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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (4557)	4/27/2002 6:19:41 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 12231

Speaking of CDNA [TM], how come ethicists seem more dopey than ethical? Dr Caplan seems to want to deny the importance of the individual and subsume people into a collective world of mush. nytimes.com <When scientists at Celera Genomics announced two years ago that they had decoded the human genome, they said the genetic data came from anonymous donors and presented it as a universal human map. But the scientist who led the effort, Dr. J. Craig Venter, now says that the genome decoded was largely his own. ... Another member, Dr. Arthur Caplan, a biomedical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, said, "Any genome intended to be a landmark should be kept anonymous. It should be a map of all us, not of one, and I am disappointed if it is linked to a person." The drive to sequence the human genome was an opportunity for personal glory as well as scientific discovery, and Dr. Venter's action emphasized the first motive, Dr. Caplan said. It seems that Celera's intended process of choosing randomly among anonymous samples must have been overridden at some stage so that Dr. Venter's became the one selected. A Celera spokesman, Robert Bennett, would not confirm or deny Dr. Venter's claim and declined to make available Dr. Sam Broder, the company's vice president for medical affairs, who oversaw the donor selection process. Dr. Venter, however, said that "I made the selection with a team," and that "only me and two other people" know the codes to Celera's five donors. Because the human genome decoded by the academic consortium is a mosaic of different individuals, Dr. Venter is at present the only person whose genome has been largely sequenced, and may remain so for many years. In his person, he offers a unique way to connect a human genotype with its phenotype, as biologists refer to a genome and the physical form it specifies. Is his body now particularly valuable to science? "You mean for dissection?" Dr. Venter said. "I haven't thought that far ahead. You have given my critics a chance to dissect me." Dr. Norton Zinder of Rockefeller University said he saw some value in less drastic investigations to study the link between Dr. Venter's genotype and phenotype. "You would have to do experiments on him," Dr. Zinder said. "Craig would become an experimental animal. He's certainly made himself liable for that." But Dr. Kenneth Kendler, a psychiatric geneticist the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, said that science was not advanced enough to read off a person's personality from their genome and that, as a sample of one, Dr. Venter and his genome were not of much help to scientific inquiry. The same verdict came from Dr. Stephen Warren, editor of the American Journal of Human Genetics. "I think it's of much more interest to him to know his genotype than for other geneticists to know it," Dr. Warren said. But he praised Dr. Venter's drive and ambition for forcing the public consortium to speed its efforts. >

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (4557)	4/27/2002 3:24:45 PM
From: DWB	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12231

Mq, I don't know about zygotes, but there's a dividing line somewhere between fertilized egg, and partial birth abortion babies at which point you have a human being from my point of view. I agree that conception isn't a good dividing line, but I don't think birth is any better. By "our" own I mean humans, and specifically those that cannot fight for themselves. The aliens that are caged, bound and blindfolded got that way as a result of their own actions, most specifically their decisions to associate within a terrorist organization. There is no comparison between an unborn baby and an Al Qaeda (sp?) member. "Chimpoids" are not human, nor are other animals. The ability to reason, and restrain ourselves set us apart. Granted, some humans are much less able to display these characteristics, but they have the potential. I'm glad you'd like some legal protection... as a human being you're entitled to it (at least in most countries). Undoubtedly as a human you're capable of understanding the concept of legal protection (unless in the cases where a persons mental capabilities are damaged or malfunctioning). Just make sure you're living or staying in a country whose people agree with that concept. DWB