Silicon Valley philanthropists have become an important source of funding for blue sky biotechnology projects in recent years. The co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, gave US$100 million a few years ago for brain research. This has just borne fruit with the publication of a genetic map of the mouse brain. His partner Bill Gates and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar both supported a successful campaign in California to authorise a US$3 billion bond issue for embryonic stem cell research.
But, as speculative as these might seem, they pale beside the US$3.5 million boost from the co-founder of PayPal, Peter A. Thiel, towards 5,000 year lifespans. The recipient of his largesse is the Methuselah Foundation, the creation of Aubrey de Grey, a 43-year-old English scientist who believes that ageing has seven causes. Once these are licked, we can hope for immortality.
"I'm backing Dr de Grey, because I believe that his revolutionary approach to ageing research will accelerate this process, allowing many people alive today to enjoy radically longer and healthier lives for themselves and their loved ones," Mr Thiel explained.
Amongst ageing experts, de Grey, a former researcher at Cambridge University in the UK, is regarded as a brilliant eccentric, but he is firmly convinced that "engineered negligible senescence" is possible. His critics object that even if he were successful, the planet would be full to bursting with elderly invalids. "Maybe people of the future will decide that children are not much fun anyway and will reduce the birth rate," he responds.
Some of de Grey's critics amongst scientists complain that he is a publicity-seeking pseudo-scientist, although he maintains that he has published many papers "that provide the scientific basis for my optimism". Although a 5,000-year lifespan (assuming that you don't walk under a bus) sounds wildly optimistic, he believes that it will be possible for people born as early as 2025.
In an interview with Technology Review in 2004, he explained his position. "If ageing already didn't exist but we did have all the other causes of death at the rates we have them now -- infectious diseases that kill young people, car accidents, wars -- then basically you come out 1,000 years that people would live on average, plus or minus a few hundred. I tend to say it will be more like 5,000 years simply because when society is faced with the opportunity to live an arbitrary length of time, we will become more risk averse." ~ San Francisco Chronicle, Sept 28; Technology Review, Apr 9, 2004
BRITISH SCIENTISTS IMPRESSED BY POSSIBILITY OF STEM CELL REPROGRAMMING
Two leading UK stem cell scientists, Azim Surani, and Anne McLaren, have given top marks to the Japanese discovery that adult cells can be reprogrammed to revert to an embryonic stem cell-like state. In an article earlier this year in the journal Cell, Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi, of Kyoto University, found that when four factors were turned on, adult mouse cells reverted to ES-like cells. In principle, say their British colleagues in Nature, the technique should also work with human cells.
If so, it could eventually be used to deliver all of the promised benefits of the ethically more contentious cells derived from human embryos: cellular therapies and greater understanding of how genetic factors influence diseases like diabetes. In an upbeat conclusion to their review, they write: "This approach may eventually eliminate the need to use early embryos for deriving stem cells -- an enticing objective, but one that will require extensive research on both mouse and human ES cells." ~ Nature, Sept 21
NEW ORLEANS DOCTOR DEFENDS HERSELF AGAINST KATRINA KILLINGS
A New Orleans ear, nose and throat specialist accused, along with two nurses, of four mercy killings in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has denied the charges. Speaking on the US current affairs program 60 Minutes, Dr Anna Pou said "No, I did not murder those patients... I've spent my entire life taking care of patients. I have no history of doing anything other than good for my patients. I do the best of my ability. Why, would I suddenly start murdering people? It doesn't make sense."
However District Attorney Charles Foti, who has spent nearly a year investigating what happened, insists that a crime was committed. "Even respected people make bad choices," he says.
Local doctors are dismayed. They believe that Dr Pou might have given patients pain relief, but that she did not intend to murder them. "I was shocked and dismayed when the attorney general chose to go after good Samaritans when the city is overrun with thugs," commented Dr Ben deBoisblanc, one of Dr Pou's colleagues. ~ Times-Picayune, Sept 25
ITALY ROILED BY EUTHANASIA ROW
It's time for a debate about the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia, says the President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano. He was responding to an open letter from a 60-year-old man paralysed by muscular dystrophy, Piergiorgio Welby, who says that he should be entitled to end "a cruelly biological survival". Napolitano declared that he had been "deeply moved and touched" and that he wanted Italian parliamentarians to debate the issue.
In Catholic Italy, many law makers are staunch opponents of the proposal, which was also hammered by the Vatican as "murder". The Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, has not commented, but his predecessor, now the leader of the opposition, Silvio Berlusconi, said that a national debate would be divisive and unproductive. ~ ANSA, Sept 25
SPACED OUT BIOETHICS
How far can the profession of bioethics take you? Possibly into outer space, it seems. NASA has recently engaged its first chief bioethicist, Paul Root Wolpe, of the University of Pennsylvania, to help it think through knotty ethical issues about space flight. Currently he is working on policies for long flights to Mars and the moon, which could begin by 2020. He deals with such problems as how to deal with a psychotic crew member who attacks his comrades or the amount of radiation to which astronauts can be safely exposed. ~ Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept 24
PETER SINGER DRAWS A LINE IN THE SAND
Australian bioethicist Peter Singer has a reputation of supporting nearly any form of technological progress, no matter how much it may conflict with traditional ethical values. But his critics may be interested to know that he does not give an unqualified Yes to everything.
In a recent article in the Guardian, Singer expresses his misgivings about the growing practice of genetic selection of children. This has become more widespread with the expansion of the range and quality of genetic tests. Is this eugenics? asks Singer. Yes, it is, but in liberal, market-driven societies, it will not be the totalitarian eugenics of the past. There is nothing essentially wrong with it. Still, he says, it offers "perils as well as blessings".
The perils have nothing to do with destroying embryos or foetuses, but with social inequity. Parents who select their chidden on the basis of sex desire the best for their child, but all children will be worse off, because of an increasingly distorted sex ratio, as in China and India. And, warns Singer, widespread demand for selecting children with a superior genetic make-up could be dangerous as well.
"Since above-average height correlates with above-average income, and there is clearly a genetic component to height, it is not fanciful to imagine couples choosing to have taller children. The outcome could be a genetic 'arms race' that leads to taller and taller children, with significant environmental costs in the additional consumption required to fuel larger human beings.
"The most alarming implication of this mode of genetic selection, however, is that only the rich will be able to afford it. The gap between rich and poor, already a challenge to our ideas of social justice, will become a chasm that mere equality of opportunity will be powerless to bridge. That is not a future that any of us should approve."
What is to be done? Singer is unsure. Banning genetic selection, in his eyes, smacks of totalitarian coercion. Permitting it will require enormously expensive subsidies to poor parents. ~ Comment is Free (Guardian), Sept 19
IN BRIEF: NEJM, stem cell source
NEJM & STEM CELLS: the New England Journal of Medicine has again expressed its strong support for therapeutic cloning. The deputy editor of the prestigious journal, Dr Robert S. Schwartz, wrote in an official commentary in the current issue that " Research on stem cells will encounter many twists and turns, but it is an endeavour that is eminently worth pursuing. The delay of medical advances by theological disputes is not in the best interests of the sick and disabled." ~ NEJM, Sept 21
ANOTHER SOURCE: a leading stem cell researcher working in Spain has claimed that embryonic stem cells can be garnered from dead embryos. Writing in the journal Stem Cells, Miodrag Stojkovic, of the Prince Felipe Research Center in Spain, says that he managed to create a stem cell line from an embryo which had stopped growing. His interpretation of the results was criticised by both sides of the debate. How can we know if the embryo was dead if it produced live stem cells, asked Rev Tad Pacholczyk, of the National Catholic Bioethics Center. And Dr George Daley, of the Harvard Stem Cell Center, says that a genetic defect in the cells may have caused its death, making it useless for therapeutic purposes. ~ AP, Sept 22
