Category Archives: Bioethics

Got Human Milk?

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Well cows do.

Flickr: MShades

Just when you thought that mankind couldn’t abuse the Bos taurus in any other way, apparently Chinese scientists got bored and decided to insert 300 human genes into a cow to make it produce what they call ’human milk’.

What was surely a drunken bet between two scientists has developed into a highly controversial issue.

 The Royal Society for the Protection of Animals as well as Helen Wallace, the director of GeneWatch, join natural breast milk stock holders in thier concern about the genetic alteration of cows.

The leader into the frontier of ‘human-like-milk’, Professor Li, claims

Human milk contains the ‘just right’ proportions of protein, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, and vitamins for an infant’s optimal growth and development.

And not only is it good for your children, but Li’s got plans:

We aim to commercialize some research in this area in coming three years. For the “human-like milk”, 10 years or maybe more time will be required to finally pour this enhanced milk into the consumer’s cup.

Photo: uned.es

Got that? In tens years mothers’ breasts across the world will be liberated from their children! The scientific drive to eradicate any maternal connection among man perseveres!

Pesticides will soon include potentially toxic nanoparticles

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Pesticide manufacturers expect that — by incorporating nanomaterials into their products — they can help farmers spray their fields more efficiently, losing less pesticide to “environmental drift,” for example.

But as with GMOs, the federal government has no existing protocols for testing nanoparticles (which behave in ways that are dramatically different from larger scale materials). before they are used in consumer and industrial products.

Oregon State University scientists also warn that researchers have found that six out of 40 nanomaterials (in a cancer study) “evoked a toxic response, most of which was linked to a specific surface chemistry that scientists now know to avoid.”

via New approaches needed to gauge safety of nanotech-based pesticides | News & Research Communications | Oregon State University.

More potential evidence of Tylenol's toxicity

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Photo: Eric Lewis/Flickr CC

It might be time to throw out your Tylenol. Consider: filthy manufacturing facilities, mounting evidence of disease and overdose risk from the drug, and viable alternatives for pain reduction… MB

Asthma and other diseases are far more likely to occur in kids who get even a single dose of acetaminophen per month, a study finds:

There was a significant association between acetaminophen use and risk of asthma and eczema. For medium users the risk of asthma 43 percent higher than non-users; high users had 2.51 times the risk of non-users. Similarly, the risk of rhinoconjunctivitis allergic nasal congestion was 38 percent higher for medium users and 2.39 times as great for high users compared to non-users. For eczema, the relative risks were 31 percent and 99 percent respectively.

It’s not a causal link, the authors note. But it is a strong association.

via Acetaminophen Use in Adolescents Linked to Doubled Risk of Asthma.

How depression damages the brain (and how SSRIs might make it worse)

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Photo: Gisela Giardino/Flickr CC

The University of Massachusetts Medical School researchers now suspect that inflammation, caused by major depressive episodes, might cause brain damage leading to dementia.

But SSRIs, such as Prozac and Zoloft, which are typically used to treat depression, also cause inflammation.

This CNN article (link and excerpt, below), does not mention SSRI’s, but instead echoes the researchers’ calls for treatment of depression in the elderly. (More to come on this subject.)

The findings, published in the journal Neurology, are based on nearly 1,000 people who were studied for up to 17 years. Researchers evaluated them for depression and dementia using standard clinical tests. Those who were depressed when first examined almost doubled their risk for dementia and also increased their risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

via Depression may raise risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s, study says – CNN.com.

Synthetic life starts with this cell

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Craig Venter & Co. announced this breakthrough today:

Daniel Gibson and colleagues have put both methods together, to create what they call a “synthetic cell,” although only its genome is synthetic. In this case, the synthetic genome was a copy of an existing genome, though with added DNA sequences that “watermark” the genome to distinguish it from a natural one. In the future, the scientists would like to design more novel genomes that would make bacteria capable of performing specific tasks that could help solve energy, environmental or other problems.

via Science AAAS.

Childfree movement gets its greenwash

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Part of the problem. Photo: Alan Turkus

I am  sure that some in the childfree movement feel so self-conscious about their choice not to raise kids that they need, occasionally, to create a smug, in-your-face manifesto.

The latest missive from the childfree movement, which has been around since the 1960s, comes in awash in green.

Lisa Hymas, in an essay at Grist*, claims that humans who choose not nurture other humans are making an admirable choice for the planet, and their pocketbooks.

Hymas, a disciple of Al Gore and Stephanie Mills of the Post Carbon Institute (think about that one, for a moment), writes that being childfree is a “luxurious indulgence that just so happens to cost a lot less for me and weigh a lot less on the carbon-bloated atmosphere.”

Hymas does not avoids mentioning adoption, abortion or infanticide, issues that would have introduced some ethical complexity to the piece.

The green solution, according to a Grist editor and blogger.

Hymas also uses a hackneyed rhetorical technique — the false premise — to get her point across.

She suggests, without any supporting evidence, that people with kids typically look down on those who have none.

A link to HuffPo’s coverage of Hymas’ manifesto, is below.

via Ultimate Way to Go Green? Don’t Have Kids, Writer Lisa Hymas Says – AOL News.

*Note: I have written for Grist myself, about environmental issues.

Pot helps schizophrenics feel better, study finds

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Nurses have found that their patients use pot to combat symptoms. Photo: Doktor Design Love/Flickr CC

While at least two studies have found an association between cannabis use and schizophrenia, none have established that pot causes the symptoms associated with the disease.

Now, in the first study that bothers to ask schizophrenics why they take the drug, patients report using pot to ease some of their tormenting symptoms:

“The findings indicate that cannabis is used as a means of satisfying the schizophrenia-related need for relaxation, sense of self-worth, and distraction. The findings may be useful for nurses working with persons who have schizophrenia, a population that is frequently stigmatized and unheard.”

via Attraction to cannabis among men with schizophreni… [Can J Nurs Res. 2010] – PubMed result.

Tylenol's trust issue: kids' meds made in grimy US plant

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Photo: Woodley Wonderworks/Flickr CC

Now, it’s American manufacturers who appear to be making poor quality meds, in filthy, grimy plants, and shipping them to the rest of the world. — MB

I’ve been railing against Tylenol for a long time, now.

I do not trust this drug.

Each year, tens of thousands of overdoses of acetaminophen, Tylenol’s active ingredient, fill US emergency rooms and hospital beds, and jam the phone lines at poison control centers. And it is the cause of hundreds of cases of acute liver failure in the US each year.

Now, Johnson & Johnson, which makes Tylenol, finds itself plagued by a quality control problem:

“Raw materials used to make over-the-counter infant’s and children’s medications, which are subject to a massive recall, tested positive for bacterial contamination, according to a Food and Drug Administration inspection report released late Tuesday.”

via FDA finds bacterial contamination in children’s medicine ingredients – latimes.com.

Darwin: victim of bad breeding

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Photo: Michael Bridgen/Flickr CC

A new article in the journal, BioScience, strikes me as being one about a ruthless, not a hapless, family. — MB

The Darwin family’s inbreeding created some misery for its youngest members, a new report suggests. (Charles Darwin, who married his first cousin, is the son of Susannah Wedgwood, the daughter of third cousins.)

“Three of Charles Darwin’s 10 children died before reaching adulthood, one from childhood tuberculosis at age 10 and one from unknown causes as an infant. A third child, who died in infancy of scarlet fever, appears in a photograph to have developmental abnormalities…Furthermore, three of Darwin’s six children with long-term marriages left no offspring. Unexplained infertility may also be a consequence of a consanguineous marriage.

Oddly, the scientists offer up this bit, as if to say, the Darwin-Wedgwood breeding effort was worth it, despite the dead babies:

“On the other hand, three of Darwin’s sons were fellows of the Royal Society and were knighted by Queen Victoria.”

via Inbreeding may have caused Darwin family ills.

Seen a djinn? There's a pill for that

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Photo: Fernando de Sousa/Flickr CC

Psychiatrists are enlisting holy men to keep the fantastic at bay. — MB

When a 30-year-old Muslim factory worker in Holland complained to his doctors about “a white figure in the basement who asked him ‘What are you doing here?’” a Dutch psychiatrist pinned the visions on obsessive-compulsive disorder, and prescribed cognitive behavioral therapy and an SSRI — the Gold Standard treatment for OCD.

“But because the patient believed he was being taunted by a djinn (loosely speaking, a mischievous spirit), his doctor enlisted the patient’s imam to disabuse him of that notion.”

The patient, as this report (below) shows in 2009, refused to cooperate.

But a door between psychiatry and religion appears to be opening:

We recommend to ask individuals with an Islamic background specifically whether djinns might be involved, especially in cases of mental problems and unexplained symptoms, and to seek the cooperation of a qualified imam or traditional healer for treatment purposes.

I wonder, then, whether science or religion will prevail, when holy men and healers prescribe their own remedies for the demon-haunted.

via [Hallucinations attributed to djinns] [Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd. 2009] – PubMed result.