how the piece is described on MoMA's site:
A small-scale prototype of a “leather” jacket grown in vitro, Victimless Leather is a living layer supported by a biodegradable polymer matrix shaped like a miniature coat, offering the possibility of wearing leather without directly killing an animal. Catts and Zurr believe that “biotechnological research occurs within a particular social and political system, which will inevitably focus on manipulating nature for profit and economic gain.” They argue that if the things we surround ourselves with every day can be both manufactured and living, growing entities, “we will begin to take a more responsible attitude toward our environment and curb our destructive consumerism.”
But wait,it gets stranger -- and more interesting. Recently, the coat had to be killed -- or turned off or... something -- because its growth was out of control. And an arm fell off. From a story in NYT:
Though she has said “I felt cruel when I turned it off,” Ms. Antonelli [the exhibit's senior curator] said in the more recent interview that it was, essentially, a simple decision tinged with a bit of regret. “It was the only piece in the show that was alive,” she said. “It really was an amazing piece.”
Oron Catts, director of SymbioticA [the creator], said in an e-mail interview that he “particularly liked what happened at the MoMA,” with its slightly Frankensteinian sensibility of “life growing out of control.” The need to shut the exhibit fit in with the group’s overarching goal “to present the end of our projects in ways that remind people that these works are/were alive and that we have a responsibility towards the living systems that we engage in manipulating,” he wrote. Besides, he added, “the piece was able to regain some of its irony that was lost” when it was put in the context of what he characterized as an “optimistic design show.”
(via)
-Greg Dahlmann
photo: Ionat Zurr
Neural Buddhism?
David Brooks has been reading up on neuroscience:
The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.
And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.
Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.
Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.
Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.
This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.
...
In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.
Earlier on blog.bioethics.net:
+ David Brooks is ready for his outboard brain
-Greg Dahlmann
The 5 most popular Bioethics News stories from the week of May 5
Here are the most popular Bioethics News items from last week based on average clicks per day:
1. Rapid organ recovery
(USA Today) New York City has a plan to equip ambulance crews to prep bodies for organ harvest -- before receiving consent from families. No organs would actually be removed without consent.
(This story ran away with the number one ranking last week. The #2 story wasn't even close in popularity.)
2. Major city hospitals lack surge capacity
(USA Today) A House committee investigation reports that trauma centers in seven studied cities don't have the capacity to handle the influx of patients from a terrorist attack. The chair of the committee called the report "truly alarming."
3. Health care costs starting to squeeze the insured
(NYT) With incomes stagnating and costs rising, more people are having trouble paying premiums and co-pays.
4. California awards $271 million for stem cell research
(NYT) It's the biggest disbursement to date of money from the state's $3 billion stem cell research fund. The money will go toward building 12 research centers around the state.
5. When does adulthood start?
(Washington Post) Neuroscience, including brain imaging, is becoming part of the legal discussion about whether young adults who commit crimes should be subject to laws for full adults.
The top five stories from two weeks ago.
Blood Matters
In NYT this weekend, Jennifer Senior reviewed Masha Gessen's Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene this weekend:
... While it was Gessen’s misfortune to have inherited her mother’s cruel mutation [BRCA1], it was her good luck — and ours — that she also inherited her mother’s storytelling grace and critical dexterity (Yolka Gessen was a writer and a translator). “Blood Matters” is valuable reading to almost anyone facing a huge health decision, not only for the literary commiseration it offers, but also for the inspired example of medical sleuthing on one’s own behalf that it provides. Gessen keeps an inflammatory topic at room temperature, writing elegantly and without self-pity. The book is very funny in places. (My favorite sentence, for reasons I can’t quite describe: “DNA-testing equipment tends to fall into two categories: things that look like printers and things that look like toasters.”) It’s also very lucid, even when the science gets complex. It’s a liberating book. Strange as it sounds, it would make a great Mother’s Day present.
Given the relative odds, one would think Gessen’s genetic counselors would have advised a pre-emptive mastectomy rather than an oophorectomy, or removal of the ovaries. To her surprise, they recommended an oophorectomy. One can understand their logic: breast cancer is easier to detect and survive; removing the ovaries reduces the risk of breast cancer; and most women can’t even countenance the idea of parting with their breasts. But Gessen balked, well aware of the studies associating surgical menopause with cognitive troubles and depression, to say nothing of osteoporosis, high blood pressure and heart disease. “I politely suggested I could just shoot myself tomorrow: That would prevent my death from cancer with a 100 percent probability,” she writes. “The joke remained suspended in the thin air between us and the counselors, and with it, our disengagement from one another was complete.”
And that question I had last week about what you call the state of potential disease? According to Gessen's book, the word used in the community of women with BRCA1 is "previvor." Gessen herself calls it being in the "cancer caste."
-Greg Dahlmann
UPDATE: Be sure to check out Larry McCullough's comment about terms such as "previvor."
Art Caplan on med schools and industry freebies
Over at MSNBC, Art writes that a recent recommendation for medical schools to ban free stuff from industry is on target:
The American Association of Medical Colleges recently released a long-awaited report recommending that pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers knock off their efforts to bribe medical students and faculty. The Association said in no uncertain terms: No more freebies. That means no more doling out free lunches, tickets, trips, pens, binders, flashdrives, bookbags, free samples and other trinkets in classrooms, offices, exam rooms and reception areas of medical schools.
What led the leaders of the schools that train American doctors to pull the plug on the free flow of chachkes, baubles and doughnuts to medical students and their teachers? The report says that the steady marketing of drugs using freebies raises questions about the “objectivity and integrity of academic teaching, learning and practice.” In other words, if you let young, well-coifed drug company representatives run around your school in short skirts or snazzy suits doling out gifts, it conveys a very bad image — that a school is an appropriate place to do marketing.
Worse still, making your medical school a drug company free-fire zone conveys the impression that the faculty believe there is a lot to learn from slanted drug company sales pitches. And worst of all, when the welcome mat is out for drug reps bearing small gifts, this says that the faculty believe the best way to educate the next generation of doctors about drug safety and efficacy is to make sure students remember a drug’s name by having it thrown in their faces 10 times a day on every pen, notepad, vase, clock, key ring, calculator and coffee mug that a pharmaceutical company’s marketing department can have their legions of salespeople lug into the hospital.
I think a ban makes good ethical sense. I am proud to say that my medical school and its teaching hospitals were the first in the country to boot the drug reps and freebie peddlers off campus.
But the policy of banning marketing in medical schools has drawn some predictable criticism.
10 Reasons to Sequence the Platypus Genome
By Ricki Lewis
Move over Craig Venter and James Watson, the latest celebrity to have her genome sequenced is Glennie, a member of Ornithorhynchus anatinus. She hails from New South Wales, Australia.
When the planners of the human genome project set aside funds for sequencing the genomes of others, I was glad that the enigmatic platypus made the list. Occupying a key branchpoint on the evolutionary tree, the platypus is a hodgepodge of parts borrowed from birds and reptiles, and echoed in the vastly more numerous placental mammals. The curious web-footed and furry, egg-laying and lactating beasts diverged from the most recent shared ancestor of all mammals about 166 million years ago, heading in a different direction from its pouched and placental brethren. The reports on the platypus genome are published in Nature and Genome Research.
Why sequence the platypus genome? Let me count the ways.
Are you diseased? Pre-diseased? Potentially diseased?
Today's Science Times included an interesting story about work toward classifying diseases by their genetic underpinnings. There are bunch of interesting angles to this idea, but one in particular stood out for me: as we gain greater insight into the nature of disease, our concept of what it means to be "sick" changes. From Andrew Pollack's piece:
The shift from symptoms to anatomical measurements had big implications for patients, said Dr. Duffin, who is also a hematologist.
“Up until the 18th century, you had to feel sick to be sick,” she said. But now people can be considered sick based on measurements like high blood pressure without feeling ill at all.
Indeed, Dr. Duffin said, people who feel sick nowadays “don’t get to have a disease unless the doctor can find something” and instead might be told that it’s all in their head. Doctors argue, for instance, about whether fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, which have no obvious anatomical causes, are really diseases.
Genes might allow the study of diseases at a finer level than even physiological tests. Genes are the instructions for the production of proteins, which interact in complex ways to carry out functions in the body. Disruptions in these molecular pathways can cause disease.
“It gives you a direct connection to what the root causes are,” said Dr. David Altshuler, a professor of medicine and genetics at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, and a researcher at the Broad Institute. “That is different from listening to a stethoscope.”
The 5 (OK, 6) most popular Bioethics News stories from the week of April 28
Here are the most popular Bioethics News items from last week based on average clicks per day:
1. House passes GINA
(NYT) The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act passed on a 414-1 vote. President Bush has said he would sign the bill.
2. Praying parents charged
(AP) The parents of a Wisconsin child who prayed while the child died from diabetic complications have been charged with reckless homicide. The parents regarded their daughter's condition as "a test of faith" and a "spiritual attack."
3. Med college group: no more industry gifts
(NYT) The Association of American Medical Colleges has proposed banning free food, gifts, travel and ghost-writing from drug and device makers.
4. More details on McCain's health plan
(NYT) The presidential candidate's plan would try to shift the basis of coverage from employers to individuals. McCain has also called for the federal government to assure that coverage will be available for people who have been turned down.
5. Marrying for health care (tie)
(LA Times) A survey sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that seven percent of Americans said they or someone in their household got married for healthcare benefits last year.
5. iPS cells used to create heart cells in mice (tie)
(Reuters) Researchers from UCLA report in the journal Stem Cell Express that they got mouse iPS cells to differentiate into two types of heart cells as well as hematopoietic cells.
The top five stories from two weeks ago.
Surrogacy without drama
When surrogacy comes up in the media, it's usually within the context of a story about celebrities, outsourced wombs, court cases or comedy. But this past weekend, the Washington Post had the story of a surrogacy gone absolutely, positively... normal. From Brigid Schulte's piece:
Fourteen years ago, Kovacic, a married, middle-class mother of three, signed a $15,000 contract with Carol Van Cleef and Doug Thompson, now of McLean, to carry the embryo that their sperm and egg had created in a petri dish. On her 35th birthday, Kovacic gave birth to Jamie. The two families, without a second thought or a hint of awkwardness, have celebrated together every year since.
In technical terms, Kovacic was a "gestational carrier" for Carol and Doug, the "intended parents." Kovacic, 49, short and easygoing with an impish sense of humor, and Van Cleef, 52, a tall, willowy, self-described type-A partner in a major law firm, couldn't be more different. But theirs is an intimate bond of flesh and bone, forged in science and the ancient yearning for a child that society has yet to find the words to describe, much less understand.
Kovacic, who lives in Herndon, brought two of her own daughters to the birthday dinner. The girls gushed about movies and bands and teased Jamie's 17-year-old brother, Peter. Jamie, sitting between Kovacic and Van Cleef, mentioned that she would be singing soprano in her upcoming chorus concert.
Kovacic looked at Van Cleef and raised an eyebrow. "I know she didn't get that from either one of us, did she?"
Kovacic has been Jamie's "special friend" at preschool. She has attended her graduations, school performances and confirmation. She babysat for her as a child. But the one thing she clearly isn't is Jamie's mother.
One interesting fact from this piece: surrogate births account for less than one percent of all births from reproductive technologies.
-Greg Dahlmann
Toward test tube meat
PETA recently announced it would award $1 million to the first person who develops commercially viable in vitro chicken meat during the next four years. They've set the bar pretty high -- the meat has to have "a taste and texture indistinguishable from real chicken flesh to non-meat-eaters and meat-eaters alike."
So, what's the likelihood of that happening? In the near future, not too good, according to Time:
In theory, this seems like an excellent idea, with the potential to ease the burden on the environment from meat production, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve human health. In practice, however, the chances of anyone actually winning the prize seem slim. "No one has yet produced [in vitro meat]. No one has succeeded in coming close," says Dr. Stig Omholt, director of Norway's Centre for Integrative Genetics and chair of the In Vitro Meat Consortium, which held its first symposium this month. Still, Omholt says, "it seems possible to develop this technology."
If such a product is created, it would raise some interesting questions.