jhussaini's blog

I would advocate for genetic modifications to prevent disease. Some people might argue that gene-editing technology is unnatural and interferes with natural evolution. To this I would argue that humans have already altered their own evolution in significant ways. For example, antibiotics have saved people throughout history from dying of infections, and yet they are also unnatural according to the article ““Pro and Con: Should Gene Editing Be Performed on Human Embryos.” Like antibiotics, gene-editing is also unnatural, but unnatural can be a good thing if it prevents disease and increases human survival. According to the NYT article “These Patients Had Sickle-Cell Disease. Experimental Therapies Might Have Cured Them” clinical trials for sickle cell anemia are already underway and have shown initial success in a few patients. I think there should be more research in gene therapy for single gene disorders such as Sickle Cell Anemia and Cystic Fibrosis than for diseases that are polygenic or have a strong environmental component. The causes of the latter are more complex and might require more than gene modifications to be cured. 

I don’t think we should genetically modify humans for purposes beyond disease prevention. Using gene-editing to select for traits related to appearance and personality to make the perfect human being can come with dire consequences. For one thing, classifying genes as “good” or “bad” is arbitrary. Genes that control psychoticism for example can confer advantages such as creativity or open mindedness (according to the article “How Gene Editing Could Ruin Human Evolution”). The article also mentions that influential people such as Carrie Fisher, David Foster Wallace and Kurt Cobain can benefit society despite them all having psychiatric risks. On a more personal note, artificially selecting genes to make a designer baby would detract from a person’s individuality. According to the Wired article “You’re only human but Your Kids Could be So Much More”, having a baby would turn into a “model building exercise” or a “project.” People would wonder if their successes are because of their own hard work or because they were genetically programmed to succeed. Everyone would choose the same traits that are considered to be the best, and we would no longer be diverse or unique. 

If it were up to me, I would allow genetic modifications only for disease prevention but I wouldn’t go a step further. To those who consider that unnatural, I would argue that humans have already defied natural evolution in many ways. According to the article “Pro and Con: Should Gene Editing Be Performed on Human Embryos?” we have prevented so many people from naturally falling sick and dying through advances in medicine such as antibiotics. Technology such as Crispr-Cas9 offers a more advanced way to prevent diseases, by editing DNA itself. In my opinion, gene-editing should be the go-to treatment for single gene disorders because it is tackling the issue straight from the source. Clinical trials for sickle cell anemia for example are already underway and have resulted in success with patients reported to show no more signs of the disease (according to the NYT article on sickle cell anemia).

However, I think there should be a limit to genetically modifying humans. Using gene-editing to select for desirable traits to increase reproductive fitness or make life easier for us in general can come with dire consequences. For one thing, genes are not always good or bad, but rather they can be a mix. Genes that cause people to be schizotypal or psychotic may confer advantages such as creativity and open-mindedness, according to the Time article “How Gene Editing Could Ruin Human Evolution.” The article also points out that influential people such as Carrie Fisher, David Foster Wallace and Kurt Cobain have made a positive impact on the world despite them all having psychiatric risks. Selecting for favorable traits is a complex process because it comes at the cost of another trait that could be beneficial. On a more personal note, artificially choosing genes to make a designer baby would take away from a person’s individuality. According to the wired article, “becoming a parent would turn into almost an intellectual exercise” or “project” that would focus on designing a baby rather than naturally giving birth to one. I think it’s important to appreciate our differences and flaws rather than trying to change them.

The aim of the paper is to investigate the characteristics of Porifera and Ctenophores in order to determine their phylogeny. Characteristics such as physiology, morphology and molecular genetics of these organisms is analyzed to map evolutionary relationships. Because these groups have not been studied extensively, making these relationships presents some difficulty. Studying them from the fossil record is a challenge because they are poorly preserved. Ctenophores are gelatinous and fragile, which makes them harder to collect. The wide diversity of porifera and ctenophores also makes them difficult to characterize. For example, ctenophores are found throughout the ocean from pole to pole. Though even with more information collected on the two species, they are often interpreted in the context of bilateria, which leads them to be labeled as less complex than they actually are. Despite the seemingly simple morphology of sponges, they have a similar genetic inventory to more complex animals. Even though the physiology of sponges is different, it carries out the same tasks and is just as complex. 

Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in the event of intolerable pain and suffering caused by an illness. This broad definition leaves room for different categories of euthanasia. It can be physician assisted or patient administered, it can be actively or passively administered on the patient, and it can involve direct or indirect assistance. This argument will focus specifically on the the morality of physician assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia. When euthanasia is voluntary, the patient requests for the termination of their own life. When euthanasia is physician assisted, a physician carries out a procedure that terminates the suffering patient’s life.

Both physician assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia are controversial from a moral standpoint. In order to assume a stance, one must consider and rank the importance of certain values such as the worth of preserving life, the degree of patient autonomy, and the external conditions that would justify death. There are many controversial questions that arise such as: Do patients have a right to die, and conversely do physicians have the right to kill their patients? Is it fair for patients to live against their will? Is preserving a patient’s life more important then their choice to live or die?

Figure 1. Juvenile penguins. Feathers exhibit dull color patterns. The front is grey and the backside of the penguins is white. There is black on the outside of the head and on the beak. 

Available at: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4014/4696423445_4705431d8f_z_d.jpg by Ron Hopkins

In my neuroscience class we read a study about vision and its connection to the brain. The objective for this study is to understand the mechanism of non-visual reflexes such as regulation of the circadian clock and pupillary reflexes. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is a site for photoentrainment in the brain. A portion of light-sensitive retinal ganglion cells protrude into the SCN. The authors hypothesized that melanopsin is a photopigment on the retinal ganglion cells (RPG’s) that generate action potentials to the brain in response to light, and play a role in photoentrainment. Although it was known that some RPG’s are photosensitive, the reasons for this phenomenon were unknown. It was also known that rods and cones are not photoentraining receptors. Provided this context, the reason for the study was to understand the function of RPG photosensitivity, and to use them to study the pathway that gives rise to photoentrainment.

Science has come a long way since ancient times. Back then, people believed that bad smells caused disease and good smells kept people healthy. So doctors wore masks with good smells when treating patients with bad smells indicative of disease. I find this ironic because it was a good practice for the wrong reason. It shows that when a belief is widely held, especially if it is held by credible people, it prevails as the truth. In the 1700’s in England a woman named Lady Montagu promoted vaccinations as a means to cure smallpox and was consequently met with resistance from local physicians. After the death of her brother, she had her son “variolated” in Turkey, where they introduced a virus from the pus of someone with smallpox into his system. Although small pox was a widespread problem with no known cure, physicians were unable to consider the idea of vaccination. It may have been because Lady Montagu was a woman, and women generally had no voice in science at the time. She was also not a scientist and did not have anyone in her network that could corroborate her theory. Nowadays, we might believe that we rely on solid evidence to support our beliefs, but I think we will always have a desire to support the ideas of people around us. We will always have subconscious biases we can’t control. As long as we are aware of that, we can challenge false information and come up with new ideas, even if they sound crazy at first. Hundreds of years from now, we might look back on us now and realize that some of the scientific ideas we had were not entirely true. But that is partly what makes science an exciting field, that there is always something new for us to find.  

23andMe is a genetic testing company that collects DNA samples from consumers and in return sends them ancestral information. The founding of the company would not have arisen if it were not for the Human Genome Project. The techniques used to sequence the human genome are utilized by 23andMe to obtain genetic data in a cost-effective and efficient manner. 23andMe collects spit samples from consumers and sequences the DNA using the same principles as Sanger Sequencing but in a more modern and digitized way. Similar to Sanger Sequencing, chunks of overlapping DNA are analyzed. The sequence is then compared to a reference data set of DNA to find ancestry information. While it may seem like cool to use genetic testing to learn your ancestry, 23andMe raises several ethical concerns. Giving the company your genetic data has been regarded as a violation of privacy because it’s possible for the data to be shared among other corporations such as pharmaceuticals and biotech corporations. Shared genetic data can lead to discrimination from health insurance companies. While there may be laws in place to prevent this, these laws are always susceptible to change. Just like when information leaks on the internet, if genetic data were to be shared, the privacy cannot be taken back. In addition, while 23andMe might have regulations to protect the privacy of consumers to a limited extent, there is no way of knowing what will happen to the genetic data in the future when the owners of the company are not around anymore. 

Anna was born with the sole purpose of keeping Kate alive. In the first chapter she states, “I was born for a very specific purpose. I wasn’t the result of a cheap bottle of wine or a full moon or the heat of the moment. I was born because a scientist managed to hook up my mother’s eggs and my father’s sperm and come up with a specific combination of precious genetic material.” Throughout the book Anna struggles to fulfill the role of a savior to her sister, because otherwise she has no reason to exist at all. At 13 years old, this internal conflict juxtaposes with her desire to be a free individual in control of her own body. She wants to be more than flesh and organs for transplant but she also doesn’t want to be the reason her sister dies.

If Anna was a clone, then the book could have played out differently. Maybe because of the sisters’ identical genetic makeup, the transplants of bone marrow, lymphocytes, etc. in addition to chemotherapy would have actually worked and cured Kate’s cancer. If this occurred, then Anna would have fulfilled her life’s purpose to save Kate and subsequently she could choose her own path and have autonomy over her body. She would not have to worry about dietary habits, engaging in sports that are too rigorous, or about being too far away from Kate any longer. It would be ironic for Anna to win autonomy as a genetic copy of Kate.

If Anna was cloned and she still ended up going to court to fight for her autonomy, I don’t think she would have won the case. Since she would have been made using one of Kate’s cells, then it would be controversial as to whether she is her own person or if she is an extension of Kate. Since her DNA exactly matches Kate’s genome then the latter opinion might be favored. The court might view it as a choice to save the life of an artificial clone or the original human that made it possible for that clone to exist. The potential to under-value Anna’s life leads me to conclude that human reproductive cloning should not be explored at any point in the future.

Acute Myeloid Leukemia involves uncontrolled growth of immature blood-cell forming cells or hematopoietic stem cells. Normally these cells differentiate to produce red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. However, in patients with the cancer, hematopoietic stem cells are unable to differentiate and accumulate excessively in the bone marrow. Treatment of the cancer requires not only the elimination of cancer cells (often by chemotherapy), but also replacement of the hematopoietic stem cells.

In the book “My Sister’s Keeper” Kate Fitzgerald is a teenage girl suffering from Promyelocytic Leukemia, a subset of Acute Myeloid Leukemia. When they realize there are no matches for donors within the family, they resort to an IVF procedure to genetically engineer a child that was the perfect donor match for Kate.

After reading “My Sister’s Keeper” I thought to myself, what if Anna was a result of reproductive cloning instead of IVF? First of all, it is important to note that the procedures are similar but different. In IVF, an egg is taken from the mother and and a sperm is taken from the father and they are combined in-vitro to produce a fertilized zygote which is then implanted in the mother. The newborn child may be genetically compatible with Kate, but would not be an identical match. In contrast, reproductive cloning would involve fusing a donated, enucleated egg cell with one of Kate’s cells with electricity and implanting the resulting embryo in Kate’s mother. This process is called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). If Anna were born through this process, then her genetic makeup would be identical to Kate’s DNA.