Practical Ethics

Slaves to consent?

Nature reports that in response to analysis done by bioethicist Robert Streiffer (and published in the Hastings Center Report), Stanford University may withdraw the use for research of several of its publicly funded stem cell lines because of concerns about consent. In 2001 President Bush decreed that only lines already in existence would be eligible for federal funding – 21 lines were subsequently approved by the NIH.

Reproductive science: is there something we're missing?

Thirty years after the first test-tube baby, Nature asks various experts for their views on what the next thirty years of reproductive medicine will bring. Some of the more startling predictions are:

• No more infertility, with both children and 100-year-olds able to have children
• Embryos created from stem cells, increasing the ease of embryo research and genetic engineering of children
• … with the resulting greater availability of embryos making it easier to create cloned humans
• Artificial wombs, enabling babies to develop outside the mother’s body
• … which, some worry, could become compulsory as an alternative to abortion, or to avoid premature birth or fetal alcohol syndrome
• ‘Genetic cassettes’ implanted in embryos to counteract the effects of inherited diseases
• Increase in litigation following evidence that IVF babies may later suffer adverse effects from the environment in which they were grown as embryos

The Choice to Have Artificial Blood: Less than the Best?

Controversy has erupted around whether experiments to test artificial blood should stop. Experimental blood substitutes raised the risk of heart attack and death, yet U.S. regulators allowed human testing to continue despite warning signs, says a scathing new report.

Blood substitutes, or artificial blood, could be stored for years without refrigeration, and be used in battlefield situations. It would carry no risk risk of infection with hepatitis or HIV. It would be an acceptable alternative to Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse life saving blood transfusions.
In a new report, researchers pooled data from 16 separate studies of five different blood substitutes, involving over 3,700 patients. Researchers found a 30 percent higher risk of death overall for patients who received transfusions using the blood substitutes. The risk of heart attack was nearly tripled in the groups receiving blood substitutes.

“Experts speculate that hemoglobin in the blood substitutes scavenges nitric oxide from the blood, causing blood vessels to constrict and sticky platelets to build up. That increases the risk of heart attacks.”

The Dignity of the Carrot

What are you allowed to do to plants? At least in Switzerland you are not allowed to do research that deeply offend the dignity of plants. The Swiss federal Gene Technology Law stipulates that any scientific research should respect the "dignity of creation". All plant biotechnology grant applications must now state how they take plant dignity into consideration, confusing researchers.  The Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) have issued some guidelines (pdf) which make the situation even more confusing. Neither humans nor plants are likely to be helped.

Academic Integrity and Vioxx

Drug company Merck and its product Vioxx are in the news again. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has examined the documents from the legal proceedings against Merck in connection with the withdrawal of Vioxx from the market in 2004. From their analysis, a significant number of journal articles – mostly review articles rather than articles reporting clinical trials – were written in-house and senior academics were brought in late to be lead named author. At least one of these academics has disputed the accusations made in the JAMA article.

Corrupted Science. Peer reviewer leaks information to drug manufacturer

A well-known diabetes expert has abused his function as peer reviewer for the renowned The New England Journal of Medicine. The reviewer broke confidentiality and leaked a damaging report about a substantial hike in the risk of heart attack when using the popular diabetes drug rosiglitazone, sold under the brand name Avandia, to the drug’s manufacturer weeks ahead of publication (see Nature or ScienceNews).

Obviously, this scientist violated principal tenets of independence and integrity of scientific journals and all codes of scientific conduct. But there seems to be more to the whole story than the violation of blatant rules by an individual. The NZZ views this incident as the “gateway to a yawning abyss” that opens up a fatal sleaze between medical industry and medical research.