human and animal GE items:
1. By banning cloning, we can avoid Brave New World
2. GM cow project being reconsidered
3. Gene therapy: treatment turns on targeted genes
4. Bresagen's pig cloning success raises disease spectre
+5. Australian researchers clone pig
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1. By banning cloning, we can avoid Brave New World
Terry Eastland
The Dallas Morning News May 7, 2001

Americans overwhelmingly  oppose human cloning - fully 90 percent, according to a  recent CNN/Time poll. Oddly, however, the law has yet to  prohibit cloning. Certainly, it should, and Congress now  has before it a new bill - proposed by Sen. Sam Brownback  of Kansas and Rep. Dave Weldon of Florida - that would  accomplish that goal. In case you are new to the story,  human cloning is the fabrication of individuals who are  genetically identical to other individuals, living or even  dead. Scientists who have studied the cloning four years  ago of Dolly the sheep know how it would be done: Take a  donor egg. Suck out the nucleus and thus remove the DNA.  

 Place in the egg a nucleus taken from a cell of the person  who is to be copied. Jolt it with an electrical current and  then hope the renucleated egg, upon transfer to a woman's  uterus, grows into the intended person. If you think human  cloning is fantasy, not to happen ever, think again. The  making of Dolly has inspired a race among a small but  determined band of people with Ph.D.s or M.D.s after their  names to become the first to clone a human being. An  "infertility specialist" from Kentucky has formed a  consortium to produce the first human clone. And then there  is a Canadian cult that worships (appropriately) science:  The Raelians, as they call themselves, actually are in the  lab right now, according to recent congressional testimony  by one of their scientists. Biotechnology specialists  expect a human being will be cloned by someone somewhere  within a few years, perhaps even months. Most people are  revolted by the very idea of human cloning, and rightly so.  To achieve "success," many nuclei will be needed to fashion  enough embryos so that at least one of them might take hold  of life in utero and finally be born. The line score on  Dolly: 277 nuclei transferred, 29 clonal embryos implanted,  one live lamb clone. There is no reason to think the  numbers would be any different for human cloning.

Yet even  if they were to "improve" over time, the entire business  still would constitute a monstrously immoral experiment  upon the person to be. Scientists agree that cloning  carries with it, as Leon Kass of the University of Chicago  points out, "massive risks of producing unhealthy, abnormal  and malformed children." Even in the case of a healthy,  normal child, there would be matters of identity and  individuality. The child, possessing the genotype of  someone else, would have been cloned for a reason and would  be shaped by "parents" accordingly. It takes no great  insight to see the narcissism cloning invites - to create  the person I had the genes to be (a Dallas Maverick, say)  but for some reason was unable to be (a career-ending  injury). Human cloning constitutes a rejection of the  wisdom of the ages: That the arrival of a newborn announces  a future that will be different from the past, precisely  because the lottery of sex has given the world a new  creation. Here it bears emphasis that human cloning is  asexual reproduction. It stands in contrast to natural  procreation. Philosophically, not to mention theologically,  the two are vastly different. In procreation, parents beget  children. In the asexual affair of cloning, parents - or  whoever - manufacture a child. What cloning proposes is  nothing less than a new understanding of human nature -  indeed, to borrow C.S. Lewis' haunting term, its  "abolition."

 You might think a prospect so severe would already have  moved Congress to act. But there has been a major snag:  Some members want a ban on human cloning to be written so  narrowly as to sanction "therapeutic cloning" - the  creation of cloned embryos for research purposes. Such  cloning is quite attractive for many people: Stem cells  from cloned embryos, it is said, might give us a cure for  cancer or Parkinson's disease. There are moral problems  with such cloning, not least that new life will be created  only to be exploited. But the ultimate reason that  "therapeutic cloning" also should be outlawed is that  cloning a human being necessarily begins with producing  cloned human embryos. Only by preventing the latter can we  be sure that we are doing as much as we can to stop the  former - or at least to make it less likely. The  Brownback-Weldon bill would aim that broadly. A more narrow  focus won't do. And meanwhile, in "undisclosed places,"  there are eggs being donated, nuclei being sucked, clonings  being attempted. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World may be  closer than ever, but the good news is that we aren't  without means of preventing its arrival. Terry Eastland is  a regular contributor to Viewpoints. L
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2. GM cow project being reconsidered
The Evening Post (Wellington) May 7, 2001
AgResearch could know in about two  weeks whether it has to destroy cows expecting genetically  modified calves in a Waikato-based experiment next month.  

In a decision last week, the High Court set aside  Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma) approval for  field trials of the experiment in which a human protein was  inserted into cattle embryos. Erma's decision was set aside  because the High Court found Erma had not followed the  proper procedures in its decision-making process. On Friday, AgResearch asked the High Court to stay the part of its  decision setting aside Erma's approval for the field trial.  The stay remains in force until May 18. LOAD-DATE: May 8, 2001 [Entered May 9, 2001]
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3. Treatment turns on targeted genes  
Eisai team finds way to control expression of therapeutic genes
The Nikkei Weekly May 7, 2001
ATSUNOBU TAKESHITA Staff writer

It is easy to  get caught up in the heady promises of gene therapy and  forget how daunting a task scientists face trying to  introduce genes into the body to treat specific diseases.  

 Most of the gene therapy research carried out to date has  focused on the creation of vectors - the vehicles that can  transport therapeutic genes into cells. Working primarily  with virus vectors, scientists have been trying to see just  how many copies of the gene they can get into cells. But  the success of any gene therapy will be measured ultimately  by the extent of its side effects as well as by its  efficacy. Administering a virus vector that injects its  therapeutic payload into any cell in the body is an obvious  invitation to complications. So another area of vital  importance for successful gene therapy is the selective  targeting of therapeutic genes to the specific  disease-related cells. This latter challenge has become a  growing subject of research in labs around the world. One  strategy being taken is to target receptors on cells. An  example of this is the vector based on the hepatitis-B  virus developed by a group at Keio University. The HBV  vector selectively introduces therapeutic genes into liver  cells because that is the natural target cell of the virus.  But Eisai Co. is working on a different approach that  controls the expression of therapeutic genes at the genetic  level inside cells. The strategy involves linking the  therapeutic gene to a short DNA sequence called a promoter  that only switches on the therapeutic gene inside certain  kinds of cells. Although the human genome comprises a  sequence of some 3 billion bases, only around 1.5% of these  are for genes that code for proteins. The vast remainder is  assumed to be junk, but among this noise are a number of  short DNA sequences called promoters that reside near the  actual genes and act like switches to turn the genes on. An  activated promoter in turn activates its associated gene,  promoting the transcription of deoxyribonucleic acid into  ribonucleic acid, which then moves out of the nucleus where  it serves as the template for the synthesis of the encoded  protein. The human body is made up of some 60 trillion  cells, and almost every cell has the exact same set of DNA.  What makes the cells different? The identity of individual  cells is determined by which promoters are switched on.  

 Artificial promoters Eisai's new method of targeted gene  therapy is based on the introduction of artificial  promoters that only switch on in specific kinds of cells.  

 The company is focusing on brain cells, seeking gene  therapies for such disorders as Parkinson's disease. The  method, however, has potential applications in gene therapy  targeting any cell type for which a unique promoter can be  found. Eisai has many years of experience researching the  brain, as typified by Aricept, its drug for the treatment  of the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. The company's  discovery of selective promoters for different types of  brain cells was born from this long tradition of research,  combined with clever use of human genome data. The work was  carried out by Eiki Takahashi and colleagues at the  Laboratory of Seeds Finding Technology in Tsukuba, Ibaraki  Prefecture, a research unit set up in April 1999 to search  at the genetic level for new biological targets. The  calcium channel is a type of cell-surface receptor, and  Eisai has been studying this protein since 1989 as part of  its research into brain-related diseases. The Takahashi  team was interested in learning why some brain cells have  calcium channels while others do not, so it searched the  genome for clues. The team discovered that the difference  was related to the length of a certain promoter in the  brain cells. Brain cells that have a lengthy version of the  promoter, comprising a relatively long sequence of DNA  bases, express the calcium channel on their surface. Cells  with an abbreviated version of the promoter do not express  this particular receptor. To verify this mechanism of  action, the researchers linked promoters of different  lengths to an enzyme called galactosidase and inserted the  construct into fertilized mouse eggs to produce transgenic  mice. When they did this, what they discovered was that the  enzyme was active in one particular type of brain cell when  the promoter was around 6,000 bases long, and it was active  in a different type of brain cell when the promoter was  around 3,000 bases long. In other words, the Eisai  researchers had found a way to control the expression of  genes in specific types of cells by using promoters of  different lengths. So far, the company has only identified  promoters for a few kinds of cells in the cerebellum. For  full-fledged gene therapy it will be necessary to find  promoters for a variety of different types of cells. But  now that the human genome has largely been sequenced, there  is a good chance that genome analysis can yield many more  promoters. "It is a thread that we can follow to solve the  (selectivity) problem of gene therapy," Takahashi explained.
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4. WRAP-Bresagen's pig cloning success raises disease spectre
AAP NEWSFEED May 9, 2001,
General News; Finance Wire

MELBOURNE, May 9 AAP - Australia's first cloned  pig was unveiled today, igniting debate about both the  ethics and value of the new cloning process and raising the  spectre of mad cow disease. The pig, a female named simply  "Pig" from a group which has been isolated on Kangaroo  Island, off South Australia for almost 200 years was borne  from the joint efforts of listed Adelaide biotechnology  company BresaGen Ltd and Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital.  Now five weeks old, the animal was healthy and growing  normally in a company piggery in suburban Adelaide,  BresaGen said today. Cloning program leader, Dr Mark  Nottle, said the most obvious use for the pig cloning was  livestock improvement, but the greatest potential was seen  in the field of supplying transplant material for humans.  

But genetic engineering campaigner Bob Phelps said there  were grave dangers in using animal tissue in transplants.  

 Mr Phelps, the director of Australia's GenEthics Network,  said prions, the agents believed responsible for mad cow  disease, could be passed on in human surgery using animal  tissue. "We should be very wary of any use of animal organs  in humans because there is a high risk of the transfer of  animal diseases. "It will be difficult to prevent viruses,  bacteria and especially prions, which are not really  understood at this point," Mr Phelps told AAP. Prions are  the recently discovered agents for causing serious diseases like cancers and creutzfeldt jakob or mad cow disease.  

"They seem to be a self-replicating protein so they may  not be genes at all," he said. He called for a five-year  freeze on commercialisation of the technology. "It is  uncertain technology with uncertain outcomes," he said. Dr  Tony d'Apice (pron: Dap-i-shay), of St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, said the pig cloning technology would help  identify the mechanics of organ rejection on a genetic  basis. "The gene, called the 'Gal gene' is present in pigs,  but absent in humans," Dr d'Apice said. "It will be  possible to produce pigs without this gene and provide  donor organs more compatible for human transplantation."

 Overseas analysts have estimated that the market for organs alone was worth $US6 billion a year. Mr Phelps said the  mechanism by which organ rejection worked was very unclear.  "Rejection is a multifaceted mechanism and involves a  complex of genes, not just one because you are basically  trying to smuggle in a foreign organ."

 He believed the Roslin Research Institute had abandoned  work on identifying the genetic mechanics involved in organ  rejection. BresaGen said the technology used to clone the  Adelaide pig was very different to that used to produce  Dolly the sheep in 1997. Dolly the sheep, the first mammal  to be cloned, was unveiled by the Edinburgh-based Roslin  Research Institute in February 1997. The institute has  since followed on its success with Dolly by producing  cloned pigs and chickens. BresaGen has applied for patents  to the techniques employed in producing the pig. Critics of  genetic engineering have also called into question the  application of patent laws to medical techniques and  discoveries. Research conducted in the United Kingdom last  year showed that 9,364 patent applications had been lodged  in 40 countries covering medical discoveries, over 60 per  cent of them in the last three years. Mr Phelps said pigs  were also involved in an incident in Adelaide during the  1980s in which 67 animals fattened using human growth  hormones ended up in city butchers' shops. "We just don't  want people experimented on," he said. Bresgen sahres  closed up four cents to $1.27. LOAD-DATE: May 9, 2001
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5. Australian researchers clone pig
BBC Online Sci/Tech
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1321000/1-1321470.stm] Wednesday, 9 May, 2001,

Australia has  produced its first pig clone. The animal, which is now five  weeks old, is said to be healthy and growing normally. The  piglet was made using new technology that could help  prevent animal diseases and aid human organ transplants,  the biotechnology company behind the development claimed.  

 BresaGen Ltd, working with St Vincent's Hospital in  Melbourne, said it produced the clone from cells that had  been frozen in liquid nitrogen for more than two years. The  world's first pig clones were announced in March last year  by researchers working for the Scottish biotechnology firm  PPL Therapeutics. Last month, the commercial offshoot of  the Roslin Institute said it had also managed to create  gene-altered, or transgenic, pig clones as well.  

 Modification of the animals' genetic make-up is vital if  pig organs are to be used successfully in humans.  

 Unaltered, animal livers, kidneys or hearts would be  rejected by the human immune system. BresaGen said the  technology it used to clone Australia's pig was different  from that used to make Dolly the sheep, the first large  animal to be copied from an adult cell. "Basically, what  works in sheep doesn't work in pigs, so we had to start  from scratch," said chief executive John Smeaton. The  company said its pig cloning technology, like that of  PPL's, was potentially life-saving, with thousands of  people around the world dying each year while they waited  for organ transplantation. "It is anticipated that the new  cloning technology will have a major impact in guarding  against the outbreak of animal disease and in the area of  xenotransplantation - the use of animal organs for  transplantation into humans," the company said in a  statement.