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Biotech Science

Playing God with Monsters 343

Posted by Hemos from the lookiing-into-the-minds-of-terrible dept.
Howard writes "Horrified by "There Be Monsters Here" tales, some members of Congress called for a ban on DNA research in the mid '70s. Because those calls were rejected, millions of people around the world can now hope for DNA-based vaccines against AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases that have destroyed lives, communities and nations. Here's an illustration: The name of Joseph DeRisi keeps coming up in connection with deadly diseases. No, he's not a modern-day Typhoid Mary. Just the opposite. The University of California, San Francisco researcher is using his own custom-built DNA microarrays to look inside the "minds" of some serious serial killers. The "minds" are genes, and his home-brewed gene chips helped solve the SARS mystery earlier this year. Now, DeRisi has chosen malaria as his next victim. For the complete commentary, please go to Howard Lovy's NanoBot."
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Playing God with Monsters More

Playing God with Monsters

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  • Stem cell research (Score:5, Insightful)

    by knodi ( 93913 ) <softwaredevelope ... m ['l.c' in gap]> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:13PM (#6689569)
    Perhaps some observant legislator will draw a parallel between the benefits of DNA research that have already been reaped without any of the scary "uber-monster" side effects, and use that to help lift the ban on human stem cell research?

    (hint hint)

    • Re:Stem cell research (Score:5, Insightful)

      by the_flatlander ( 694162 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:23PM (#6689669)
      Our Fearless Leader told us stem-cell research and human cloning would be morally wrong. (Dropping bombs on Afgan and Iraqii civilians, well, that's okay.) The first thing moralist do is attack any new science. Galleo wound up in trouble for proposing that the Earth orbited the sun. (Oddly, eventual wide acceptance of that information did not lead to the fall of the Church.) It is the [unpleasant] duty of scientists to ignore the politicians, and pursue the clues Nature provides.
      • "Oddly, eventual wide acceptance of that information did not lead to the fall of the Church." Oddly, not everything has to be taken absolutely literally. Have you ever heard of a metaphor? While I don't want to get into a long debate about the veracity of my beliefs, suffice it to say that I doubt that stone age people would've understood a literal account of creation. "The first thing moralist do is attack any new science." That's right, generalize! I can be punished for another person's actions simply

        • Re:Stem cell research (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Ken Broadfoot ( 3675 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @05:00PM (#6689983) Homepage Journal
          "I for one want a leader with the balls to stand up for what s/he thinks is right."

          It would be nice if "what s/he thinks is right" had ANYTHING to do with reality. In our case, we (USA) are fscked. I feel sorry for the Brits too.

          --ken

        • Re:Stem cell research (Score:5, Insightful)

          by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:39PM (#6690621)
          I for one want a leader with the balls to stand up for what s/he thinks is right.

          I do too, I just don't like it when they impose their views on their country. Recently the mayor of Edmonton Bill Smith had a press conference. He was very emotional and went on about how he felt homosexulality was morally wrong and went against everything he was brought up to believe in. He then said it was his duty as mayor to have gay pride parades. Similarly with gay marriages quite a number of officials from the Catholic church said that any politicians who allowed gay marriages would burn in hell. Prime Minister Cretien said that his first duty was as Prime Minister and is in the process of allowing them (well the courts already did that parliment is drafting legislation now, it's a long story). The thing is that in both cases the leader stated their beliefs and stood up for them but did not impose that belief upon their constituents, that's the kind of leader I feel most comfertable with.

      • Re:Stem cell research (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Rostin ( 691447 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:42PM (#6689840)
        Actually, it was Copernicus that first championed that idea, and he was not condemned by the church for it. In fact, the majority of the people who didn't like the idea, the people who Galileo continued to contend with, were academics who held that the earth had to be the center of the universe because of their adherence to Aristotelean philosophy. Galileo did have a run in with the church, but it had nothing to do with geocentrism, and it was a far cry less serious than has been popularly portrayed. The story about Galileo, representing Science, vs Big Bad Irrational Religion, protrayed by the Catholic Chruch, is a myth. I leave you to speculate as to why it is such a popular one.

        • Re:Stem cell research (Score:2, Insightful)

          by rjmx ( 233228 )
          > Actually, it was Copernicus that first
          > championed that idea, and he was not
          > condemned by the church for it.

          ...probably mostly because he wouldn't let his book detailing his theories be published till he was on his deathbed.

          Safer that way.

        • Have a cite for your revisionist history, or would that spoil the fun?

          • Re:Stem cell research (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Rostin ( 691447 )
            Off topic though it may be: 'From 1613, however, Galileo unambiguously asserted that the earth literally moves around the sun and popularized his views in snappy Italian rather than the arcane Latin of the universities. This put his work at the top of the seventeenth-century bestsellers list, but it did not endear him to his academic colleagues. Galileo was first and foremost opposing Aristotle, not the Bible, and for the majority of early-seventeenth-century astonomers, this put him on the fringes of "s

            • Re:Stem cell research (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Lars T. ( 470328 ) <.moc.liamelgoog. .ta. .regearT.sraL.> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:45PM (#6690657) Journal
              Very nice. Now for some facts [christiananswers.net]. [Excerpt]
              In 1632, Galileo completed his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems -- Ptolemaic & Copernican. This publication, a twelve year effort, presented all the arguments for and against the two great world systems--the Copernican (sun centered) and the Aristotelian or Ptolemaic (earth centered). Galileo also warned the Church of a trap they were walking into:

              "Take note, theologians, that in your desire to make matters of faith out of propositions relating to the fixity of sun and earth you run the risk of eventually having to condemn as heretics those who would declare the earth to stand still and the sun to change position--eventually, I say, at such a time as it might be physically or logically proved that the earth moves and the sun stands still."[16]

              The Roman Catholic hierarchy and their Aristotlean-Ptolemaic advisors did not heed this advice. The Roman Curia promptly banned and confiscated Galileo's monumental work; and it became the basis for his second trial, censure, and lifetime house arrest by the Holy Office of the Inquisition in 1633. The Roman Catholic Church convicted him of breaking his agreement of 1616 and of teaching the Copernican theory as a truth and not a hypothesis. They suspected him of holding heretical opinions condemned by the Church, which they ordered him to abjure [abandon a false opinion]. Seven of the ten Cardinals presiding signed his condemnation.[17]

              The Holy Tribunal in Galileo's condemnation states: "The proposition that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world and immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically, and theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith."[18]

              Sure, compared to burning him at the stake, this was a nice treatment. And not only was he on "at the top of the seventeenth-century bestsellers list", but also on the Roman Church's Index of Prohibited Books until 1835. Last but not least, it took the Roman Catholic Church until 1981 to finaly pardon Galileo. Sure, some church officials including the Pope liked him - yet they didn't do much to help him, nor did they prevent that no Catholic was allowed to read his work for 200 years.
        • I was rather appalled when I discovered that the Jesuit high school I attended was named after the cardinal who headed the Vatican's case against Galileo. I didn't believe the Jesuits at first that Galileo was basically a (very smart, and utterly correct) grandstanding asshole who intentionally goaded the Church into reluctantly taking action against him, which even then was (as the parent poster said) quite restrained. He had many friends among the Church hierarchy, though fewer with each passing year as

          • Re:Stem cell research (Score:3, Interesting)

            by zenyu ( 248067 )
            To summarize, if Galileo had said "The Earth revolves around the Sun" and left it at that, he probably would have been ignored by the Church. Instead he said "The Earth revolves around the Sun, which contradicts Church doctrine, so the Church is full of idiots who are utterly, completely wrong about this, wow, look how stupid they are!" Big difference.

            This is overstating the case in the other direction. He simply wrote his book as a Socratic arguement. One voice would ask a question or make a statement ba

      • Re:Stem cell research (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Khomar ( 529552 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @05:05PM (#6690015) Journal

        With the very real possibility of earning a flamebait or troll....

        The moral issue with stem-cell research and cloning cannot possibly be compared with Galileo. The science Galileo offered threatened the misguided establishment at that time that taught that earth was the center of universe. It isn't the "new science" that is problem. It is the known facts and the resulting concerns for the sanctity of human life that are at issue.

        Cloning is very much in its initial stages of development, and it's early results with animals have been very questionable. Most animal clones either die quickly or are found to be deformed. Given the current track record, to attempt to clone a human would be to produce an individual whose life would be filled with pain and probably an early death. It is these very considerations that require massive amounts of testing on animals for any medical products to protect human lives.

        Stem-cell research is questionable due to the source of the material: abortions. While not composing all of the source of stem-cells, it certainly is a contributor. In this country where close to half of the population opposes abortion, I think it is reasonable to restrain public money from going toward something that so many find objectionable.

        When comparing these two issues with the war against Afganistan and Iraq, let me ask you a question. Is it better to attack aggressive nations and cruel dictators or to inflict suffering and death upon innocent children with unproven science? While there are certainly some who fear these developments for more dogmatic reasons, it does not mean that there are not rational arguments against them.

        • Re:Stem cell research (Score:5, Insightful)

          by cens0r ( 655208 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @05:18PM (#6690106) Homepage
          Stem-cell research is questionable due to the source of the material: abortions. While not composing all of the source of stem-cells, it certainly is a contributor. In this country where close to half of the population opposes abortion, I think it is reasonable to restrain public money from going toward something that so many find objectionable.

          I would agree if people were having abortions just to provide stem cells, but that isn't the case. No one is repeatedly getting pregnant and having abortions just to provide stem cells for research. The abortions are going to happen anyway. It just doesn't make sense to throw away the stem cells when they have value.
        • To add to that, I can't think of any pain and suffereing by any living being (human or otherwise) caused by the science that Copernicus and/or Gallileo were putting forth. That is, unless you count the emotional suffering that those who were having their base belief systems shattered by a different idea might have endured. Some people can't stand the idea that others have different ideas than they do. Then there are people who can't stand the idea of changing something, even as they're changing it.

          It's
        • Very well put.

          The abortion issue is not as cut and dried as you make it seem... In this country where close to half of the population opposes abortion...

          While I myself am strongly in the pro-life camp, in reality I believe most Americans disagree with both the pro-life and pro-choice positions. I'd estimate that 75% of the population want to see early abortions (first trimester) legally available, but 75% also wants to see late abortions (third trimester - after the baby is viable) banned. They subc

          • Let my bias and background be clear - I am an ethnically Jewish atheist/humanist in graduate school in molecular biology.

            Obviously - I am not concerned about the welfare of balls of cells roughly a millimeter in diameter. The creation of blastocysts, using in-vitro fertilization, to make clonal stem cells, does not trouble me in and of itself. No different from tumors or flakes of skin.

            However, when this is done, women need to undergo egg donation. The health effects of this procedure may be severe; study
      • > It is the [unpleasant] duty of scientists to ignore the politicians, and pursue the clues Nature provides.

        It is the duty of a scientist to search one's conscience, whether a goal is right, and the way to reach the goal is right.

        This is what Mengele and Oppenheimer are examples for. Both have shown us two different scientists, which we both surely don't want to become. The first, is one without a conscience, the second, is one with a plagued conscience.

        Oppenheimer's point of view was initially a simi
    • You know, for all the stink everybody makes about how the "ban" on stem cell research will hinder progress, I for one haven't noticed any change in my research practices since the "ban".

      I work in the Developmental Neurobiology Dept. of a large children's cancer research hospital (which shall remain nameless, but let's say it rhymes with "paint food"). I use stem cells on a regular basis (human embryonic kidney 293 cells (or HEK-293 for short)). And ya know what? I've never had the guv'ment come take my

      • >I use stem cells on a regular basis (human
        >embryonic kidney 293 cells (or HEK-293 for
        >short)). And ya know what? I've never had the
        >guv'ment come take my cells away. ...yet.

        Just you wait...and see what Bush and his minions are capable of doing to destroy scientific progresses...
        • They've already come under fire for: 1) manipulating studies, burying research they don't like, and basically politicizing government science and intel 2) encouraging third parties to SUE THE GOVERNMENT to get studies on things like global warming buried (that is, one branch of our government is encouraging people to sue another branch so it can spend our money defending itself)
      • Any legitimate researcher can get stem cells with little or no effort. Thus, all the fuss is quite pointless.

        There may be more strategy here than what it looks. As you say, you can get stem cells, and you are a legitimate researcher. Trying to heal children and trying to create mutants are two very different things. By already having the law on the books, the government can step in a and shut down an operation that is perversive to human kind, while giving dedicated, child healing doctors a blind eye.
      • My understanding of the ban was that no NEW stem cell lines could be created with federal money. So you can do research with the existing cell lines. So are you using new cells or cells from an existing line?
      • 293 cells [atcc.org] are virus transformed - so they are fine for research, but medically useless.
      • For a biologist you don't seem to know much about stem cells. Last time I looked in a tissue culture flask you couldn't differentiate HEK293's into anything other than cancerous kidney cells which is what they are... The point of a stem cell is that it can differentiate into other cell types.

      • Re:Stem cell research (Score:4, Informative)

        by DocDendrite ( 666208 ) * <<moc.oohay> <ta> <etirdnedrotcod>> on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @09:45PM (#6691885)
        use stem cells on a regular basis (human embryonic kidney 293 cells (or HEK-293 for short)).

        Uhhhh, check your facts....293s are most definately NOT stem cells. They are a cell line derived from embryonic kidney cells. They have been severely fucked with to make them grow in cell culture. They are immortalized (probably by introducing an oncoprotein which abrogates the limit on number of cell divisions) and are severely mutated. All these modifications may even cause them to have extra chromosomes. They are a fairly common laboratory cell line and have zero therapeutic benefit.

        Stem cell lines are rare. Perhaps only a dozen exist and they are not immortalized. They were cultivated from human embryos and are pluripotent. That is, they are not already differentiated into kidney cells. In fact, they have the ability to differentiate into any other tissue type like neuronal, dental, or muscle. This could translate into disease treatments which benefit mankind significantly.

        The Bush Administration has made it difficult to work with stem cells since they banned the culturing of new lines. Therefore, the few existing lines have to be doled out by a handful of laboratories. This is very difficult for just a few labs and requires a lot of paperwork. Furthermore, since the lines aren't immortal the supply is tightly regulated.

        -DD

      • Re:Stem cell research (Score:3, Informative)

        by rhodak ( 697646 )
        I beg to differ. The HEK293 cell line can hardly be considered a "stem cell". It is transformed by adenovirus DNA, i.e., it is a tumor cell, and is not diploid, hypotriploid according to the ATCC. You seem to be confusing embryonic and stem cell. Embryonal stem cells are diploid and are not cancerous.

        http://www.atcc.org/SearchCatalogs/longview.cfm ? vi ew=ce,916189,CRL-1573&text=hek293&max=20

        HEK293 was derived in 1977 or thereabouts from the kidney of a human embryo (I assume because of the name).

    • Re:Stem cell research (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ded Bob ( 67043 )
      You are comparing apples and oranges. Are you not? The ban on human stem cell research using federal money (private still allowed?) from embryos is due more to morals than fears about monsters.

      Didn't they recently find that stems cells from baby teeth worked just as well? This should solve any moral arguments.
      • It doesn't solve the arguments, it would just make it less of an issue. If it were true that they do just as well for everything embroynic stem cells are used for (which I'm not sure is true). And morals differ. Some of us can't understand why anyone in their right mind would think that a culture of cells have moral interests when grown animals do not.
    • To write off the potential for bad things to happen through our knowledge of DNA, is as silly as writing off it's potential good. The good and the bad are both there to be used, it's just a matter of the people who have the knowledge to manipulate it. Knowledge and technology are power, but that power is amoral, it's up to the wielder of that power how to use it and there's no physical law prevent somebody for using it for the wrong reasons.

      Eventually somebody will have the knowledge and the will to use

  • Doesn't make sense (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:16PM (#6689599)
    you speak of the availablity of genetic research as being of benefit to humans.
    But that same genetic research, without a doubt, will ensure that humans will be genetically engineered into another species vastly more advanced than us, thereby meaning our own de-facto extinction.

    I have learned to be sceptical when people speak of 'progress' - progress to what? You wish to eliminate all human discomforts? You will eliminate humanity in the process.

    • What is humanity? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TuringTest ( 533084 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:29PM (#6689731) Journal
      Is humanity determined by the specific genotype you happen to have now? Any more that by your fenotype? If you do a aesthetic surgery, you are changing yourself into something that you couldn't naturally be. That too would make you less human?

      Changing your life habits to live longer and healthier don't make you less human. If that goal is achieved by changing your genes, would it be different? Or if you are made physically stronger so you don't need a fork lift truck to carry packages and now can do it manually, is that so important?

    • I have learned to be sceptical when people speak of 'progress' - progress to what?

      Actually, just more of a general term - progress, as in the opposite of Congress.

  • genetics revolution (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chloroquine ( 642737 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:18PM (#6689617) Journal
    I am a molecular biologist. I regularly read the news about criticisms of genetic engineering and stem cell research. I think that perhaps I should spend more time talking to my non-science friends about the positive things that have come from genetic engineering - insulin, the genetic testing (Tay Sachs screening is a good example), and so on. It is nice to read of more good examples in a not-completely biology setting.

  • Monster me! (Score:2, Funny)

    by RocketRay ( 13092 )
    God, shmod, I want my monkey-man!

  • Banning Research (Score:5, Insightful)

    by darkstar949 ( 697933 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:19PM (#6689631)
    With any luck these advances can be pointed out to those whom want to ban various froms of research in the future. Hopefully, people can come to realise that no research is "bad" or "evil", it just depends upon how the research is applied.
    • As an official Mad Scientist, Dr. Clayton Forrester [geocities.com] and his experiments on the Satellite of Love (continued by his mother Pearl) show the fallacy of your contention that no research is "bad" or "evil".
    • Yes, I'm sure Dr. Mengele's "research subjects" felt exactly the same way.

      I guess it's a good thing today's victims can't scream.

      There's nothing wrong with stem-cell research, as long as you're not killing people to get the stem-cells. Or getting someone else to do the dirty work either.

  • *Where* there be monsters? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by watchful.babbler ( 621535 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:19PM (#6689635) Homepage Journal
    While it's true that Congress wanted to ban (or sharply curtail) genetic research in the 1970s, it was the self-policing of the scientific community (at the Asilomar Conference) that convinced Congress not to enact legislative bans on the research. Asilomar showed that scientists were concerned about the ethical and public policy effects of their research, rather than being the Dr. Frankensteins so many members of the press and the anti-scientific left painted them to be.

    What we lack today is the same kind of scientific consensus-building process in ethical and policy matters. The inability of the research community to show that it cares about the moral, legal, political and social effects of its work has led to greater political scrutiny of that research, and acts such as the Executive Order limiting research into stem cells.

    So, to raise the obvious question, what chance do we have for another Asilomar? Can the scientific establishment convince the public that it's not hell-bent on progress at any price, or is modern bio-science too fragmented, too much a creature of academic, corporate, and social specialization to speak with a united voice again?

  • Cancer article at Wired (Score:5, Interesting)

    by john_smith_45678 ( 607592 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:21PM (#6689652) Journal
    There's a good article at Wired about the current state of affairs in the battle against cancer.

    The End of Cancer (As we Know it)

    Diagnosis. Chemotherapy. Radiation. Slow painful death. No more. A new era of cancer treatment is dawning. Meet three scientists who are using the revelations of the Human Genome Project to reshape medicine.

    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/cancer.ht ml?pg=2 [wired.com]

    They talk about micro-arrays, among other things.

  • Speaking as a representative for seial killers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ryvar ( 122400 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:26PM (#6689699) Homepage
    Speaking as a representative for seial killers everywhere, I for one find the wording of this post offensive. No mere simple biological 'machine' could replicate the beauty and artistry of my vast bodies of work in the field of serial killing.

    I for one hope Slashdot's editors issue an apology and a retraction.

  • Finally... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Guano_Jim ( 157555 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:27PM (#6689718)
    ...the world will know the glory of the FIVE-ASSED MONKEY!

    Or maybe not. Call your congresspeoples and demand your five-assed monkey.

  • But both the uses of the research (applications) and the priorities of the research need to be moderated by moral, ethical and social concerns. In particular, I am very disturbed by the huge amount of money put into research that benefits the rich, and the lack of money put into research that benefits everyone. Medical research tends towards helping the rich more than anyone else. For example the amount of research on heart disease far outstrips the amount of research on malaria.

    One book that really ins

    • Seriously: consider the fact that drug research for basically HEALTHY people DWARFS that for sick people. Vanity pills like Supfrexa Poplexa Dodecxla are much better profit makers than drugs that treat disease: because sick people tend to either die or better, and either way not need the medications anymore. Suckers who take "non-drowsy" allergy medicines or mood-fixers keep on buying for life.
    • It's because poor people can't (or won't) regulate or control their fucking reproduction (no pun) in any way. Catholics aside, most middle to upper class people I know have only one or two kids. Most poorer people I know have at least 3 kids already and they're only in their early 20s. I work with homeless single moms, I see this shit every day.

      That being said, over-population will become an even bigger problem because now folks are going to get less diseases and live even longer. And of course, left-w

  • Care to bet? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:39PM (#6689827) Journal
    Anybody willing to make a bet with me on whether more people will be killed by genetically engineered weapons than are saved by genetically engineered cures during the 21st century?


    • Anybody willing to make a bet with me on whether more people will be killed by genetically engineered weapons than are saved by genetically engineered cures during the 21st century?

      Depends on how you answer this question:
      If, because of generic enginering, the population doubles,
      and because the population is double, twice as many people die each year,
      Do we count those extra deaths against genetic enginering?

      -- this is not a .sig

    • That my army of xenophobic, AK-47 toting illiterates can out-kill your genetically-engineered disease, at least in the short term. My point is, people are going to find ways to kill large numbers of other people, biotech or no. It'd be a lot easier for some wack-jobs, terrorist or rogue state variety, to make dirty bombs or truck-nukes than to engineer a whole new disease.

    • Re:Care to bet? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phriedom ( 561200 )
      Yeah, I'd put money on genetic cures, I'd even give you 2:1 odds.

      I don't want to belittle the danger posed by biological weapons, especially in this day and age where air travel can spead a pathogen far and wide in short order. Man continues to increase the efficiency and speed at which war can kill. However, the number of people killed by disease every day, during peace or war has historically dwarfed the number of people killed by war, so I think progress is more likely to have a larger impact there.

  • Metaphor Cuisinart (Score:4, Funny)

    by meeotch ( 524339 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:46PM (#6689883) Homepage
    DeRisi found that the secret to malaria's success is its simplicity - regulated by only 10 genes compared with, say, 141 in yeast and more than a thousand in human cells. So, malaria is not the brightest bug in the biosphere, but it does its job with a single-mindedness, turning on each gene just before it's needed - like an assassin pumping his rifle.

    I bet it would take a long time to snipe someone to death with an air rifle.

    thwap!

    OW - Quit it.

    thwap!

    OW - Quit it.

    thwap!

  • I imagine that O'Reilly will be the first to publish the first book on programming humans. If you imagine the human body as a machine, you will note that its components are created by protein folding. A protein folds in one manner to react with a protein folded in another manner. Sooner or later, I imagine we will know what folds are required to create a liver or a kidney.

    Perhaps we can download folding scripts from the internet to instruct sophisticated machinery to affect the folding in a protein cult

  • Did anybody else go to his lab webpage (link in the article)? Go about halfway down; he has a lot of the /. lead stories linked there. I gotta check back later to see if he links to his own story. Or if he posts here.

    He also discusses the NOMAD software he uses for the bioibformatics, talks about how it's Linux based, and how "best of all, it's open source".

  • We nearly eradicated malaria, remember? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ensign Regis ( 249331 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @04:50PM (#6689913)
    This guy shouldn't have to waste his time on curing malaria. It could have been dealt with years ago. We had a prevention for it: DDT. At least, we did until environmentalists used bad science [tedeverson.com] and hype [aim.org] to stop the use of DDT, an action which has killed millions of people.
    • an action which has killed millions of people.

      And saved many, many more in the long run. Or do you wanna live in a chemical wasteland? Also, there are alternatives for (using) DDT, as there are alternatives for most stuff the enviromentalists you so hate (while they try to pay attention to a world that's being fucked up bigtime, which might ultimately save your ungrateful ass). Its just that the megacorps and the anti-enviromentalists probably don't earn as much money from those. Do you want to know what
    • Yeah, great plan! Kill the mosquitoes (and dump our planet full of chemicals in the process) rather than do the obvious (and harder) thing and cure the disease. Forget environmental impacts (effects of DDT on life (including ourselves), the fact that mosquitoes have a rather important role in the food chain, etc, etc)! Friggin' brilliant! You should run for President!

    • Re:We nearly eradicated malaria, remember? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by barawn ( 25691 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @06:49PM (#6690694) Homepage
      Borneo is not bad science. Nor is it hype. Nor is it something that someone can claim "ooh, the big bad environmentalists did it to us!"

      It's an ecology lesson, that's what it is.

      For those who don't know the story, here's the short:

      Yah, DDT killed mosquitos. It also raised DDT levels in caterpillars. Which raised DDT levels in geckos, making them slow and easy to catch. Which raised DDT levels in cats, which killed them. Which brought in the rats.

      Which brought bubonic plague.

      Which kills many more, and much worse, than malaria.

      So the WHO, which sprayed DDT in the first place, parachuted cats into Borneo (hence the name of the children's book, "The Day They Parachuted Cats Into Borneo". This isn't a joke - there are about a billion resources on the Web to back this up.

      So what, you might say. At least they got rid of malaria. Yah. Sure. Except afterwards, their thatched huts caved in as well, because all the geckos - which ate the caterpillars - were dead. (Plus the fish in the rivers were dead, killing the livelihood of many people there, and much more...)

      The WHO made a decision because one exercise of DDT went horribly, horribly wrong. You have no idea what introducing DDT into ecosystems would do. "Ecological engineering" is one thing that we just plain do not know how to do. We're awful at it.

      DDT is a very powerful killer, and it can be useful. But we are simply far too bad at ecosystem modeling to use it. We chose to not use DDT because we don't understand ecosystems, and it was a good choice. You can only look back and say "ah, if only we had used DDT, life would be happy, and rainbows would spread over all tropical regions!" Sorry - Murphy's Law would've intervened, so the WHO smartly said "look, this stuff is powerful, and we're not smart enough to use it." Good choice.

      Came a bit too late for Borneo, though.
  • The fact of the matter is that there is no comprehensive understanding of how particular DNA encodings work or why, so most of the progress being made is happenstance, pure hit-and-miss.

    This approach is successful for solving specific problems, but as a methodology applied over time it is akin to courting disaster. The short-term gains being made by some come at the expense of risk borne by us all over the long-term, and without our consent.
  • Poor Malaria, I knew you well.

    Heh, uh, I mean, I didn't know you at all... *cough*. Nervous laughter.

    Well, then, good riddance.

  • An informed opionion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rowanxmas ( 569908 ) on Wednesday August 13, 2003 @05:21PM (#6690130)
    So I am also a biotech person, and I have used Microarrays extensively in my research. I will say that they are a very cool, high-throughput tool, that enables insight into celluar function. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, a means to "human programming".
    While I like Microarrays, they have a number of drawbacks:
    1. Noisy, the signal to noise ratio is almost unusable, unless you have REALLY BIG changes in RNA expression ( which is what they are measuring ). In the case of SARS I imagine that the differences were pretty high, so that it was relativley easy to detect the affected genes.
    2. Sequence, in order to make an array, or "chip", one needs to do a whole-cell extract for the target organism, extract the RNA, reverse-transcribe it, sequence it, figure out where on the sequence it is, make sure it isn't a spliced form of some other gene, then spot it onto a slide. Basically you get the EST library. Not easy to do, still kinda unreliable.
    All accounted for, I don't think that anyone is to the point of making monsters or playing god. In order to do that, we first need to figure out how to get cells to change their DNA which we are still at least 50-75 years away from doing.

  • DDT (Score:2)

    by heli0 ( 659560 )
    "Now, DeRisi has chosen malaria as his next victim."

    Until there is some breakthrough here DDT should be used to save lives. Over 1 million of the 300 million people infected with malaria each year worldwide die. There is not a single peer-reviewed, repeatable study showing any adverse effect on health of humans from the use of DDT.

    • Re:DDT (Score:3, Informative)

      by barawn ( 25691 )
      Are you the same kind of person that would use nuclear power everywhere, simply because we've only ever had 1 (recorded) nuclear meltdown in history, and "well, it seems safe now!" Nuclear power is about the analog of DDT: it's extremely powerful, and extremely dangerous. Actually, it's about the analog of nuclear power in the 1970s, when we DIDN'T know that much about how to control nuclear plants. Today, we still don't know how to deal with ecosystems well. Honestly, we suck - we're awful. The world is fu
  • some members of Congress called for a ban on DNA research in the mid '70s
    References or URLs please.

  • Stem Cell Research based on false. . . (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @03:13AM (#6693243)
    assumptions.

    According to the work of Robert O. Becker, the assumption that regular cells cannot dedifferentiate is in fact not just a false belief, but one which has been shored up at great expense by orthodox medicine. The phenomenon of normal cell dediferentiation, (a skin or bone cell into a 'stem' cell) can be observed at the site of tissue wounds in not just salmimanders, (which can regrow whole limbs), but in humans as well. (Who, even though they cannot, do not for extremely interesting reasons.)

    Apparently, vanishingly small micro current DC electricity is used by complex organisms to tell cells what to do during various stages of growth and tissue repair. --I came upon Becker's work while reading up on Electromagnetism and its effects on human neurology.

    I was blown away by what he had discovered over his long and lettered career. Becker is one of the 'real' ones. Look him up.


    -FL

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