Rise of the Super Weeds

Biotechnology company Monsanto has stirred up quite a storm of controversy in the past years over their genetically engineered “Roundup Ready” crops. These crops were designed specifically for the use of Monsanto’s herbicide and are engineered to resist any other herbicide other than Monsanto. This product appeals to farmers because of the reduced cost and promises maximized production, however, Monsanto’s monopoly on herbicides seems to be dangerous to the environment in the long-run, and the concerns of the company seem to only be that of maximizing profits.

Similarly to the way human overuse of antibiotics has lead to a built up resistance of such drugs, the sole of Monsanto herbicide on Roundup Ready crops has caused the crops to grow resistant and into out of control “super weeds”. While this may not seem like a big deal, studies have shown that the genes in the Roundup Ready crops that are resistant to other herbicides (aside from Monsanto brand) can and have migrated to other crops that have not been genetically modified. For example, the unmodified crops found on a farm nearby could inherit these gene that cause them to become resistant to other herbicides and force farmers to purchase Monsanto brand herbicide for their crops.

As the profits of Monsanto has gone up (estimated $1 billion by 2012), the income of farmers has decline by around 34% in the past years. This is the perfect example of an unethical use of biotechnology. Where it appears as though Monsanto creates revolutionary products to help maximize the yield in crops to supply more food in the market, in reality it targets farmers who are looking to maximize their yield and unethically confines them to the sole use of their products- essentially monopolizing the market of herbicides in the United States and indirectly harming the environment by mutating the genes of unmodified crops and causing an overgrowth of weeds. As the profits of Monsanto has gone up (estimated $1 billion by 2012), the income of farmers has decline by around 34% in the past years.

Another infuriating point is that Monsanto has patented their genetically modified crop seeds, and viciously sues any farmer found with their seeds without a contract with their company. Many farmers have been unjustly forced out of business because Monsanto’s seeds were carried by the wind into their crops from a nearby farm. I find it extremely unfair and unethical that these small farms are held responsible for having Monsanto seeds in their fields when they arrived their unintentionally and by means outside of the control of the farmers. We need better policies that can not only protect the rights of these farmers but also help to regulate the monopolies large corporations have on genetically engineered crops and herbicides.

Sources:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto_and_the_Roundup_Ready_Controversy

http://www.groovygreen.com/groove/?p=2921

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/02/04/monsanto-the-evil-corporation-in-your-refrigerator/

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0118/americas-best-company-10-gmos-dupont-planet-versus-monsanto.html

Safe vs. Practical: What is the right balance?

Given the extent of our medical knowledge these days it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which someone takes a drug thinking that it will prevent a serious medical problem, only to find out later that the drug has in fact been endangering his or her health all along.

However, in the past month, this very scenario arose twice: a study by the Food and Drug Administration showed that two types of drugs on the popular market in fact can have very negative effects on the health of those who take them.

In the first case, they found that bisphosphonates, widely prescribed to prevent fractures as a result osteoporosis, can lead to a rare degeneration of the jawbone that was previously unheard of. In the second case, Avandia, used to try to prevent heart problems in diabetics, has in fact been causing the heart problems that it was meant to be shielding patients from.

The question thus arises, how could laws, drug manufacturers and food testing authorities have ever allowed there to be such risks to the general population? The answer arises can be found in the disconnect between trials of new drugs, and the way they are used by patients once they are put on the market. Due to the race for innovative new drugs and thus profit margins, companies have been putting too much emphasis on premarket testing as opposed to post-market testing. Typically, the length of time that a drug is tested for before release to the market is at most a few years. However, the drugs are advertised for “lifetime use” and patients have been using them for far longer than just a few years, thus revealing new side effects that were previously unknown.

While it seems completely logical that drugs should be tested for longer in order to determine all of the risks associated with them, it would be completely impractical for all “lifetime” drugs were to be tested for an entire lifetime before their release to the market. Drugs that could be improving the quality of life would be withheld to the point that they may not even help the current generation, and also the pace of innovation and development in the drug industry would be significantly hindered, thus preventing us from coming up with better drugs more quickly in order to maximize our improvement of people’s well being.

Clearly, we need to seek a better balance between safety and practicality. Perhaps the implementation of better and more thorough post-market testing would eliminate the possibility that the population would be unknowingly exposing themselves to great risk with little benefit. And premarket testing should also perhaps be lengthened – if not to the actual extent of an entire lifetime, perhaps more than just a couple of years. After all, what on earth is the point of a drug that does the opposite of what it is supposed to do?

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/health/policy/17drug.html?_r=1&ref=health

Who is responsible for the past?

Roughly sixty years ago, the United States knowingly infected approximately seven hundred Central Americans with the sexually transmitted disease, syphilis for scientific experimentation purposes. Just now are United States government officials apologizing for the horrid and illegal act they performed upon these innocent people. Apparently the experiment was conducted in order to test the functionality of a somewhat recently discovered treatment, penicillin. United States government researchers purposely infected “Guatemalan prison inmates, women and mental patients with syphilis” (LA Times) and then proceeded to attempt and treat them with penicillin in order to test the usefulness of this treatment. However, it is recorded that not all of the test subjects were treated and that one of them may have died during this process.

The experiment is related to the Tuskegee experiment in which four hundred black men were infected with syphilis during the 1930s (about a decade before the Guatemalan experiment) and watched carefully for forty years as part of an experiment. They were literally treated as rats in a laboratory—given a disease that could potentially be the cause of their death. Likewise, “they were never told that they were actually subjects being followed in a long-term, "no treatment" study that finally ended in 1972” (Villarosa). Furthermore, the same researcher (Dr. J. Cutler) is associated with both experiments proving that both these experiments were intentional and planned strategically. However, the difference in the experiments lies in the fact that the Tuskegee experiment subjects already had syphilis, whereas the Guatemalan subjects were purposefully infected with it.

The United States performed a terrible deed and is now paying the consequences through embarrassment. As a leader in scientific research, it is the duty of the United States to set the standard for correct experimentation regiment. What the United States researchers conducted was undeniably unethical. However, is it right to punish the country for something that happened in the 1930s and 1940s when the people truly responsible are now deceased? How are we to punish ourselves? And is it perhaps worse that we performed an experiment not even on our own people, but on the people of another nation?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-guatemala-std-study,0,4155801.story

http://www.essortment.com/all/alexanderflemin_rmkm.htm

http://www.theroot.com/views/tuskegee-study-s-guatemalan-roots?page=0,1

Showing You the Way

Dr Phillip Nitschke, the director of Exit International, is giving public workshops to advise people about the age of 50 on how they can take their own lives under the risk of imprisonment. He intends to give people information the “‘best drugs’” and techniques to commit suicide so they can craft a reliable and peaceful ‘exit plan’”(National Post), so that they do not need to get others to do for them and get them into trouble. His workshop is controversial due to the legal grey area that he is stepping into. The Vancouver Public Library has backed out of hosting his talks, many people have threatened legal action, right-to-die advocates applaud his candour, while the courts are unclear on whether his talk is legal. As a supporter of euthanasia, I welcome his actions, but I have some reservations about this.

There is a fair chance that some of the people who attend the talks will eventually enter a late stage of some terminal illness, and it is this group that Dr Nitschke primarily wishes to address. These people will benefit from having this information, because it would help them to make plans that allow them to relief their agony instead of suffering needlessly as they unwillingly cling on to a hopeless existence or implicating others as they seek to be let released from their misery.

However, not all the people who obtain this information will end up in the late stage of a terminal illness. These people might, at some other point in time, contemplate suicide for other reasons, and this information would make it easier for them to take this irreversible step, and I think it would not be possible to avoid this highly undesirable scenario.

What would be better, though, is that only people who are likely to end up in the first scenario should be given access to this information. But what would be even better is that assisted suicide at end-of-life scenarios is legalized. If assisted suicide is legalized, the doctor would be able to freely discuss this option and the arrangements with the patient who is likely to become terminally ill, and the patient would not need to resort to ending his life himself. There would not be a need for Dr Nitschke to give these lectures and risk having more people committing suicide when they are not under great physical agony in a terminal illness.

If all patients received the best possible care that minimized their suffering, then there would be fewer requests for assisted suicide, and all the remaining requests would be taken seriously. However, due to the high cost of healthcare, that is currently not the case. Those who are poor would be under a greater pressure to consider the option of assisted suicide, and this is an undesirable scenario that we should try to avoid. But what other options are there? Better healthcare for the poor and higher taxes for the rest? Or ban assisted suicide, remain at the status quo and give the poor with terminal illness no choice but to live a dreaded existence? None of the options are palatable, but at least this doctor provides an additional option.

Sources:

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/Euthanasiaworkshopstestlegalboundaries/3660698/story.html

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/asuici.htm

A Fated Mortality

"Every custom begins as a broken precedent."

                                                           - Nancy Astor

My last post on the website addressed the rights of tortured terrorists in Guantanamo Bay subjected to experimentation against their will, but it was a bit hard to digest since I was defending the rights of anti-American proponents of violence. That seemed to be the primary argument from the opposition. Perhaps I was a bit extremist, but at this point, it might be safer to ask if tried and true Americans on death row can be subjected to human experimentation. Moreover, can we justify a case for/against capital punishment that differs from our argument for terrorists in Guantanamo? Does the ethical debate change?

The controversy revolves around the execution of Kenneth Biros in Ohio, who was put to death using a single anesthetic in place of the regular three-drug cocktail. Biros’ lawyer claimed that this procedure really was “experimental.” There were other ethical controversies: the doctors were involved in administering the dosage when this was a separate “executive killing” and they should not have been. On the other hand, the Nuremburg Code does not apply to executions. It might have been apropos to review past ethical codes, but as we can see, they point in both directions. What is the right thing to do?

Despite my repudiation of human experimentation at Guantanamo, I would condone Biros’ execution. Though it seems like I’m adopting a unpatriotic double standard, there are a few reasons for this stance. Dr. Teresa Zimmers believes the one-drug knockout miracle is not sufficient and shouldn’t be administered on a “doormat of blind acceptance.” She is right- which is why, as state prosecutor Charles Wille, would put it, “Somebody has to be the first.” Doctors are hesitant to tie their name to this new form of lethal injection, but an improved technique may very well be underway, and for humanity to make any progress, tests must be run.

That practical premise brings us to the ethical dilemma. Should we obey the principles of informed consent, so methodically outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki post-WWII? Because these are not international subjects (like the Guantanamo Bay terrorists), and because their health is not at stake (they will die either way), the same arguments don’t hold true. Biros cannot be the judge of how he dies or even a “method of treatment” because these doctors are not looking to cure him. This is a matter of politics and policy investigation- when the doctors are present, they play the role of researcher alone, not medic. When in a jail cell, the rights of prisoners on death row to “humanity, freedom, and dignity” are restricted, and those regulations are perfectly in line with international human rights law (Prisoner’s rights).

The question of capital punishment is a separate matter to be addressed (I’m personally not for it). But if the death penalty is a given, perhaps these inhumane and unjust wrong-doers can serve humanity as subjects of research- especially when the probability of fatality in the experiment is a predetermined 1.

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http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/hotline/2009/12/ohios-execution-of-kenneth-biros.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/07/lawyers-fight-ohio-execution

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/08/biros-execution-kenneth-b_n_384409.html

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:SBs3UigkSZYJ:www.lac.org.na/projects/alu/Pdf/prisonerrights.pdf+prisoners+lose+dignity&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShG5E9MWquS04LFyGYp8Igil9F0mYWs3ifxofjitE70rC9Q3rLvKdRBjG1pbRTCIYwhN_Yfk9oCVvyQjmWNthp6BGwaBzAuwMqWFua-sZHEZplBUoy7sdbfg8JdPf1CIQEenv3v&sig=AHIEtbRnomIUlXi_70T70ogFnJSYY9JK3Q

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_about/experimentation

If Malthus Were Alive, He'd Kill Himself

Many shudder at the thought of death. They look to science for longer lives.

Science is answering them. New medicines are being investigated to directly increase lifespan through genetics and nanotechnology (1, 2). Though considered possible in the scientific community, life extension should be viewed with a guarded interest – if individuals all seek gain, population dynamics must be addressed. Because of population dynamics and distribution of resources, life extension should be avoided – a population already under pressure of overgrowth should not be burdened by people who simply want to live to undue lengths.

The Malthusian specter of population overgrowth has loomed above the world since 1800 – a world of only a billion people (3). The specter is more than six times bigger now, even without life extension. Ideally, if people desired extended lives, they should be allowed. However, this assumes society would have excess resources (e.g. space, food, etc.) to support these overage individuals. If enough of the population subscribed to life extension, great stresses would be placed on mankind’s ability to support everyone fairly.

This is troubling – even now it is logistically difficult enough for efficient food distribution to impoverished sections of the population. As far as we know, “a Malthusian catastrophe [is] happening under our eyes” (4). An increased demand in the overage population would only exacerbate the current situation. Effectively, an increased demand because of overage individuals would cut away at resources further, decreasing welfare of the society as a whole.

Arguably, the same could be said of modern medicine. However, an important distinction must be drawn between living longer through treatment of disease and through life extension. While the former guarantees better quality of life, the latter simply gives a longer life. Life extension does not improve the quality of peoples’ lives – they are still affected by the same diseases, but just for a longer time period. Perhaps people with life extension would become the living deadweights that Johnathan Swift proposed in Gulliver’s Travels.

Though it seems impersonal to say, normal people should not be allowed to extend their lives through upcoming therapies. The therapies’ perceived benefit to individuals – if existent – would hurt society as a whole. A 50% increase in population is expected by 2050 (5). With population projections to be colossal in the future, the Malthusian specter is too worrisome to ignore. If mankind cannot somehow generate more resources like food and living space, an overage population would tax a significant portion to starvation. As Gandhi said, “There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” If that is today, how can we even slightly burden tomorrow?

Sources:

1. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1662/1679.full

2. http://www.lef.org/anti-aging/telomer1.htm

3. http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm

4. Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed – Jared M. Diamond

5. http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf

6. http://desip.igc.org/malthus/principles.html

Embryonic Stem Cell Research Makes (Un)Ethics History Today

Today, the first human subject was injected with embryonic stem cells. This is part of the first research endeavor in the world in human embryonic stem cell therapy, headed by Geron Corporation, a pharmaceutical company based in Menlo Park, California. Today marks the beginning of their preliminary trials in spinal injury therapy using “oligodendrocyte progenitors” to cover nerve endings. These cells are derived from stem cells, and will in theory perform a series of microscopic tasks to protect and heal the nerves.

Stem cell therapy is not inherently wrong. By using human cells to grow other human cells, we may eventually be able to actually re-grow limbs and organs and prolong lives beyond any threshold we can imagine today, but this is just speculation. Stem cell research is still in the most infantile stage of development and still carries a plethora of risks. What makes this first trial of stem cell research so unethical is that each patient must be treated with immunosuppressive drugs to prevent their bodies from rejecting the stem cells. This combined with the nagging fact that those with spinal injuries are not normally in mortal peril should bring a stark reality to the attention of those reviewing this research: there isn't enough medical benefit to justify such of a risky treatment on human beings with this, in some cases, highly treatable condition. The "progenitors", whose very survival depend on the weakening of the patient's own immune system, also have a very real chance of unpredictably multiplying and "forming improper tissues" throughout the body. This is disgusting to be performed on someone who still has other options. Stem cell research may have its day and save the world, but today, its first step into the human arena was not the best it could have been. Such a risky endeavor is heinous to be performed on anyone who has other, proven alternatives and should be frowned upon by the medical world for this reason.

Sources:

http://www.frcblog.com/2010/10/geron-begins-questionable-human-experiments/

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-stem-cell-treatment,0,451053.story

http://www.frcblog.com/2009/10/fda-hold-on-embryonic-stem-cell-experiments/

http://www.thecloakroomblog.com/2010/02/geron-admits-politics-in-timing-of-fda-embryonic-stem-cell-approval/

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01217008