[tt] James Watson Hate Package

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James Watson Hate Package
The bio-cons are out in full force. Some good stuff here, too.

Center for Genetics and Society : Watson as wake-up call: When genetics 
endorses a new eugenics
http://biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=3724&&printsafe=1
7.10.22
[Most of the referenced articles are attached. Note their dates.]

Watson as wake-up call: When genetics endorses a new eugenics
Posted by Marcy Darnovsky

The world now knows about [3]the blatant racism of the twentieth
century's most famous geneticist. Those tracking the story have
also learned of James Watson's other assorted bigotries - his
denigration of [4]"ugly girls," "stupid" children, and [5]"fat
people"; his endorsement of [6]paying rich people to have more
children and [7]aborting affected fetuses when tests for a "gay
gene" are developed.

But that's not all. Though neither media nor blogosphere have noted
it so far, Watson - and a small but disturbing number of other
prominent figures - have over the past decade been actively
promoting a renewed program of eugenics, this time using
twenty-first century reproductive and genetic technologies.

The new eugenics crowd is hardly coy. Various among them have
explicitly endorsed [8]"seizing control of our [human] evolutionary
future" and [9]"engineering the human germline." Back in 1998 they
held a [10]high-profile conference - covered on the front pages of
the New York Times and Washington Post - to plan how to make this
high-tech eugenics "acceptable" to the American public.

At that event, Watson called for [11]"mak[ing] better human beings"
by "add[ing] genes." A few years later, he advised that
[12]"Hitler's use of the term Master Race" should not make us "feel
the need to say that we never want to use genetics to make humans
more capable than they are today."

Those familiar with the Center for Genetics and Society are aware
of these travesties; in fact, CGS's formation in 2001 was prompted
in large part by the urgent need to counter them. Thus we've
collected a fair sample of revealing Watsonisms. We've [13]compiled
these, and ask that anyone who has others send them to us.

Here are a few other accounts of Watson's eugenics advocacy:
* [14]"Watson's World," Science, Susan Lindee, April 18, 2003
* [15]"James Watson Wants to Build a Better Human,"AlterNet.org,
Ralph Brave, May 28, 2003
* [16]"Germline Warfare,"The Nation, Ralph Brave, April 7, 2003

References

3. http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece
4. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3451
5. 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/11/13/MN111208.DTL
6. http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/ESQ0107jameswatson
7. 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1997/02/16/nabort16.html
8. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0618340831/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-8409634-1154531
9. 
http://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Human-Germline-Exploration-Altering/dp/0195133021
10. http://www.ess.ucla.edu/huge/report.html
11. http://www.ess.ucla.edu/huge/report.html#Executive%20Summary
12. http://www.amazon.com/Passion-DNA-Genes-Genomes-Society/dp/0879695811
13. http://biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=3723
14. http://geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=154
15. http://geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=245
16. http://geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=247
===========

Independent: Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent 
than Westerners
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece
7.10.27

Celebrated scientist attacked for race comments: "All our social policies
are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -
whereas all the testing says not really"

By Cahal Milmo

One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an
extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people
were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal
powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.

James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling
of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research
institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made
ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues
including the Science Museum in London.

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race
and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western
policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an
assumption that black people were as clever as their white
counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed
genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence
could be found within a decade.

The newly formed Equality and Human Rights Commission, successor to
the Commission for Racial Equality, said it was studying Dr
Watson's remarks " in full". Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that
he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because
"all our social policies are based on the fact that their
intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not
really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings
should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees
find this not true".

His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in
which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the
intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in
their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our
wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal
heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

The furore echoes the controversy created in the 1990s by The Bell
Curve, a book co-authored by the American political scientist
Charles Murray, which suggested differences in IQ were genetic and
discussed the implications of a racial divide in intelligence. The
work was heavily criticised across the world, in particular by
leading scientists who described it as a work of " scientific
racism".

Dr Watson arrives in Britain today for a speaking tour to publicise
his latest book, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in
Science. Among his first engagements is a speech to an audience at
the Science Museum organised by the Dana Centre, which held a
discussion last night on the history of scientific racism.

Critics of Dr Watson said there should be a robust response to his
views across the spheres of politics and science. Keith Vaz, the
Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "It is
sad to see a scientist of such achievement making such baseless,
unscientific and extremely offensive comments. I am sure the
scientific community will roundly reject what appear to be Dr
Watson's personal prejudices.

"These comments serve as a reminder of the attitudes which can
still exists at the highest professional levels."

The American scientist earned a place in the history of great
scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century when he worked at the
University of Cambridge in the 1950s and 1960s and formed part of
the team which discovered the structure of DNA. He shared the 1962
Nobel Prize for medicine with his British colleague Francis Crick
and New Zealand-born Maurice Wilkins.

But despite serving for 50 years as a director of the Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, considered a world leader in
research into cancer and genetics, Dr Watson has frequently courted
controversy with some of his views on politics, sexuality and race.
The respected journal Science wrote in 1990: "To many in the
scientific community, Watson has long been something of a wild man,
and his colleagues tend to hold their collective breath whenever he
veers from the script."

In 1997, he told a British newspaper that a woman should have the
right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would
be homosexual. He later insisted he was talking about a
"hypothetical" choice which could never be applied. He has also
suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, positing the
theory that black people have higher libidos, and argued in favour
of genetic screening and engineering on the basis that " stupidity"
could one day be cured. He has claimed that beauty could be
genetically manufactured, saying: "People say it would be terrible
if we made all girls pretty. I think it would great."

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said yesterday that Dr Watson
could not be contacted to comment on his remarks.

Steven Rose, a professor of biological sciences at the Open
University and a founder member of the Society for Social
Responsibility in Science, said: " This is Watson at his most
scandalous. He has said similar things about women before but I
have never heard him get into this racist terrain. If he knew the
literature in the subject he would know he was out of his depth
scientifically, quite apart from socially and politically."

Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr Watson's remarks to be looked
at in the context of racial hatred laws. A spokesman for the 1990
Trust, a black human rights group, said: "It is astonishing that a
man of such distinction should make comments that seem to
perpetuate racism in this way. It amounts to fuelling bigotry and
we would like it to be looked at for grounds of legal complaint."
==========

New Scientist: Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer - 28 
February 2003 - New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3451
2003.2.28
by Shaoni Bhattacharya

Fifty years to the day from the discovery of the structure of DNA,
one of its co-discoverers has caused a storm by suggesting that
stupidity is a genetic disease that should be cured.

On 28 February 1953 biologists James Watson and Francis Crick
discovered the structure of DNA - the chemical code for all life.
The breakthrough revealed how genetic information is passed from
one generation to the next and revolutionised biology and medicine.

But in a documentary series to be screened in the UK on Channel 4,
Watson says that low intelligence is an inherited disorder and that
molecular biologists have a duty to devise gene therapies or
screening tests to tackle stupidity.

"If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease," says
Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New
York. "The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in
elementary school, what's the cause of it? A lot of people would
like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't.
So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent."

Watson, no stranger to controversy, also suggests that genes
influencing beauty could also be engineered. "People say it would
be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be
great."

Complex traits

But other scientists have questioned both the ethics and
plausibility of his suggestions.

Nikolas Rose, a bioethics expert at the London School of Economics,
says such genetic engineering may not be possible: "These are
complex traits, with multiple genes interacting with the
environment."

"These are characteristically casual and provocative statements by
James Watson," Rose adds. "I think they should be treated just as
amusing rather than as a serious account of what behavioural
genetics or any genetics should be doing, or will be able to do."

Geneticist Steve Jones, at University College London, dismisses
Watson's comments about beauty as "daft". "The concept of beauty is
a subjective one," he told New Scientist.

No fool

But he adds: "The IQ suggestion is a little bit less silly, if you
turn the logic on its head. Watson likes to annoy - no question -
but he's no fool." Genetics could and does help people with severe
disorders like Fragile X syndrome and phenylketonuria, both of
which affect IQ, says Jones: "The problem is where do we draw the
line?"

Series producer David Dugan, of Windfall Films, said the programmes
also show Watson visiting a family who greatly value their child
with Down's syndrome, as well as their child without Down's.

"We were keen to confront Jim with this - he was genuinely moved,"
but insisted that geneticists should work to eliminate the
disorder. Dugan believes Watson's views emanate from his own
family's experiences with his son, who has a mental illness
resembling schizophrenia.

DNA begins in the UK on 8 March on Channel 4.

There is 1 comment on 1 page
A Science Observer And Student Of Civil Rights.
By James Cox
Fri Nov 02 16:59:55 GMT 2007
I would have loved to read an article on James Watson about his
contribution to science; however, he caught my attention because of
the racist comments associated with his accomplishments. His
strides in Biology, I suppose entitle him have media spot light.
How this article would of been so much more enjoyable, if it was
more about his discovery and not matter of personal opionion. I
understand Science and religion have their separate places in
society, but I do pray at some junction in the future people like
James Watson will understand his disorder a little more, and some
briliant scientist will be able to genetically correct it.
===========

James Watson: What I've Learned: James Watson
http://www.esquire.com/print-this/ESQ0107jameswatson

Never fight bigger boys or dogs.

The cost of DNA sequencing is going to change the world much faster
than I would have thought. We can resequence someone now for
$150,000. Can you reach the $1,000 genome? I'm skeptical of that.
But just $15,000 would change the world. You'd do a thousand Greeks
and a thousand Swedes and find out what's different about them.
Anytime a child has problems at school or something where you worry
something is wrong, you'll do a DNA diagnosis.

I've given my DNA to two of these companies. I've told them they
can publish everything except the structure of the gene that will
tell me if I'm predisposed to Alzheimer's. I don't want to know.

New ideas require new facts.

You explain things by way of ideas. Why do we have a government
that is run by rich trash? Because they've used their money to buy
the presidency. Bush is a tool for the people who don't want an
inheritance tax. And Frist isn't an innocent bystander, with his
own family fortune -- hundreds of millions. The piece of shit, I
hate him.

For all my life, America was the place to be. And we somehow
continue to be the place where there are real opportunities to
change the world for the better.

I'm basically a libertarian. I don't want to restrict anyone from
doing anything unless it's going to harm me. I don't want to pass a
law stopping someone from smoking. It's just too dangerous. You
lose the concept of a free society. Since we are genetically so
diverse and our brains are so different, we're going to have
different aspirations. The things that will satisfy me won't
satisfy you. On the other hand, if global warming is in any way
preventable and it's likely to come, not doing something would be
irresponsible to the future of our society.

Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark? Yes, because
some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling
is justified. If you can't be criticized, that's very dangerous.
The whole Larry Summers thing, to say that men are a bit strange
and their strangest quality is their ability to understand
mathematics -- you're not supposed to even think it.

I turned against the left wing because they don't like genetics,
because genetics implies that sometimes in life we fail because we
have bad genes. They want all failure in life to be due to the evil
system.

I've wondered why people aren't more intelligent. Why isn't
everyone as intelligent as Ashkenazi Jews? And it may be that
societies work best when there's a mixture of abilities -- the
bright people would never be an army. Or has our intelligence been
limited by leaders killing off any potential competitors? I suspect
time is not a factor. The Ashkenazi Jews have done it in a thousand
years. So these are the sorts of things we'll find out -- how many
mutations would you need to be more intelligent?

I went to a meeting on genetic enhancement in New York City, and a
few of us were for it. The rest were appalled. To me, that's just a
defensive reaction of people on the top -- they're afraid someone
else might be on the top. But what if you were really dumb?
Wouldn't it be nice to have a child who would let you get out of
the slums? If you could make people with ten-point-higher IQs, we'd
probably have fewer wars.

Francis Crick said we should pay poor people not to have children.
I think now we're in a terrible situation where we should pay the
rich people to have children. If there is any correlation between
success and genes, IQ will fall if the successful people don't have
children. These are self-obvious facts.

I've seen no evidence of a god, so I'm not going to think about
one.

Being raised nonreligious made you free. You could look at the
evidence. Whether being nonreligious or a Democrat was more
important, I can't tell you.

If I had been married earlier in life, I wouldn't have seen the
double helix. I would have been taking care of the kids on
Saturday. On the other hand, I was lonely a lot of the time.

I like writing good sentences. In the minimum amount of space, you
get the maximum amount of information. So when people ask me what I
can still do, I say I finished this essay and I wrote every word of
it and I'm seventy-eight. I haven't lost my ability to know what a
crappy sentence is.

Do things as soon as you can. If a decision needs to be made, make
it. It gives you more time to change your mind.
===========

San Francisco Chronicle: Nobel Winner's Theories Raise Uproar in Berkeley 
/ Geneticist's views strike many as racist, sexist

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2000/11/13/MN111208.DTL&type=printable
2000.11.13

Geneticist's views strike many as racist, sexist
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer

(11-13) 04:00 PDT BERKELEY -- Nobel laureate James Watson, whose
co-discovery of DNA revolutionized the field of genetics, has
provoked a scientific controversy by suggesting there are
biochemical links between skin color and sexual activity and
between thinness and ambition.

Watson advanced his thesis during a guest lecture at the University
of California at Berkeley last month, prompting several faculty
members to brand his remarks as racist, sexist and unsupported by
any scientific data.

Witnesses were flabbergasted when the 72-year-old discoverer of the
double helix suggested there was a biochemical link between
exposure to sunlight and sexual urges. ``That's why you have Latin
lovers,'' Watson said. ``You've never heard of an English lover.
Only an English patient.''

In a lecture hall jammed with more than 200 Berkeley students and
faculty members, Watson showed a slide of sad-faced model Kate Moss
to support his contention that thin people are unhappy and
therefore more ambitious.

``Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know
you're not going to hire them,'' Watson said.

Even those who chalked up Watson's remarks to his penchant for
deliberately stirring things up were concerned that hearing such
views expressed by a Nobel laureate would fuel irresponsible
speculation about how genes might influence behavior.

``Doesn't a guy like Jim Watson have the responsibility to make
this not ugly?'' asked UC Berkeley biologist Michael Botchan, a
Watson protege. ``Yes. But I cannot tell Jim Watson to change his
ways.''

Watson, who shared a Nobel Prize for his role in figuring out the
structure of DNA in 1953, and who launched the Human Genome Project
in 1990, declined to answer questions about his lecture.

However, a spokesman at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research
institute on Long Island where Watson serves as president,
confirmed the gist of his remarks and said Watson has voiced
similar sentiments at other scientific gatherings.

Berkeley biology professor Susan Marqusee walked out about a third
of the way through Watson's hourlong lecture, titled ``The Pursuit
of Happiness: Lessons from pom-C.''

CLAIMS UNSUPPORTED BY DATA

``I was kind of in shock most of the time,'' Marqusee said. ``He
took a lot of what I consider sexist and racist stereotypes and
claimed a biochemical basis without presenting any data.''

Botchan, who presided over the session, said Watson was merely
trying to call attention to a protein (pom-C) that helps create
several different hormones: One determines skin color (melanin);
another enhances a sense of well-being (beta endorphins); and the
third plays a role in fat metabolism (leptin).

Botchan said Watson was wondering out loud why evolution had linked
these hormones, and whether the interrelationship of these mood and
behavior-influencing compounds might be affected by exposure to
sunlight.

Unfortunately, said Botchan, Watson advanced his hypothesis with
``comments that were crude and sexist and potentially racist.'' But
Botchan, who did post-graduate work under Watson, said he doesn't
think the Nobel laureate is racist or sexist, merely insensitive.

``Jim says startling things,'' he said. ``He is a person who tends
to shock people.''

For instance, Botchan said, Watson once suggested Japan should be
bombed for dragging its feet on supporting the Human Genome
Project.

Berkeley genetics professor Thomas Cline said Watson's lecture
``crossed over the line'' from being provocative to being
irresponsible because the senior scientist failed to separate fact
from conjecture.

``If he wants to give a talk like this in his living room, that's
his business, but to give it in a setting where it's supposed to be
scientific is wrong,'' Cline said, adding that listening to Watson
at the podium was ``more embarrassing than having a creation
scientist up there.''

GRADUATE STUDENTS UPSET

The controversial talk was profoundly disturbing to some graduate
students in Berkeley's molecular biology department, who ultimately
brought Watson's comments into the public spotlight.

``I found it really offensive,'' said Sarah Tegen, one of several
graduate students who recounted Watson's remarks.

She said Watson happened to be in Berkeley when the department
needed a speaker for a regular scientific seminar. The lecture
hall, which seats around 200 people, filled to overflowing as word
spread that Watson, one of the founders of modern biology, would
speak.

Watson, who has a reputation as an engaging lecturer, started off
describing an experiment by scientists at the University of
Arizona, who injected male patients with an extract of melanin.
They intended to test whether they could chemically darken the
men's skin as a skin cancer protection, only to observe an unusual
side effect -- the men developed sustained and unprovoked
erections.

``He said this (melanin injection) is even better than Viagra
because you don't even have to think about sex,'' Tegen recalled.

``Then he launched into this whole thing about the sun and sexual
drive,'' added Berkeley graduate student Jill Fuss. She said Watson
showed slides of women in bikinis and contrasted them to veiled
Muslim women, to suggest that controlling exposure to sun may
suppress sexual desire and vice versa.

Watson reportedly went on to suggest that people who live in
northern climates drink more alcohol to compensate for the
unhappiness they suffer because of sunlight deprivation. Then he
delved into what he presented as the bad news, good news aspects of
being fat, the students said. The bad news, said Watson, is that
thin people are more ambitious and therefore make better workers.
On the other hand, fat people may be more sexual, Watson told the
assembly, because their bloodstreams contain higher levels of
leptin, one of the hormones derived from pom-C. He used a slide of
a Reubens painting to illustrate the assertion.

Tegen was offended by Watson's repeated references to women. ``To
be a woman in science is difficult enough as it is without one of
your own demeaning women,'' she said.

Jeffrey Friedman, a molecular geneticist at Rockefeller University
and a leading authority on leptin and obesity, had this reaction
when presented with a distilled version of Watson's remarks:
``People can speculate about anything they want,'' he said. ``But I
know of no data linking differences in weight to any particular set
of personality differences.''

OTHER LAUREATES TARNISHED

If Watson's theories are judged as being beyond the scientific
pale, he would not be the first Nobel laureate to fall from grace
after winning the highest honor in science.

Now-deceased Stanford University professor William Shockley, who
shared a Nobel for inventing the transistor, was ostracized during
his lifetime for calling certain races genetically inferior, and
for suggesting that people with IQs under 100 be paid bonuses if
they agreed to be sterilized.

Former biotech scientist Kary Mullis, who won a Nobel for inventing
a process to multiply DNA samples, was marginalized after he lent
his name to several dubious causes, including the discredited
notion that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.

No matter how history judges Watson's emerging views on pom-C, his
fame guarantees a broad audience for his views, however politically
unsettling or scientifically unsound they may be.

Berkeley biology professor Caroline Kane, who did not attend
Watson's talk, said she was disappointed that ``a figure who looms
so large in the science of the late 20th century'' would take such
a provocative stance in the absence of the precise data that is the
hallmark of good science.

``Sometimes, Nobel laureates are asked to give their opinions on
areas where they should keep their mouths shut,'' Kane said.
``Unfortunately, Jim just likes to talk.''

E-mail Tom Abate at tabate at sfchronicle.com., Chronicle staff writer
Todd Wallack contributed to this report.
================

Telegraph: Abort babies with gay genes, says Nobel winner

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1997/02/16/nabort16.html
1997.2.16

By Victoria Macdonald

JAMES Watson, the Nobel prize winner who discovered DNA, the human
genetic code, has provoked outrage by claiming that women
should be allowed an abortion if their unborn babies are
found to be carrying a gene for homosexuality.

In today's Sunday Telegraph, Dr Watson says: "If you could
find the gene which determines sexuality and a woman decides
she doesn't want a homosexual child, well, let her."

But last night Nick Partridge, chief executive of the
Terrence Higgins Trust, an Aids charity, said: "It is
outrageous to suggest that there is a right for termination
because there is a possibility the child might be
homosexual."

And Sir David Weatherall, Regius Professor of Medicine at
Oxford University, said: "To say this is controversial is a
generous way to describe it." Sir David, author of The New
Genetics and Clinical Practice, said that Dr Watson's
comments were a "hindrance" to the debate about genetics.
"This does not help the debate, it is really emotive and it
is a gross oversimplification," he said.

Dr Watson and his colleague Francis Crick became
world-famous for their discovery in 1953 of the double
helix, the structure making up DNA, which is the blueprint
of human genes.

In 1989 Dr Watson became director of the American branch of
the Human Genome Project, the worldwide attempt to map the
200,000-odd genes in the human body. But in 1992 he was made
to step down after it was claimed that his involvement in a
biotechnology company was causing a conflict of interest.
The new edition of his book The Double Helix is to be
published in Britain this month.

Speaking from his home in Long Island, New York, Dr Watson
recalled a discussion he had had about the genetic
implications of homosexuality in front of a woman whose son
was gay. He said: "Looking at the situation from her point
of view, it was that she wanted grandchildren. Her son's
homosexuality was the great tragedy of her life. And who am
I to say otherwise?"

Although American scientists claimed in 1993 that they had
identified a link between homosexuality and genetic make-up,
it remains unproven and controversial.

At that time the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Jakobovits, was
criticised when he said that if the techniques became
available, then scientists should help eradicate the
"abnormality of homosexuality".

Dr Watson, however, admits that it is not even known how
normal sexuality is determined. "But while I think in the
end we will, that doesn't mean that the majority of
homosexuality has a genetic basis, just that genetics will
help us understand."

Although Dr Watson claims that these issues should be left
to the individual, he also states that parents have a moral
responsibility to make sure their babies are born as healthy
as possible. "We already accept that most couples don't want
a Down's child. You would have to be crazy to say you wanted
one, because that child has no future," he said.

"Some day a child is going to sue its parents for being
born. They will say: my life is so awful with these terrible
genetic defects and you just callously didn't find out. Or,
you knew and didn't do anything about it. Or, this disease
was in the family and again you didn't do anything about
it."

Ann Hunt, founder of the Genetic Interest Group, which
supports research into genetically inherited diseases, said
last night that Dr Watson was not commenting on science but
on social matters, and from a "prejudiced American
perspective".

See also 20 February 1995: Scientists warn of dangers in genetic research
===========

Engineering the Human Germline Symposium Report
http://www.ess.ucla.edu/huge/report.html

Summary Report
June, 1998

This one-day symposium organized by UCLA's Science, Technology, and
Society Program at the Center for the Study of Evolution and the
Origin of Life was funded through grants by the Greenwall
Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

______________________________________________________________

Gregory Stock
Director, Program on Science, Technology, and Society
Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life
University of California, Los Angeles

John Campbell
Symposium co-convener and Professor of Neurobiology, UCLA Medical
School
Senior Science Advisor: Program on Science, Technology, and Society
______________________________________________________________

Acknowledgments

The UCLA Program on Science, Technology and Society at the Center
for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life would like to
express special gratitude to the invited speakers at the
Engineering the Human Germline Symposium for their willingness to
participate thoughtfully and candidly at the event. These
presenters were: W. French Anderson, Andrea Bonnicksen, Mario
Capecchi, John Fletcher, Leroy Hood, Daniel Koshland, Jr., Michael
Rose, Lee Silver and James Watson. Obviously, the symposium could
not have succeeded without them. We would also like to thank
William Stubing from the Greenwall Foundation and Doron Weber from
the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their generous support. Their
desire to foster increased public dialogue and awareness of the
emerging technology of germline genetic engineering is greatly
appreciated. Finally, wed like to thank the Director, William
Schopf, and the staff of the Center for the Study of Evolution and
the Origin of Life for their ongoing support and assistance, and
Donald Ponturo, Associate Director of Special Projects in the
Science, Technology, and Society Program for his many contributions
to the symposium and this summary report.
______________________________________________________________

Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Symposium Overview
Presentation Abstracts and
Speaker Biographies
Key Points and Highlights
Policy Recommendations

Executive Summary

On Friday, March 20, 1998, distinguished scientists and ethicists
gathered on the UCLA campus for a one-day public discussion of the
possibilities and challenges of human germline engineering during
the coming two decades. This symposium, the first significant
public forum anywhere to focus exclusively on this difficult issue,
had four primary objectives.

To assess the potential of human germline engineering over the next
twenty years.

To provide a solid scientific foundation for future public policy
discussions on this topic.

To examine scientific and ethical arguments for and against
germline engineering.

To invigorate and deepen public debate about human germline
engineering.

Our hope was that a candid look at this controversial topic by key
voices in the academic community would significantly elevate public
discussion. Questions about human germline engineering are often
parried with the response that the technology is too distant for us
to worry about now, though it may be an important issue for our
children or grandchildren. This is no longer true. The potential
exists to do primitive human germline engineering now, though not
with the safety and reliability we demand in human medicine.

Since a goal of this symposium was to catalyze broad discussion of
germline engineering, in addition to the individual presentations,
there was a free-wheeling panel that for an hour and a half
candidly and openly discussed many of the difficult issues
surrounding germline engineering. A more august, qualified, and
forthright panel is hard to imagine. Of the eight scientists (James
Watson, Daniel Koshland Jr., Mario Capecchi, Lee Hood, French
Anderson, Michael Rose, Lee Silver, and John Campbell), half are
members of the National Academy and hold prestigious prizes
including the Nobel Prize, the Kyoto Prize, and the National Medal
of Science, some are (or have been) editors of key journals such as
Science, PNAS, Mammalian Genome, and Human Gene Therapy. As for the
panels non-scientists, John Fletcher was the first head of NIHs
bioethics program and Andrea Bonnicksen is on the ethics committee
of the American Society for Reproductive Science.

This symposium -- the first broad appraisal of germline engineering
-- was free and open to the public. What was most interesting about
the attendees was their diversity, not only in walks of life but in
age. Middle and high-school students lined up at the door along
with undergraduates, research scientists, physicians, writers,
journalists, school teachers, and the interested general public.
Attendees flew in from around the US, and from overseas. Germline
engineering rouses intense interest, and whether one is inclined to
embrace its possibilities or to worry about its misuse, this
technology could change humanitys path and deserves serious public
discussion.

The UCLA symposium reached far beyond the thousand who filled the
hall and the close-circuit-TV overflow room. Thoughtful print and
broadcast pieces have discussed the event and human germline
engineering itself. Not a single general article about human
germline engineering appeared in any of the several thousand
publications in the Dow Jones database during the three months
before this symposium, in the three weeks following it there were
31 including front page stories in The New York Times and
Washington Post.

Engineering the human germline consisted of seven talks, each
covering a key scientific aspects of germline engineering, and a
moderated panel discussion.

Some points of particular interest were:

That clever design of germline modifications could insure that
they are not inherited by future generations and that activation
of the genetic changes will require the consent of the
recipient.

That germline engineering will be quite gradual in its
introduction so we will have considerable time to reflect on its
more profound implications.

That germline engineering will likely prove much easier and more
versatile than somatic engineering.

That there are two very different approaches to germline
engineering in humans: homologous replacement and the use of an
artificial chromosome.

That the fundamental discoveries that will lead to germline
engineering will occur whether we deliberately pursue them or
not, because they will come out of research deeply embedded in
mainstream efforts toward other important biomedical goals. So
the question is not if, but when and how.

PUBLIC POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS: There was diversity of opinion at
the meeting, but also agreement about many important issues. The
policy recommendations presented here are in general alignment with
the thrust of the symposium and were greatly informed by it, but
are solely those of UCLAs Science, Technology, and Society Program
and do not purport to represent either the views of the symposium
participants or the institution of UCLA as a whole.

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) should explicitly assert
its authority to regulate human germline engineering.

The RAC (Recombinant Advisory Commission) should revise current
policies and agree to entertain germline proposals.

The Human Genome Projects ELSI (Ethical Legal and Social
Implications) should lead an exploration of the challenges and
potentials of human germline engineering.

The United States should resist any effort by UNESCO or other
international bodies to block the exploration of human germline
engineering.

No state or federal legislation to regulate germline gene
therapy should be passed at this time.

The National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) should
recommend revisions to US Patent law to address the challenges
of germline technology and the widespread patenting of human
genes.

A temporary voluntary moratorium on the cloning of humans should
be supported by researchers and clinicians.

Any legislation to prevent the act of human cloning should
explicitly state that it does not restrict research.
___________________________________________________________

Symposium Overview

Presentation Abstracts

Welcome and Introduction - Gregory Stock

An evolutionary perspective on germline engineering and the
interplay between human biology and technology.

A Vision for Practical Human Germline Engineering - John
Campbell

Germline engineering may enable us to obtain the benefits of a
century of genetic science. We now have the capacity to develop
techniques to reliably and safely introduce DNA constructs into
germ cells and could begin to conceive and design genetic
therapies to ward off diseases and improve the quality of human
life. This talk discusses how a program for human germline
engineering might be structured and some of the technical
hurdles it would face.

The Human Genome Project, Launch Pad for Human Genetic
Engineering - Leroy Hood

Our ability to manipulate our genetics will be profoundly
extended by the successful completion of the human genome
project. What therapeutic enhancements to our genes might be
feasible two decades from now? How close might we be to
constructively altering the genes for our immune system, our
development, and our nervous system? What role might
biotechnology companies play in generating the knowledge and
technology for human germline engineering and making it broadly
available?

Ethics and Safety - Daniel Koshland, Jr.

Efforts to engineer the human germline need to satisfy
appropriate ethical and safety requirements. What level of
testing should be required before germline procedures are used
with humans? How do the individual and global risks from human
germline engineering compare with other medical and reproductive
risks? Should guidelines be developed to regulate the methods by
which the human genome is manipulated or merely the types of
genetic changes allowed?

The Genetic Engineer's Tool Box - Mario R. Capecchi

Various procedures have vastly expanded our ability to
manipulate the genome and further advances can be expected
during the next two decades. This talk examines the techniques
used to engineer genetic changes in various organisms and
considers their technical potential for refinement into tools
for safe, reliable germline engineering in humans. The potential
scope of human germline manipulations in coming generations is
also considered.

A New Front in the Battle Against Disease - W. French Anderson

Introducing healthy genes into diseased somatic cells is
becoming an established medical practice. How big a step would
it be to extend such therapy to germline cells? For which
categories of disease might germline engineering be superior to
such alternatives as somatic cell therapy, embryo selection, and
traditional medical treatment? What new approaches to disease
diagnosis and treatment might germline engineering offer us in
two decades?

Aging: a Target for Germline Engineering - Michael Rose

Aging is multifaceted, affected by individual genes, interacting
gene complexes, and environmental influences. This talk reviews
our current understanding of the genetic factors which affect
aging, considers how this knowledge may increase in the next two
decades, and assesses the prospects of germline engineering both
for ameliorating the degenerative changes that accompany aging
and for retarding the aging process itself.

In-Vitro Fertilization: From Embryo Selection to Genetic Design
- Lee Silver

In-vitro fertilization will soon offer many possible new twists
to traditional human reproduction, from chimeric babies and
children born to their grandparents, to detailed screening of
individual embryos. This talk explores these possibilities,
looking at how sophisticated such technologies as embryo
screening might soon become, and how they might relate to
germline engineering.

The Road Ahead: Human Germline Engineering and Society

This panel discussion moderated by Gregory Stock will consider
the technical, social and ethical issues raised during the
presentations. Panelists will include Andrea Bonnicksen, John
Fletcher, James D. Watson, and the symposium speakers.

Speaker Biographies

W. French Anderson is Director of Gene Therapy Laboratories and
professor of biochemistry and pediatrics at the University of
Southern California School of Medicine. It was Dr. Andersons
pioneering efforts that led to the first human genetic engineering
trials in 1991. Dr. Anderson holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical
School. He has published extensively, holds many Board and
Editorial positions, and is Editor-in-Chief of Human Gene Therapy.

Andrea L. Bonnicksen is Professor and Chair of the Political
Science Department at Northern Illinois University. Dr. Bonnicksen
has written various articles on preimplantation genetic diagnosis
of human embryos, germline therapy, and other reproductive issues.
She is the author of In Vitro Fertilization: Building Policy from
Laboratories to Legislatures (Columbia University Press, 1989),
co-editor of Emerging Issues in Biomedical Policy, and a member of
the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive
Medicine.

Mario Capecchi received his doctorate from Harvard University and
is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Human Genetics in the
Department of Biology and Human Genetics at the University of Utah.
His techniques for generating mice with specific targeted genes
inactivated ("knock-out" mice) established a new way of exploring
how genes work in mammals. He is a member of the National Academy
of Science and his honors include the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award
for distinguished achievement in neuroscience, and the 1996 Kyoto
Prize.

John Fletcher received his Ph.D from the Union Theological Seminary
(NYC). He researched his dissertation, "A Study of the Ethics of
Medical Research", at the Clinical Center of the NIH, where he
later served as the first chief of its bioethics program. In 1980,
French Anderson and he coauthored an influential article on
criteria for any trial of human gene therapy. He was one of the
first in bioethics to explore the issues of germline gene therapy.
In 1993 he was named Kornfield Professor of Biomedical Ethics at
the University of Virginia.

Leroy Hood received his M.D. from the Johns Hopkins Medical School
and Ph.D. from Cal Tech. He has been a member of the National
Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
since 1982, and co-edited The Code of Codes (Harvard 1993). Dr.
Hood was the Bowles professor of Biology at Caltech until he joined
the University of Washington in 1992 as the William Gates professor
of Biomedical Sciences and founding chair of the Department of
Molecular Biotechnology.

Daniel Koshland, Jr. received his doctorate from the University of
Chicago. A professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley
since 1965, Dr. Koshland was the editor of PNAS from 1980 to 1985
and of Science magazine from 1985 to 1995. He has been a member of
the National Academy of Sciences since 1979. Among his many honors
are the Waterford Prize from the Scripps Institute and the National
Medal of Science.

Michael Rose received his doctorate from the University of Sussex,
and is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology at the School of Biological Sciences, UC Irvine. He is the
author of The Evolutionary Biology of Aging (1991 Oxford Univ.
Press), and co-edited Genetics and Evolution of Aging with Caleb
Finch. Dr. Roses major research focus has been experimental tests
of evolutionary theories of aging and fitness.

Lee Silver received his doctorate from Harvard University. He is
currently a professor at Princeton University in the Department of
Molecular Biology where he conducts research in mammalian genetics,
evolution, reproduction, and developmental biology. Dr. Silver is
the editor-in-chief of Mammalian Genome and the author of Mouse
Genetics: Concepts and Applications (1995 Oxford Univ. Press) and
Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World (1997 Avon).

James D. Watson, who shared a Nobel Prize with Francis Crick and
Maurice Wilkins in 1962 for the discovery of the structure of DNA,
received his Ph.D. from Indiana University. He joined the Harvard
faculty in 1956 and became Director of Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory in 1976. From 1988-1992 , Dr. Watson functioned as
Director of the National Center for Human Genome Research of the
NIH where he established the Human Genome Project. Dr. Watson has
won numerous honorary degrees and awards, and has been the
President of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory since 1994.

Symposium Co-Organizers

John Campbell received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and
postdoctoral training at the Institut Pasteur, Paris and the CSIRO
in Canberra Australia. He is an elected Fellow of the American
Academy of Sciences, first holder of the Robert Wesson Fellowship
on Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy, and Professor of
Neurobiology at the UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Campbells fields
of research are genetics and evolutionary theory.

Gregory Stock received a Ph.D. from John Hopkins University and an
M.B.A. from Harvard. In his 1993 book, Metaman: The Merging of
Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism, he examined the
evolutionary significance of humanitys rapid technological
progress, and at Princetons Woodrow Wilson School looked at the
implications of recent breakthroughs in molecular genetics. Dr.
Stock is now the Director of the Science, Technology and Society
Program at UCLAs Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin
of Life.
  ______________________________________________________________

Key Points and Highlights

Engineering the Human Germline March 20, 1998

The following are some key points and ideas from the symposium. The
full text of the presentations and discussion will be available
around the end of this year.

Background - Germline engineering definition.

Gregory Stock: I would like to make sure we all understand exactly
what is meant by germline genetic engineering, because it's not a
common term. When we talk about germline manipulations we mean
manipulations to the germinal cells, the sexual cells: the egg and
the sperm. In practice today that means altering the fertilized
egg. When you make a genetic alteration in the fertilized egg, the
first cell of the embryo, all of those changes will be copied into
every single cell of the adult including the sexual cells, so
normally they would be passed to future generations.

We're talking about significant changes, and that contrasts sharply
with the kinds of genetic engineering and genetic therapy that's
going on today. Genetic therapy today is somatic therapy, which has
to do with particular cells of the soma (or the body), such as
those of the lining of the lung mucosa, which are the target of the
effort to treat cystic fibrosis. Such interventions are much more
limited in scope.

You might ask, "Well, why is human germline engineering so
important?" And the reason is that it embodies virtually everything
about the powerful new technologies of molecular genetics and
molecular biology that are coming back upon us. It touches at the
very core of what it means to be human. It touches upon the flow
from generation to generation, which is obviously very
controversial. And it touches upon our relationship to our genetics
because obviously we're talking about altering the genetics of an
unborn child.

Germline engineering will likely prove more effective than
somatic engineering. Indeed, somatic therapy is very difficult
and still not effective.

Mario Capecchi: One of the things that's enticing from a biological
point of view about germline therapy is, that's it's actually much
simpler than somatic gene therapy. Modalities that we would never
think would be possible with somatic gene therapy would be quite
easy to do with germline gene therapy. This applies, in particular,
to homologous recombination.

The efficiency of homologous recombination is extremely low, so if
you have to deliver something to do homologous recombination, as
with somatic work, this is a Herculean challenge. But, in germline
gene therapy, you're looking for single events, and since you can
weed out things that didn't work out right, all of a sudden now,
you can apply these technologies much more easily than you ever
could do with somatic gene therapy.

Leroy Hood: I think the amazing thing is that the manipulations to
do these kinds of experiments are actually much simpler in germline
than in somatic. In the long run we will essentially be doing -- if
I had to project fifty years from now -- everything at the germline
rather than in somatic tissues.

John Campbell: Genes are already put into the body cells of adults
to ameliorate their cellular diseases. And putting genes in an egg
really is just an extension of somatic gene therapy down to the
germline. But this is a very important extension because it means
that all of the changes can be exactly reproduced in every cell of
the body. And these changes can be focused onto particular cells
that need them by controlling the expression of the genes. So I see
genetic germline engineering as the ultimate form of gene therapy.

Lee Silver: Its important to realize that germline engineering has
very different modalities than somatic cell engineering, because
the actual efficiency of the initial process does not have to be
very high. In the mouse homologous recombination has efficiencies
which are less than one in a thousand, or even one in a hundred
thousand. It doesn't matter. If you can select that one cell out of
a hundred thousand, and produce the whole embryo from it, that's
all you need to do; whereas, with somatic cell gene therapy you
have to develop methods that allow you to increase the efficiency
with which you get the genes into cells.

French Anderson: The unfortunate fact is that, with the exception
of a few anecdotal cases, there is no evidence of a gene therapy
protocol that helps in any disease situation. That sentence is
expanded in a review I've just written for Nature that looks at
this question in six thousand words.

Our bodies have spent tens of thousands of years learning how to
protect themselves from having exogenous DNA get into their
genomes. So we were all a little naive to think that if we made a
viral vector and put it into the human body it would work. The
body's done a very good job of recognizing viral sequences and
inactivating them.

So the answer to your straightforward question "Does gene therapy
work?" is, at this point in time, it does not work. Now, does that
mean it's never going to work? Well, no. It will. And there are now
some very hopeful signs in a few clinical protocols. There are
certainly some very promising new vectors being developed and
animal studies that look like they will work. But we have a long
way to go.

To look at germline gene therapy in twenty years is probably too
early, and to think of artificial chromosomes being used for gene
therapy in twenty years I think is definitely too early. But I
agree with Mario who said, "We all have a tendency to overestimate
what we can do in five years and underestimate what we can do in
twenty-five years."

James Watson: One thing that seems pretty obvious is that germline
therapy will probably be much more successful than somatic. If we
wait for the success of somatic we'll wait until the sun burns out.
We might as well do what we finally can to take the threat of
Alzheimer's or breast cancer away from a family.

Elucidation of our genetics is proceeding rapidly and will have
enormous consequences including the possibility of manipulating
extended gene clusters.

Leroy Hood: The human genome is about deciphering the twenty-four
human chromosomes. And by deciphering, we mean a number of
different things. The size of the task is absolutely gargantuan.
There are three billion letters in the DNA language. There are
twenty-four different human chromosomes. There are a hundred
thousand or so different human genes. And, of course, the human
genome is probably the most incredible software program that's ever
been written. So here's a program that dictates and directs the
development of the most fascinating of all processes, starting with
a single cell, the fertilized egg, and going to ten to the
fourteenth cells in a developed human organism -- and being able to
carry out the chromosomal choreography that specifies for each of
the different cell types the right subset of those hundred thousand
genes that have to be uniquely expressed.

The Human Genome Project is going to do many things for us. It will
define all the genes. It will give us the information to let us
ascertain all of this fascinating regulatory information. It will
give us the ability to actually take the individual genes and their
corresponding proteins and de-convolute the lexicon of motifs that
are the building block components of genes and proteins. And this
is very important because they give us clues both as to what
protein structures are and to what protein functions are.

In addition, the Human Genome Project will give us the wherewithal
to look at the natural variation that occurs within humans. It is
this natural variation that makes us all different from one another
-- some tall, some short, some fat, some thin -- but even more
important, some predisposed to different types of diseases. So we
will be able to characterize and create incredibly dense genetic
maps that will let us do genetics in an entirely new way. If the
marker distribution is dense enough, we won't have to follow
complicated family studies, we will be able to do genetics directly
by association.

And even more intriguing, in a new field called molecular
epidemiology, we'll be able to look at the variations -- the common
variations -- in these hundred thousand genes and ascertain, how
differing combinations of these polymorphisms -- these variations
-- can cause different physical and mental traits or,
predispositions to disease.

But, in a sense, the most important thing the Human Genome Project
is going to give us is a vision and the tools to start looking at
an entirely new kind of biology -- a biology I'll call systems
biology. And, indeed, what the Genome Project and some of the other
advances that have occurred in science in the last ten years have
done, is lead to a series of really incredible paradigm changes in
how we view science.

The demand for genetic enhancement will likely be much greater
than that for cloning.

Daniel Koshland, Jr.: Individuals, and particularly egotists, are
usually interested in establishing a life record that is not only
considerable but also unique. People like to get an Olympic gold
medal, be an upstanding leader of the community, be a devoted
patriarch of a family, and so forth. Some people even like to be
famous bank robbers or a charming swindler or a distinguished
artist -- different goals for different souls, but unique for each.
Would they really want to clone themselves? My guess is that
people's demands for self-cloning will be very low.

The demand for gene enhancement therapy will probably be very
large, to give your children a better chance of success in the
world. So outlawing the cloning of one's self seems to me a little
like outlawing ballooning around the world. You know, balloons may
land in the back yard and do some damage, but the frequency of
ballooning around the world really doesn't demand that we pass a
law against ballooning around the world. Cloning, I think, of
individuals, may be close to that analogy in trying to even outlaw
research on human cloning before any indication of widespread use
is apparent.

Cloning, in my opinion, is likely to be appealing if one wants to
emulate those more clever or more handsome or more athletic than
one's self. That will require humility, not egotism. One is saying,
"My children will be better with somebody else's genes rather than
mine."

Let us imagine an infertile couple faced with the need for
artificial insemination. If that's the only way they can get a
child would they be better off taking a natural child with a
strangers genes, than a clone from a known person who led a
commendable life. As we know, children of even the best parents can
turn out to be quite peculiar disappointments. Some just dont care
to study and go to college -- the same college that Dad and Grandpa
or Mom and Grandma went to. Or some child of a long line of
clergymen will decide to go into the theater and disgrace the
family and run around with loose people. Or others smoke pot and
live a wild life and become President of the United States.

There are two very different approaches to germline therapy use
of the auxiliary chromosomes and homologous recombination.

John Campbell: Geneticists can manipulate the germline of an animal
in three different ways:

A change can be made in an existing gene in one of the
chromosomes of the germline cell.

A new gene can be introduced into one of the cells existing
chromosomes.

A new gene can be introduced into a newly added chromosome.

Double addition adding new genes to a newly added chromosome is
necessarily the least intrusive strategy because it leaves the
original genome untouched. Already, geneticists have developed
auxiliary human chromosomes that might serve as the basis for this
type of manipulation. These Human Artificial Chromosomes can be
injected into human cells and they will persist for many divisions,
faithfully copied from each cell to its progeny.

A chromosome design suitable for human germline engineering has no
genes of its own, but instead, a series of "docking" sites where
extra genes can be inserted. The chromosome would thus serve as a
sort of universal delivery vehicle for modules of genes that
disparate collaborators had fashioned to achieve various
therapeutic purposes. Such modules would be integrated into the
docking sites using enzymes. The diagram shows an auxiliary
chromosome with three inserted modules. Initially, only a few
genetic modules will have been shown to be safe and effective, but
eventually hundreds might be incorporated, each offering its own
particular extension of the genome. Technicians might inject the
loaded chromosome into an egg using a micro-syringe, which could be
done in a laboratory similar to an infertility clinic. Today, eggs
are collected from a woman, fertilized in vitro, and implanted in
the womb. Germline engineering would require an extra step before
implantation in which the extra chromosome would be injected into
the fertilized egg.

Mario Capecchi: Modalities we would never think possible with
somatic gene therapy actually would be quite easy with germline
gene therapy. An example is homologous recombination.

The efficiency of homologous recombination is extremely low and if
you have to deliver something which requires homologous
recombination, this becomes a Herculean challenge. In germline gene
therapy, you're looking for single events, so you can weed out
things that didn't work out right. This allows you to apply these
technologies much more easily than you could ever do with respect
to somatic gene therapy.

Our genes already know how to work in the context of many, many
other genes. If we modify a particular gene in some context, then
we're going to have much smaller perturbations, things that are
much less disastrous. One thing we must appreciate is that
interactions of genes are going to change all the existing
information. We have to become wise enough to know how the
interaction is appearing. And that's a very complicated process and
it's going to take a lot of research. And a lot of chips. Chip
technology is going to go up, so, modifying existing information is
actually much easier and a much safer route, initially.

(slide) Here is a schematic outline of homologous recombination.
The top line represents the exogenous information, the asterisk a
modification. On entering the cell, the machinery actually takes
that piece of DNA, searches the entire hundred thousand volumes,
finds the same sequence, and then exchanges information. It
replaces the sequence that was already there with the modified
sequence that you created in the test tube. And this takes place
with enormous accuracy so that, in essence, at the point of the
recombination there's no change in sequence.

And the asterisk, remember, can be one base pair, ten base pairs,
or megabases. That asterisk can be anything we want. So I think
that's the power, essentially, of homologous recombination.

There are significant safety issues to be addressed with this
technology.

Daniel Koshland, Jr.: There is no such thing as absolute safety in
this world, even though some of our legal profession believes that
anything more dangerous than getting out of bed in the morning must
have somebody who is responsible and fiscally liable. Yet most of
us know that the risks must be relative and that they will be taken
if the gains seem to be in some proportion to the risks. So perhaps
a start on the design of safety in germline engineering is that
they be no more risky than the normal process of birth and
conception. If we start with a new therapy you might say, "That is
really a tough standard. You don't allow any margin for error."

But on the other hand, if you think it over, the whole process of
conception and birth is really a very risky and dangerous
proposition. For example, if the criterion is that the children
should turn out to be at least as good as their parents, my guess
is that germline engineering will compete very well with those
conceived the natural way. And if we make this criterion that the
children should be up to their parents' expectations, then I think
the engineered child may have a good edge over the child conceived
the normal way.

Safety issues will require, first of all, that there be extensive
experiments on animals to be sure that the techniques which we
would use to cure, say, a defective gene are done so that the risks
and side effects and failure are known and, for example, would not
create any real problems to the mother, certainly before the event,
and then see what the after-events are. We should sort of expect,
then, that the child has a better chance of living a longer and
more disease-free life than a natural child who, say, has inherited
a defective gene.

French Anderson: In one sense this gives me an easy out every time
I get interviewed about whether I am for or against germline gene
therapy. In principle I'm absolutely for it on the most fundamental
of grounds. And that's the grounds of human nature. Germline gene
therapy is going to be done, assuming that we have experience from
somatic cell that it is, in fact, safe. Germline gene therapy will
be done because of human nature.

None of us want to pass on to our children lethal genes if we can
prevent it. And that's what's going to drive germline gene therapy.
In the last analysis, when you really sit down and think about the
things really important in your life -- your loved ones, your
family, what you're going to do for your family, those things which
really touch our core as human beings -- you're not going to pass
on a lethal gene to your child if you can have a simple, safe
treatment that prevents it. So germline gene therapy is going to
happen. The issue is: When is it safe? When is it ethical to have
it? So, this is the first criteria.

We need, and do not have now by a long shot, a reliable,
reproducible, safe procedure that works in primates. Transgenic
animals, knockout mice, are all done in inbred strains of animals.
Livestock becomes more difficult to do because, even though they
are partially inbred, there's still a touch of outbreeding.

Human beings are, of course, outbred. And there are very strict
laws. You can't marry your cousins and so on. The reason for this
is because of the problem of having a genetic disease gene in one
parent match up with that of the other.

We all carry five to ten lethal genetic diseases in our genes. But
by staying very outbred we basically don't see as heavy a dose of
lethal genetic diseases as we would if we were marrying our
sisters, our cousins, and so on.

But there is not a procedure that's reliable, that's reproducible,
and that's safe yet, even in mice where the majority of eggs that
are injected do not give you healthy animals. They're aborted.
They're deformed. There are various problems.

Now, the efforts in in vitro fertilization are becoming such that
the procedure of actually taking one cell out from a four-cell
zygote, analyzing it, and then perhaps putting a gene into one of
the other cells -- that is becoming more and more reproducible and
reliable. And if, when that time comes -- which might not be within
a twenty-year period but could be within a twenty-year period --
that it is, in fact, safe and can be shown to produce healthy baby
monkeys, then it would be ethical to transfer that procedure to
human beings.

We know so little about the human body. We know so little about
life itself, that we should not try to dedicate engineering to try
to improve anything. What our society does fifty years from now is
its business. It doesn't care what we think, and we don't care what
people of fifty or a hundred years ago thought we should do. But it
is our duty to go into the era of genetic engineering in as
responsible a way as possible. And that means to use this powerful
technology only for the treatment of disease and not for any other
purpose.

The idea that restrictions on basic research to prevent germline
engineering or cloning would have broad and serious
consequences.

Mario Capecchi: There is an enormous distinction between vigorously
supporting research and supporting its implementation. Without the
research we will never have the opportunity to make decisions. We
won't have the knowledge. Another thing I want to point out is that
most of us think that research goes very, very rapidly. We see new
events coming up every day and, therefore, we have a feeling that
every day things are new.

In actuality, research is extremely slow. For example, somatic gene
therapy is an example where over a decade of work has gone into it
by countless very talented people, and yet the products are fairly
dismal, I think. I mean, if I have to be realistic. Certainly,
progress is being made but it's not staggering. And yet, that's
over a decade's worth of research by many, many labs and many, many
practitioners.

Leroy Hood: I think science succeeds by doing. What we're talking
about here are incremental advances that have enormous
implications. And I think if they're shackled by "you can't do
fetal research. You can't do this; you can't do that "

Some of the proposed cloning laws would ban everything that has
anything to do with the word "clone." That's DNA as well as cells.
I think that's something we can't afford to have in society. What
you have to be is reasonable and rational. I think you should do
animal testing. How far you have to carry that I'm not exactly
certain.

The well-known model systems might give us an awful lot of the
information we need, but I think it would be a shame if -- and that
is the purpose of this symposium -- if we were really inhibited by
society. What is great about American society is its enormous
diversity. I think it's the equivalent of what Mario was talking
about in the genes. And I think an implication of that is people
have to have the right to make decisions based on what their
diversity is all about.

Lee Silver: An interesting analogy is a story from the fertility
field, because up until 1992 men who could not produce motile sperm
were completely infertile and there was nothing that could be done.

In 1992 a completely untested technique was tried, which was to
inject sperm directly into the oocyte; and it worked. It had never
been tested on other animals but it worked. You got babies out. And
within three years, not knowing anything about long-term effects,
eighty percent of the fertility clinics in the United States were
using this technique.

And I think that it's important to understand what was the driving
force here. There was a demand. There was this whole population of
individuals who were infertile. The only way they could have a
child is by using this technique and the fertility clinics met
their demand by using an untested technique. And the children born
from this technique, the oldest ones are not more than five years
old right now. I think that's going to give you a sense of what's
going to drive this technology. They had a sense this was going to
work; that it shouldn't be bad. And that was what allowed them to
do it in the first place.

James Watson: We're in the position of passing regulations without
anything bad happening. I think that is a very different situation,
and a very dangerous one, because you really don't know your enemy
and yet you're passing laws against them. And biology is so
complicated, I think it's a very misguided way to go.

I think we can talk principles forever, but what the public wants
is not to be sick. And if we help them not be sick they'll be on
our side.

With germline modifications, heritability is undesirable both
for safety reasons and because of the eventual obsolesence of
the germline constructs, but there are technical approaches for
blocking their heritability.

John Campbell: You're all aware that, as Dr. Stock mentioned, any
change made in the genes of an egg can be transmitted from one
generation to the next. This is not desirable, especially with the
first pioneer attempts we make at genetic engineering. We do not
want these changes reverberating generation-to-generation into the
future.

At every generation, a parent will presumably want to endow his or
her child with the newest and the best modifications and
improvements that are possible, instead of relying on the
chromosome that was given to that person, to the parent, a whole
generation ago. So, it'll be important not to have this problem of
inheritance.

If geneticists were to scatter gene changes throughout the genome,
it would be very hard to handle this problem. But that does not
have to be the case. All of the changes could be confined to one
disposable, dispensable, extra chromosome, and we could make that
chromosome so it wouldnt be inherited.

If a person has one copy of an extra chromosome instead of the two
copies we have of our own chromosomes, that single chromosome would
be expected to be transmitted to only one-half of the person's
progeny if it follows the rules of Mendel.

We have to go to our genetic engineers and say, " You have to
develop a module for the chromosome that will not get through to
the sexual cycle. You have to build a module that will break the
rules of Mendel." And this, I think, is possible.

Mario Capecchi: One thing that's difficult to appreciate is that
when you're doing germline gene therapy you're creating a permanent
record. And being a human enterprise, sometimes there will be
mistakes. If you have a permanent record, then you're passing that
on to the next generation, the next generation, and so on. Also, if
we, for example, as a society, decide in twenty years to apply
human gene therapy, that the procedures that we'll be working out
at that point will appear very primitive fifty years from now. And
those procedures, in turn, will appear very primitive a hundred
years from now.

So there's no way we should create a system where it is a permanent
record. But even with today's technology it would be very simple to
make it reversible. This isn't theoretical. Here are vectors
[refers to slide] we are making right now with mice for different
purposes, in which the human artificial chromosome, for example,
would have this pre-recombinase. It's capable of mediating
homologous recombination between certain sequences. And if you were
to flank those with sequences called lox, so that you had one at
each end of this artificial chromosome, when you activated the cre
recombinase by a cocktail of two or more, depending on how sure you
wanted to make it, of drugs. At that point, the gene addition would
be cleared, essentially, from all germ cells from then on. What you
would be left with is a small piece of DNA that has no information,
no way to replicate itself, no way to propagate itself and,
therefore, would be lost in the next generation

So it's important to remember that there are ways, if we jump into
this technology, there are ways to reverse it. It's simply not
something we are writing in stone and whatever mistakes we make
we're going to have to live with from then on. There are very
simple ways to make it reversible.

Germline engineering has been criticized because it does not
allow "informed consent" but such consent might be designed to
be possible.

John Campbell: Informed consent. It sounds like something you could
not have in advance; but I think you can.

In my examples, a change is made that is genetic and of absolutely
no consequence at all. The only thing that would happen would be a
particular transcription factor produced in a particular cell type.
The patient has to choose whether to activate this particular
cassette.

I think if people are really concerned about consent we could take
a human chromosome or a segment of it and put on a lock. None of
those genes would have any effect until a person took an artificial
hormone pill to unlock the cassettes and give him or herself the
new engineered phenotype.

I don't see that germline engineering does not allow a person to
have choice. If that's important, then its a technical issue. Well
say to our genetic engineers, "This is a constraint you have to
work with. A person must have a choice before he has any change
made to his physical body."

Leroy Hood: The other point one can make is, as Mario pointed out,
there has been a lot of genetic engineering practiced in terms of
therapeutic selective abortions and things like that. There isn't
any prior choice there. It's something that's been done for a long
time in society. So these are complicated issues and I don't think
you can categorically say we should always require and/or need
informed consent. The other thing I would say is that, although you
can design these reversible kinds of things (as John Campbell and
Mario Capecchi mentioned), it's quite clear that if we get into
engineering more complicated traits, its not going to be possible
to make them all simply reversible. So we are going to have to face
up to this question. I think it really is an important one.

Daniel Koshland, Jr.: I'm not sure informed consent is always
necessary. When I was a kid I didn't really have an option about
whether I should go to school or not. My parents told me to go. And
I told my children. My children didnt have a vote on who their
mother was when we decided to have children. So I think, sometimes,
to extend informed consent to the embryo is really sort of a
theoretical construct.

There might be significant numbers of people who would be
interested in meaningful germline therapies if they were safe.

Gregory Stock: (addressed to the large general audience) I would
like all of you to imagine a question that gets to the core of the
issue of germline genetic engineering in humans. If you and your
partner were going to conceive of a child using in vitro
fertilization, for entirely other reasons, and you knew that, in a
safe, reliable procedure, you could have a human artificial
chromosome added that would, say, give your child an extra ten or
twenty years of increased life expectancy. Many of our speakers
have suggested that a reliable procedure is not an unreasonable
possibility, though there are some questions about time frame, so
lets just assume it were possible.

My question is: Who in the audience would absolutely not want to do
that? I would like people to raise their hands; those who would
not. That's interesting. There are about a dozen or so raised
hands. The question is: If you could safely and reliably add an
artificial chromosome to a child that you were conceiving, by in
vitro fertilization, who would not want to add one that would
increase their life expectancy by some ten or twenty years? A few
people said that they wouldn't, now how many would, given adequate
safety and reliability, do that? Well, look around. That's a large
fraction of the audience <about 70%>. It's interesting to reflect
on what such interest will lead to when germline engineering
becomes practical, whenever that may be.

There are many possible long-term targets for germline Aging
AIDS, etc.

Michael Rose: So here we come to the other approach [for attacking
aging] -- the germline approach. Let's say you went after the
gametes and you went after the gametes for good; namely, you wanted
your descendants to have the best possible genes. So right from the
start -- right from the zygote or close to it -- you intervene. The
nice thing is the benefits go to all your descendants. A problem is
that early problems associated with your artificial chromosome
would still be expressed.

Now, I know it is very fashionable for genetic engineers to say,
"Ah, yes, but we will only turn on those genes later." Well,
indeed, you may only turn on transcription at high levels later,
but the fact is you're likely to get some amount of genetic action
at early ages despite the fact you tried to shut everything down.
Then you have the problem of evolutionary instability and having
chronically in your germline an artificial chromosome, which is
simply not going to be as stable as a regular chromosome. Finally,
you have the problem of possible homogenization which is like all
of us driving a Toyota Camry. If we all have exactly the same
anti-aging chromosome and, as it turns out, that gives us a
weakness to a virus which none of us have yet experienced -- which
we've not yet seen epidemiologically -- and that virus comes in and
kills all of us? Well, bummer.

So I think there are problems with that, and what I would suggest,
and this isn't, I hope you understand anything I'm proposing we do
immediately. But I think a compromise might be appropriate. The
compromise I would suggest is from various types of stem cells,
supplying these additional artificial chromosomes to the body
before it really gets aging, in the hope of alleviating a lot of
the damage of the aging process, so that when you do hit
sixty-seven or sixty-eight you don't have to absolutely panic. You
could be in relatively decent shape.

Not all disorders that are associated with aging will be
preventable using this kind of intervention, because certainly some
things arise from growth patterns established in the fetus, such as
patterns of vascularization. However, this does leave the germline
free. It does leave deleterious effects during childhood avoided
and, therefore, it probably right now would be my first choice.

Leroy Hood: In gene therapy, we can think about simple genetic
traits, and we can think about complicated genetic traits. So the
simple genetic traits are those that might manifest themselves as
the expression, primarily, of a single gene. Now, I don't mean that
the system still isn't complicated, but a single gene could have a
large effect. And I think resistance to infection, as John Campbell
has suggested; I think resistance to AIDS; I think resistance to at
least a limited number of cancers are a real possibility. And
another interesting possibility is longevity.

The second kind of trait -- these complex traits that we're going
to have to do the systems analysis on -- are a lot further
downstream, but they are the traits that are, by far, the most
interesting. In the first category were things we'd like to fix up.
In the second category, if humans are ever to take in hand their
own evolution, it will be using traits of the second type.
Emotional stability, intelligence, the ability to learn, physical
attractiveness -- these are all very complicated traits of this
second type that I think we have the tools, over the next ten to
twenty years to begin deciphering in a really profound way.

There is great disagreement about the distinctions between
therapy and enhancement.

James Watson: And the other thing, because no one really has the
guts to say it... I mean, if we could make better human beings by
knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we do it?

Panel Discussion excerpt:

French Anderson: What is a disease and what is not a disease is
a major question. We can all recognize what is a major disease,
because if it causes severe suffering and premature death then
that can be recognized as a major disease. But once you leave
that category and you hit minor disease, what's a minor disease?
What's a cultural inconvenience? What really is disease? What
really is normal?

When the time comes that it [germline engineering] is truly
safe, that we understand how human cells work, how the brain
works, and so on, which I think will take centuries -- when that
time comes, I have no objection to enhancements. But the
fundamental point I'm trying to make is that we don't know
enough about what the consequences would be, from a medical
point of view, to attempt anything at this point but treatment
of serious disease. That's my fundamental point.

The normal aging process I would not consider disease. The
consequences of aging; namely, cancer, heart disease, stroke --
those degenerative processes that take place -- those are
diseases.

Lee Silver: One of the ways of getting over the problem that
French mentions is also a question of what you mean by
enhancement. When parents want to give something to their
children which already exists in other individuals in society,
you know how that will operate, at least in other individuals.
Thats an alternative allele that parents could give to their
children naturally, but not if they don't have it themselves. So
that's a situation where you already have the information <about
what will happen>. Nobody wants to have an average child, of
course. Is it enhancement to give your child something that
other children get naturally? It's very difficult to stop
parents from doing that particular kind of treatment.

Michael Rose: I think you're tying yourself into all kinds of
knots that arise from the medical model, which is basically
inherited through Hippocrates from Plato and Aristotle. It's a
model that's twenty-five hundred years old. I would suggest that
if you reconsider your basic biology, in terms of concepts like
quantitative genetics and fitness, selection, genetic variance,
environmental variance, you would find your way out of a lot of
these problems.

French Anderson: Is breast cancer normal?

Michael Rose: Aging is totally normal. Breast cancer is
dramatically age-dependent, like innumerable other disorders.
For example, you talked about having premature mortality. If
you're alive over a hundred you're overdue for mortality in
terms of the normal aging pattern, to which I say: Fine. If we
find something that enables us to live to be two hundred, even
if I'm an M.D. I'm not going to say no to it, even if it's
abnormal. I mean, what can be abnormal can be fantastic.

French Anderson: Is breast cancer normal?

Michael Rose: In terms of the age-dependent profile, to get
cancer is very normal. It's difficult to find a person over
ninety who, on autopsy, does not show some signs of cancer, some
signs of tumor.

French Anderson: So that you would say that breast cancer is
normal?

Michael Rose: So are all cancers. The older you get the greater
chance of getting Alzheimer's, the older you get the greater
your chance of cardiovascular disease and, to me, all of those
things reflect the failure of natural selection to operate at
those ages. The functions that we have when we are young do not
betoken normality, which is a meaningless concept in biology,
they instead betoken the action of natural selection to make our
bodies work well.

French Anderson: I would say that if you think that Alzheimer's,
breast cancer, and so on are normal, then you are tied up in
philosophical knots that you need release from.

We are seizing control of our own evolution.

Gregory Stock: We're unraveling our own blueprint and beginning to
tinker with it, which is extraordinary. It means that we are
becoming subject to the same powerful forces of conscious design
that are completely re-shaping the world around us. They are now
reflecting back upon us, and life is entering a new phase in its
history. We are seizing control of our own evolution in some sense,
and that, to me, is quite amazing.

Lee Silver: What IVF does is to bring the embryo out of the
darkness of the womb and into the light of the day. And in so
doing, IVF provides access to the genetic material within. And it's
through the ability to read, alter, and add genetic to the embryo,
that the full force of IVF will be felt.

As the editors of the preeminent journal Nature put it, "We now
have the power to 'change the nature of our species.'" We now have
the power to seize control of our evolutionary destiny. I would
suggest also that someday we'll be able to use these genetic
differences as a way to discover exactly what are the genes that
allow humans to have a higher level of consciousness than
chimpanzees. I don't agree that we'll have to understand how the
brain works to know this. When the Huntington's disease gene was
first cloned nobody knew how the mutant gene caused the disease;
but we knew people who had the mutant gene got the disease and
people who had the normal gene did not get the disease, even though
there was a black box between one and the other. And I suspect that
this might happen in the future.

I think it's important not to make the mistake of thinking that
technology is always going to stay the same as it is now.
Technology always goes forward. There are radical new technologies
that surprise us all the time. And we've got a long time in the
future to go. This is my conclusion: Human evolution will be
self-driven.

Religion will continue to be a strong ingredient in discussions
of genetic engineering.

John Fletcher: I'm not an enemy of religion. I recognize its power
for good and for evil. But I think that my own view of religion is
that it is an evolutionary program that fulfills a very important
function: to make you aware that you're part of the whole. I think
human beings are the only species who have an awareness that they
are part of a whole, and that, as several speakers have emphasized
today, this is an awesome insight that binds us all together. I do
think that the concept of God blurs that insight for the most part,
rather than magnifies it. Religion plays a powerful part in the
responses of peoples all over the world but especially in our
culture, where religion is so vibrant and so alive and there are so
many types of religious movements.

On the whole, religion plays a very conservative role in response
to genetics. And it actually, in its worst features, makes people
afraid and passive in the face of the terrible things that nature
can do to children and that genetic roulette does to children.

I think that one of the greatest harms of religion in the world is
the doctrine that unprotected sex is sanctified. Some religious
movements teach that unprotected sex is the holiest way to produce
a baby -- or to try to produce a baby. Unprotected sex is the
greatest threat to women in the world. It's also a threat to men,
but it's certainly a threat to women

There are a variety of approaches to germline regulation in
Europe.

Andrea Bonnicksen: One example in Europe of what I would call a
permissive climate is in the United Kingdom which has a licensing
system for embryo research and for in vitro fertilization. This has
been in effect since 1990, and it leaves the door open for germline
manipulations and other medical innovations. It says that there
will not be germline interventions now unless they meet with
regulations. So that leaves the door open, and I would call that a
permissive kind of climate.

There are other nations, too, that are permissive by default, by
not having a national law on embryo research, and that would
include Belgium. There are some, also, that are restrictive. And I
would say that there are two kinds of restrictive voices: one would
be countries that have embryo research laws that are very broad, so
broad that they would, in effect, include germline manipulations.
And that would include Norway, Austria, Switzerland, that forbid
all kinds of embryo research. Still, that leaves the door open
because if embryo research has reached the point where it would be
safe, then germline manipulations would not longer be research and
maybe the application would be appropriate.

Another restrictive type is one that has an embryo research law
and, in it, specifically mentions germline interventions. Germany
would be an example here of a highly restrictive law. It, too, has
been in effect since about 1990. Here, there's concern for
individual rights; there's more of a distrust for the ability to
draw lines on technological change than in the countries such as
Britain. There's also a concern for genetics as a common heritage.

On the regional level, the Council of Europe was formed at the end
of World War II. There are forty nations now. And in 1982 it came
up with the idea that maybe there's a right to inherit a genetic
inheritance that has not been interfered with except following
principles.

So what might those principles be? Over time, the people in the
Council of Europe, different ministers and committees, have worked
with this, and last year they came up with a Bioethics Convention.
And this is now out for the signature of the states. Twenty-two
nations have signed it already, and it calls for trans-national
harmonization: looking for principles that would guide the
deliberate intervention in such things as the human genome. And
there's a key phrase that says: "An intervention seeking to modify
the human genome may be undertaken for prevention, diagnostic, or
therapeutic purposes and only if its aim is not to introduce
modification in the genome." This indicates probably a more or less
closed door, but still only half of the nations have signed this.

Another that I will mention is UNESCO, which is an international
organization. A hundred and eighty-six nations have signed an
agreement -- a declaration -- that, again, was issued last year.
Last year was a busy year for national and international
conventions. It was four years and nine drafts in the making, and
it is conducive to scientific inquiry. It suggests that if
scientific inquiry comes about there is a need to balance
individual rights with it. And, therefore, it is rather open and
permissive; it does not close the door.

Everything we do that affects reproduction alters the gene pool
in one way or another, so arguments about the sanctity of the
human gene pool are difficult to sustain.

Mario Capecchi: Why germline gene therapy? I raised this query
because we tend to forget that we actually have had a very
effective means of practicing germline gene therapy for many years
in many countries. That is through the application of abortion or,
alternatively, selective implantation. If parents find that their
fetus is afflicted with a debilitating disease, they can choose to
abort.

Further, if they are, for moral reasons, unable to participate in
abortion they can go the much more expensive route of selective
implantation, in which the early embryo is dispersed into single
cells and then one of the cells is analyzed with respect to its
genome. If you find the mutation, you don't plant that embryo. If
you find it's free of that particular mutation, you go ahead and
implant.

Daniel Koshland, Jr.: We should start, perhaps, with the question
raised by some who say we shouldn't tamper with the germline. I
frankly don't understand these people. Where are they living? We
are already altering the gene line right and left. When we give
insulin to a diabetic who then goes on to have children, we are
increasing the number of defective genes in the population. No one
is seriously suggesting we refuse to give life-saving drugs to
genetically disadvantaged people.

We discussed here the cystic fibrosis problem; yet we are damaging
the germline every day by doing so [treating cystic fibrosis]. Are
we doing something terrible by simply ameliorating the illnesses
that our compassionate policies of the present and past have
created?

James Watson: I just can't indicate how silly I think it is [the
sanctity of the human gene pool]. I mean, sure, we have great
respect for the human species. We like each other. We'd like to be
better, and we take great pleasure in great achievements by other
people.

But evolution can be just damn cruel, and to say that we've got a
perfect genome and there's some sanctity to it. I'd just like to
know where that idea comes from. It's utter silliness. What we want
to do is treat other people the way that maximizes the common good
of the human species. And that's about all we can do.
______________________________________________________________

Policy Recommendations

Medicine is entering unfamiliar territory on many fronts, and
people are uneasy about the strange possibilities that are
emerging. It is still too early to discern the full challenge and
potential xenotransplantation, genetic testing of embryos,
psychotropic drugs, human somatic gene therapy, cloning, and human
germline therapy embody, but controversy about how to handle the
fruits of modern biology and medicine is not new.

In the early 1970s, anxiety about the escape of genetically
engineered organisms brought a voluntary moratorium on recombinant
DNA research and subsequent adoption by the scientific community of
a carefully thought out framework of self-imposed restrictions
(Assilomar, 1975). This February, the Association of American
Medical Colleges and other groups proposed a pre-emptive 5-year
voluntary moratorium on cloning in response to a flurry of
legislative efforts to ban cloning, but the harsh condemnations of
cloning and various ill-considered measures to stop it have not
been a good model for how to approach these challenging new
technologies wisely. Human germline therapy will be a far more
significant and complex matter than cloning; what must done to
insure that its arrival will be handled more judiciously?

At the symposium, there was general agreement that human germline
procedures will eventually be used. The real question is not
whether the technology will come about, but when and how it will.
One way of approaching the matter is to look at the three key
activities associated with human germline engineering: research
contributing to it, discussion of the issues surrounding it, and
its use on humans. Their optimum sequence might seem to be
discussion, then research, then use. But this is unrealistic
because meaningful, concrete discussion of how to handle the
technology isn't possible without the insights provided by
research. Research must provide the basis for the evolving
discussion and should be strongly supported as we try to decide how
best to handle the powerful procedures that are taking shape.

What has been missing is serious discussion of germline
engineering. To avoid the sort of the public surprise and dismay
that attended cloning, it is important to begin our discussions
about the advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to
germline engineering before it reaches the stage where its
application to humans can be seriously contemplated. Germline
engineering, like the rest of medicine, will need to be regulated,
but only after we understand more specifically its extraordinary
therapeutic potential.

At present, any legislation attempting to influence how the
technology unfolds by restricting biomedical research would be
misguided. First, it would be less likely to delay the basic
research developments that will enable germline engineering than to
disrupt other uncontroversial medical research. The fundamental
discoveries that will lead to germline engineering will occur
whether we deliberately pursue them or not, because they will come
out of research deeply embedded in mainstream efforts toward other
important goals. Second, it would breach America's cherished
tradition of free scientific inquiry to restrict medical research
merely because it might open up difficult possibilities. Third, it
would set a dangerous precedent for other promising future medical
technologies. To our knowledge the Federal government has never
banned a particular line of basic medical research, and at present,
no impending threat warrants such extreme action.

It is useful to look back twenty-five years to the menacing
possibility recombinant-DNA research raised the accidental release
of some new life form that would wreak havoc on us or the
environment. Even so grave a threat as this was met largely by
voluntary controls that could be easily relaxed as safety concerns
were answered. The wisdom of this course is evident in the great
strides made subsequently, when progress might have been blocked by
earlier legislative excesses.

Recent fears and misconceptions about human cloning provide a clear
example of the problems that arise when a new technology arrives
unexpectedly. Arguments to ban research that might lead to this
possibility employ an entirely different logic than those about
recombinant-DNA in the 1970s. Those who seek to block cloning
invoke images not of catastrophic accidents, but of technological
success. They argue that use of the technology would be unwise or
even immoral, and propose stopping it by preemptively blocking both
its use and the research that might lead to its development. But in
our view, loose speculation about the possible misuse of a
technology or its imagined corrosive social influences are not
reason enough to stifle research.

Banning the act of cloning humans would be less disturbing, but it
is our opinion that prior regulation of this sort is also
unwarranted. The FDA, the RAC, and Ethical Review boards already
have ample oversight in place to prevent broad misuse of such
technologies, and any isolated violations could be dealt with like
any serious malpractice or reckless human experimentation would be.
In any event, biomedical advances take many years, and resultant
clinical procedures remain difficult and expensive for even longer,
so our society will have adequate time to debate the implications
of cloning before it impacts more than a handful of people.

This last point is especially important in the context of human
germline engineering, because it means that we have the luxury of
seeing what possibilities emerge from this nascent technology
before making decisions about how to define and restrict them. The
challenges germline engineering will create are profound: How much
are we willing to intervene in life's flow from generation to
generation? How much do we want to control the genetics of our
children? But we must not answer such questions too quickly.
Germline engineering may prove a valuable tool in fighting cancer,
AIDS, infectious diseases, and even aging, so society will best be
served by first broadly and intelligently appraising these
possibilities. We believe that the most effective way of
accomplishing this is to move forward in the public light --with
the basic research that will disentangle fantasy from reality. The
birth of Dolly, for example, led to more vigorous debate about
public policy in this arena than all previous panel discussions,
meetings, and writings combined.

Toward this end, UCLA's STS Program offers the following specific
recommendations about human germline engineering:

The RAC (Recombinant Advisory Commission) should indicate that
it will now consider germline proposals. Such proposals probably
will not arise for several years, but a believable public
process for examining potential early clinical applications of
this challenging technology should now be put in place. It is
important to have public scrutiny of germline possibilities
right from the beginning to insure that issues of safety,
propriety and reliability in germline procedures are fully
aired. In 1990, the RAC stated that it would "not at present
entertain proposals for germ line alteration," but that policy
should now be changed. The RAC, by virtue of the excellent job
it has done in reviewing somatic therapy protocols, is the
logical body to review early human germline proposals when they
are offered.

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) should explicitly assert
its authority to regulate human germline engineering. The FDA
recently asserted its authority to regulate human cloning, an
action applauded by PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers Organization), BIO (Biotechnology Industry
Organization), and ASRM (American Society of Reproductive
Medicine). We agree with that action and call on the FDA to
further extend its authority to germline engineering, so that it
is clear that this important technology is not without
oversight.

The human genome projects ELSI (Ethical Legal and Social
Implications) should lead an exploration of the challenges and
potentials of human germline engineering. Germline manipulation
may well be the most far-reaching technology to emerge from the
Human Genome Project and therefore should be the focus of
considerable attention from ELSI. It is important to begin to
thoroughly explore its implications. Issues such as the
distinction between human enhancement and human therapy embody
deeper dilemmas when they relate to the germline. Issues like
the importance of heritability and consent are unique to
germline discussions. The advantages and disadvantages of
various technical approaches to germline engineering should be
compared and issues of safety and reliability explored. Finally,
ELSI should fund a serious effort to gauge public attitudes
about germline engineering in-depth. This is very important. One
of the reasons that human germline engineering had not until
recently been seriously explored is that the topic was viewed as
too sensitive. But our UCLA symposium demonstrated that the
public is thirsting for mature, intelligent discussion of such
future possibilities. Solid data about public attitudes and
perceptions, rather than short newspaper and television polls
about controversial questions, should be an important ingredient
in future public policy decisions in this arena.

The United States should resist any further effort by UNESCO or
other international bodies to block the exploration of germline
engineering. Various attempts have been mounted in Europe and
elsewhere to prevent germline genetic engineering. While such
policies do minimal damage when they exist only at a national
level, internationally they must be avoided. In any event, it
is far too early to seek a cross-cultural consensus about this
difficult and complex technology, and it would be unwise for the
US to unnecessarily hamper its future policies in a realm so
important and so unformed. Large legislative assemblies are
simply not an appropriate arena for regulating provocative new
research.

No state or federal legislation to regulate germline gene
therapy should be passed at this time. Legislation should be
contemplated only if oversight by the FDA, RAC, and Local Review
Boards proves unable to prevent serious misuse of the
technology. Any research prohibition, in addition to being
contrary to our traditions of free inquiry, would drive research
overseas or underground, would disrupt unrelated biomedical
research, and might foreclose as-yet-unseen therapeutic
possibilities. As to attempting to block the use of germline
technologies, such action at this time would not serve our
interests or the interests of future generations. We do not yet
know even what the most important possibilities of germline
engineering will be. In addition, our courts have been loathe to
allow infringement of our fundamental liberty to procreate. The
right to bear children was first constitutionally protected as a
right to privacy in 1965, and it has been repeatedly reaffirmed
and extended to include the right to have access to
contraceptives and to medical procedures such as IVF (Lifchez
v.Hartigan, 1991). Critics of cloning contend that cloning is
not protected because it is replication rather than
reproduction, does not involve a cooperating male and female,
and does not involve the transmission of genes from one
generation to the next, but such arguments would be unlikely to
be sustained about germline therapy.

The National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) should
recommend revisions to US Patent law to address the challenges
of germline technology and the widespread patenting of human
genes. Increasing difficulties and uncertainties have arisen in
the application of patent law to the rapidly evolving arena of
biotechnology. As we move towards human germline engineering and
the patenting of genetic constructs that could potentially be
transmitted from one generation to the next, a comprehensive
review is essential. Such a review would also provide an
excellent opportunity to re-examine the difficult issue of
human-gene patents, since they exhibit many novel
characteristics not anticipated by existing patent law. NBAC was
charged in 1996 with the task of reviewing gene patenting, and
it is well positioned to outline a viable approach for this
important issue.

In addition, STS offers the following recommendations about
cloning, since this issue could have an impact on the handling of
germline engineering and other biotechnologies:

A temporary voluntary moratorium on the cloning of humans should
be supported by researchers and clinicians. We support the
5-year moratorium proposed in February (1998) by AAMC
(Association of American Medical Colleges). It is in alignment
with similar calls by NBAC (National Bioethics Advisory
Commission), SDB (Society for Developmental Biology), FASEB
(Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology) and
others and is an excellent response to public sensitivities on
this controversial research. A voluntary moratorium avoids the
pitfalls of legislation while allowing a pause for discussion.
Such a moratorium should be extended to human germline
engineering as well, since it also is at so early a stage of
development that its clinical application to humans would be
exceedingly reckless.

Any bills to register opposition to human cloning should be
crafted to minimize subsidiary damages they might cause.
Specifically, they should:

Apply only to the act of cloning a human child identical to an
existing adult.

Explicitly state that they do not seek to limit biomedical
research.[ Any ban of the cloning of DNA, cells, or tissues
could disrupt vital areas of medical research such as stem-cell
research.]

Contain a sunset provision.

Contact:
Dr. Gregory Stock
UCLA Program on Science, Technology and Society
Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life
405 Hilgard Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1567
(310) 825-9715
gstock at ess.ucla.edu
www.ess.ucla.edu/huge
==============

Center for Genetics and Society : James Watson's Legacy
http://biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=3723
7.10.22

Over the past half century, millions have known James Watson for
his Nobel Prize and double-helix fame. Only last week did most
learn about James Watson, bigot and eugenics enthusiast.
Watson now says, [19]"That is not what I meant." But take a look at
these statements by him, stretching back years. And he's not the
only one; some of his colleagues have joined him in advocating for
a new high-tech eugenics.
Do you have a Watson quote we've missed? Post it as a comment
below, and we'll add it to the list. Please be sure to include
citation.
On race and intelligence
[A]ll our social policies are based on the fact that [Africans']
intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not
really [P]eople who have to deal with black employees find
[equality] is not true.

Interview with [20]The Times of London, October 14, 2007

"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual
capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution
should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve
equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will
not be enough to make it so."

[21]Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science (2007)

On "stupid" kids, ugly girls, and enhanced children
"If you really are stupid, I would call that a disease.... The
lower 10 percent who really have difficulty, even in elementary
school, what's the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say,
'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't. So I'd like
to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 percent...."
"It seems unfair that some people dont get the same opportunity.
Once you have a way in which you can improve our children, no one
can stop it. It would be stupid not to use it because someone else
will. Those parents who enhance their children, then their children
are going to be the ones who dominate the world..."
"People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I
think it would be great...."
"I think it's irresponsible not to try and direct evolution to
produce a human being who will be an asset to the world."

[22]DNA, British documentary, March 2003

"Then I am a eugenicist"
"My view is that, despite the risks, we should give serious
consideration to germ-line gene therapy. I only hope that the many
biologists who share my opinion will stand tall in the debates to
come and not be intimidated by the inevitable criticism ... If such
work be called eugenics, then I am a eugenicist."

[23]DNA: The Secret of Life, 2003

On sex and discriminating against overweight people
Watson proposed that skin color and sex drive are linked. "That's
why you have Latin lovers. You've never heard of an English lover.
Only an English patient."
Watson proposed that thinness and ambition are linked, and thus
thin people are better hires. "When you interview fat people, you
feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them."

"[24]The Pursuit of Happiness: Lessons from pom-C," Watson's
lecture at University of California, Berkeley, October 2000

Let's play God
"If scientists don't play God, who will?"

Addressing members of the British Parliamentary and Scientific
Committee, May 2000

Embracing the Master Race
"Here we must not fall into the absurd trap of being against
everything Hitler was for.... Because of Hitler's use of the term
Master Race, we should not feel the need to say that we never want
to use genetics to make humans more capable than they are today."

[25]A Passion for DNA: Genes, Genomes, and Society, 2000

On inheritable human genetic modification
"I'm afraid of asking people what they think. Don't ask Congress to
approve it. Just ask them for the money to help their constituents.
That's what they want.... Frankly, they would care much more about
having their relatives not sick than they do about ethics and
principles. We can talk principles forever, but what the public
actually wants is not to be sick. And if we help them not be sick,
they'll be on our side....
"If we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes,
why shouldn't we? What's wrong with it? Evolution can be just damn
cruel, and to say that we've got a perfect genome and there's some
sanctity?"

[26]Engineering the Human Germline, symposium at University of
California Los Angeles, March 20, 1998

Aborting fetuses with a "gay gene"
"If you could find the gene which determines sexuality and a woman
decides she doesn't want a homosexual child, well, let her."

[27]The Telegraph, February 16, 1997

On the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications program of the Human
Genome Project
"I wanted a group that would talk and talk and never get anything
done," Andrews quotes Watson as telling a meeting. "And if they did
do something, I wanted them to get it wrong. I wanted as its head
Shirley Temple Black."

Quoted by Lori Andrews in [28]The Clone Age: Adventures in the
New World of Reproductive Technology

More on Hitler
The time has come to "put Hitler behind us," Watson said, urging
Germany to put more resources into genetic research.

[29]Keynote speech to a conference on molecular medicine in
Berlin, May 1997

Comments

1. Comment by Keith Tayler, Oct 30th, 2007 6:18am
The problem is that there are hundeds, if not thousands,
of scientists and philosophers that think the same. Just
as with the first wave of Anglo-American eugentics (1880
to 1945), it has begun again among scientists and
pseudo-scientists. The foundations of what happened in
Germany were in place by the beginning of the 20th C..

2. Comment by Evelyne Shuster, Oct 29th, 2007 7:22am
What else could you add to these quotes? Comments by
Watson himself speak for themselves. No comment.
Evelyne Shuster, PhD
Philosopher and Medical Ethicist

References

19. 
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/18/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-US-Scientist-Racism.php
20. 
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2630748.ece
21. 
http://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Boring-People-Lessons-Science/dp/0375412840
22. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903750/
23. http://www.amazon.com/DNA-Secret-James-D-Watson/dp/0375415467
24. 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/11/13/MN111208.DTL
25. http://www.amazon.com/Passion-DNA-Genes-Genomes-Society/dp/0879695811
26. 
http://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Human-Germline-Exploration-Altering/dp/0195133021/
27. 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1997/02/16/nabort16.html
28. 
http://www.amazon.com/Clone-Age-Adventures-Reproductive-Technology/dp/0805060804
29. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/276/5314/892
=============

Center for Genetics and Society : Watson's World
http://geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=154
2003.4.18

by Susan Lindee, Science
Vol. 300, No. 5618

A review of James D. Watson, with Andrew Berry, DNA: The Secret of
Life (New York: Knopf, 2003), and Victor K. McElheny, Watson and
DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2003)

The time has come, in the world of James D. Watson, to leave behind
societal fears of genetic technologies. It is time to start using
germ-line genetic engineering to make people who are more
intelligent, more attractive, and resistant to HIV. It is time to
use genetically modified organisms to improve the environment and
end world hunger. And it is time for everyone to contribute their
DNA to databases, both private and public. Fortunately, there is no
need to worry too much about abuse, injustice, commodification,
technical error, or social stratification grounded in biological
difference. Such worries are groundless because science shows that
people are biologically inclined to care about one another and to
care about building a good society. The Bible also mentions how
important human love is.

Despite their propensity for caring, of course, people are often
fanatical, unscientific, ignorant, dishonest, prone to "Luddite
paranoia," irrational, and unwilling to accept the true facts that
science reveals--as Watson notes in his latest public promotion of
genomics, DNA: The Secret of Life. People just need to stop
worrying so much about power and money. It is true that politics
and economics do drive science, but Watson insists that they should
be irrelevant to its assessment. And people also need to stop
worrying so much about "the human spirit." The idea that there "is
no gene for the human spirit" reflects irrational prejudice. People
wish that there were no such gene and this constitutes "a dangerous
blind spot in our society." In any case, back in 1953, molecular
ghostbusters Watson and Crick cleared out any spirits that might be
hanging around inside the cell: "Is there something divine at the
heart of a cell that brings it to life? The double helix answered
that question with a definitive No."

I have just summarized the normative framework that drives Watson's
book. The alert reader might well ask how such a convoluted nexus
of belief and prophecy could gain cultural legitimacy, or even a
sympathetic publisher. What forces made this incoherent tangle of
mysticism, historical ignorance, religiosity, corporatism,
exaggerated technocratic rationality, intemperance, and social
naïveté plausible to so many people? Or even to James D. Watson? It
would be comforting to attribute all to Watson himself, but both
the texts reviewed here suggest Watson is merely a potent sign of
what has happened to the biological sciences in the last 50 years.
Biology is now an important corporate sector, and Watson is a
captain of industry. Indeed, in his latest account of himself,
written with Harvard biologist Andrew Berry, as well as in Victor
McElheny's biography Watson and DNA, Watson emerges as that richly
American character, the great salesman. And salesmen, as every
attentive consumer knows, sometimes hedge on the details.

These two books join a wave of texts and events celebrating the
50th anniversary of the elucidation of the helical structure of
DNA. Watson's book is linked to a five-part television series
(which airs this month on PBS) and provides an overview of the
history, science, and politics of DNA. McElheny, a science
journalist who has covered molecular biology for decades and worked
for Watson at Cold Spring Harbor, finds Watson boyishly charming
and refers to him as "Jim" throughout the book. His biography is
written in strong journalistic style, thick with quotations from
people who were there. McElheny presents his subject's life as a
high-energy, high-action sequence of personal confrontations--with
nature, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory advisors and investors,
other scientists, Bernadine Healy at the National Institutes of
Health, ignorant critics of science, and so on. The biography
briefly touches on Watson's personal life, but it offers little
exploration of the interior person. Watson is all gossip, public
pronouncements, machinations, clever intrigue, and shock value. The
result is a fast-paced, though flat, account intended to appeal to
the general public.

Watson's own book has the same intended audience, but broader
goals. Whereas McElheny's book primarily promotes Watson, Watson's
book promotes his views of what the findings of molecular biology
tell us about ourselves and our world. It mentions data suggesting
racial differences in intelligence, sexual differences in
mathematical ability, the inheritance of genes for violence (are
these on the Y chromosome?), and the biological tendency of younger
women to marry older men (as in Watson's own life story).

Throughout his account, Watson is unconstrained by either evidence
or logic. For example, stressing that DNA predicts just about
everything, he repeats the common claim that DNA reveals what is
most important about individual human beings. However, he also
believes that no one should be too concerned about making their own
DNA freely available to the criminal justice system, the military,
employers, the education system, health care insurers, and so on.

Anyone who is concerned about privacy, he suggests, is not thinking
clearly. In another example, he invokes the existence of a
bioethics industry to suggest that there is no reason to get too
worked up about ethical concerns: The ethicists are on the job; the
public can relax. But the reason ethicists have taken an interest
in genomics is that it is an endeavor that could lead to practices
devastating to human rights, a potential exacerbated by the
pronouncements such as Watson's. The bioethics industry built
around genomics is a sign not that the public should be complacent,
but that it should actively resist the kinds of answers provided in
Watson's book.

If Watson, for example, wants to theorize about world hunger,
perhaps he should consult the work of his fellow Nobelist Amartya
Sen. Sen has demonstrated, (through finely textured, detailed,
specific, and data-rich accounts of major famines since 1943) that
famines are not simply the result of inadequate food supplies. They
are the result of economic systems (1). People can starve when the
grain elevators are full; they can have enough to eat when crop
yields are disastrous. India, for example, has in recent years
faced dual crises of both overproduction of food and profound
malnutrition. By December 2000, millions of tons of wheat and rice
stocks were rotting in India's granaries, while 1.5 million
children were dying annually of diseases linked to malnutrition.
Promoters of genetically modified organisms often claim that anyone
opposed to transgenic crops is turning a blind eye to the needs of
those who are starving. But the anthropologist Glenn Davis Stone
has suggested that the real moral outrage is the strategic use of
hungry people to justify corporate programs to develop these crops.
"Malthusian biotechnologists need to explain why crop genetic
modification will feed hungry Indians when 41.2 million tons of
excess grain will not" (2). Famine is an economic and political
phenomenon. It cannot, therefore, be eliminated by genetically
modified organisms or by any food product, though Watson seems to
think it can. When Watson turns to the Icelandic genome, he again
gives the story a meaning that the details cannot sustain. The
Icelandic genome was sold to investors on the premise that
Icelanders were a uniquely homogeneous population. deCODE Genetics
arranged a deal with

Iceland's parliament to construct and market to pharmaceutical
companies a database that combined Icelandic genotypes, medical
records, and genealogies. These companies could then study genetic
predispositions to common conditions such as cancer and heart
disease. But if Icelanders were no more homogeneous than any other
population, they would be far less valuable commercially and
scientifically. Einar Arnason, at the University of Iceland, has
demonstrated that Icelanders are among the most genetically
heterogeneous populations in Europe. Those who calculated Icelandic
homogeneity in the early promotional years were using public
databases of mitochondrial DNA, databases now known to be filled
with errors. Arnason tracked down the errors, proved that they were
there by contacting the original authors, and used blood group and
allozyme variation (in conjunction with more accurate DNA data) to
show that the Icelanders have experienced, unsurprisingly, plenty
of genetic admixture (3). Earlier conclusions were based,
essentially, on typographical mistakes (4, 5); as molecular
geneticist Peter Forster has wryly observed, the "postgenomic age
promises to become a proofreading age" (6). Like the investors and
the buyers, the Icelanders themselves were conned into a corporate
scheme that was the equivalent of selling swampland, entering into
arrangements that profoundly compromised their priv