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Population Education Bulletin
July 1996
<"Major Components of Reconceptualised
Shift, wherein the focus will shift from the
Population Education:
The reconceptualised population education will have
the following components which would constitute the
Equality and Equity, Reproductive Rights
base for developing its scheme of contents :
and Reproductive Health, Family: its
(a) Family Life : Structure and'Role of Family,
Structure and Role, Health and Education,
Basic'Needs, Shared Rights and Responsibilities,
Sustainable Development and so on. It will
Responsible Parenthood,' the Girl Child and the
highlight the individual needs instead of
Female Members-their prime place
. demographic targets and reflect the shift
from purely population control approach to a \^^(b) Gender Equality and Equity: Education,
broader sustainable development approach.
Health Care and Employment Opportunities
outside home for Women, Reproductive.Rights
and Reproductive Health, Male Responsibilities
2. The reconceptualised framework will be based
• on the understanding of the role'of education as
a means to promote greater responsibilities and
awareness of the interrelationships between
population and sustainable development. It will
also highlight the criticality of education as an
essential condition for population stabilisation.
,
(c) Adolescents and Reproductive
Health:
Process of Growing Up, Sexual Health and
STDs, HIV/AIDS and Drug Abuse
J (d) Health and Education: Health, Nutrition
and Population, Infant Child and Maternal
The new framework will incorporate elements
Health, Safe Motherhood, Literacy and
of adolescence education as one of its major
, Female Literacy
components and will provide comprehensive
(e) Sustainable Development: Population
treatment to Process of Growing Up, HIV/.
'
Situation, Sustained Economic Growth,
AIDS and Drug Abuse.
It will aim at
Consumption,
Resource
Development,
providing authentic knowledge to learners in
Population,
Resources,
Technology,
respect of these sensitive areas and developing
Environment and Development
. among them rational attitude and responsible
v/(f) Urbanisation and Migration: Population
behaviour.
distribution, Future Directions, Internal and
Population education will be conceptualised as
International Migration
a truly educational programme and not as an"
3.
Strategies and Modalities :
adjunct to IEC approach, though it will also
make use of interventions being made under
IEC programmes for reinforcing and
strengthening the educational process and
creating a congenial social environment.
5.
The changes, reflected in the conceptual
framework of population education will require
identification and adoption of non-traditional
strategies and modalities of curriculum transaction.
The first task will be to conduct advocacy oriented
activities for eliminating inhibitions and
apprehensions against adolescence education among
parents, teachers and all other educational
functionaries. It will also be essential to interact
with educational administrators at decision-making
level. Suitable strategies will be employed to
Since the fresh reconceptualisation of population
education is being attempted at for the first time
after Revised National Policy on Education-1992,
which provides population education a distinct
place the policy directions given by it will be
reflected in the Reconceptualised Framework of
Population Education.
3
Put this in the asset column of China's late
paramount leader Deng Xiaoping: his market
reforms helped make China one of America's
biggest creditors. Awash in dollars from
exports, China now buys more U.S. Treasurys
than even the Japanese—$12.1 billion in U.S.
notes and bonds through the first nine months of
1996,vs. the $11.6 billion Japan purchased.
China owns more than $43 billion of U.S.
Treasury debt, the world’s fifth largest hoard,
and moving up.
By investing in Treasurys, China is helping
keep U.S. interest rates low. On the other hand,
money talks, and the Chinese might get louder
when it comes to settling touchy disputes on
trade—or Taiwan. Much louder. Last month
Washington reported that America’s trade deficit
with China jumped to an all-time high in 1996 to
$39.5 billion, a gap expected to widen, giving
the Chinese yet another fistful of dollars with
which to go shopping for U.S. bonds.
In Deng’s Debt
He Planned It. He
Did It Meet the
New King of Cars
H. WAYNE HUIZENGA IS DRIV-
k ing in the passing lane. Since
Jan. 1, the billionaire entre
preneur has gone from neo
phyte car man to the nation’s
biggest car retailer. His Re
public Industries has bought
up new- and used-car dealer
ships whose revenues totaled
S2.7 billion last year. That will
make Republic bigger than
current numero uno Hen
drick Automotive Group of
Charlotte, North Carolina,
with $2.3 billion, Automotive
News reports. Time first de
tailed Huizenga’s plans for a
An Ambassador’s
Misfortune
HOW DO YOU CREATE A SMALL
fortune? Start with a large
one. The late Pamela Harri
man, British-bom U.S. ambas
sador to France, went through
money faster than husbands,
and her amazing social and
political skills stood in stark
contrast to her investing acu
men. She seems to have
squandered most of tire more
than $100 million she inherit
ed from her third husband,
New York Governor and Am
bassador W. Averell Harri
man. Her estate: some $15
million to $20 million, mostly
in jewelry, propeity and art.
The Democratic doyen
had already paid more than
$10 million to Averell’s heirs,
who had accused her and her
advisers of blowing $40 mil
lion outright, including $20
The Rich Are Indeed Different
BIG DEALER: Wayne Huizenga
dealership-acquisition binge
in December. Then, Huizen
ga, 59, had little more than a
blueprint and a shopping list.
Now, the man who built
Blockbuster and trash collec
tor Waste Management has
acquired 36 dealers for about
$550 million in stock. He’s
also opened seven AutoNation
and three ValuStop used-car
lots. Wall Streeters expect
him to spend $5 billion in
three years buying dealer
ships, consolidating yet anoth
er mom-and-pop industry.
Bill Gates may be the
richest American, but even
he can complain that $15
billion ain’t what it
used to be. According
to The Wealthy 100: A
Ranking of the Richest
Americans, Past and
Present, by Michael
Klepper and Robert
Gunther, Gates ranks
a mere 31st. He is
ahead of the modest
Mark Hopkins, one of
the powers who built
the Central Pacific
Railroad, just behind
meat-packer Philip
Armour, and way,
way behind John D.
Rockefeller at No. 1.
| Gates doesn’t figure to
threaten old John D. The
I authors determined the
million on a
doomed hotel
project in New
Jersey. She also
spent lavishly on
herself. Alas, she
didn’t die smart
ly either. Accord
ing to the Wash
Harriman
ington Post, she
did not set up a
trust to shelter the estate from
taxes, so her heirs will receive
a hefty bill from the IRS.
standings by looking at the
tycoons’ fortunes in relation
to the country’s total gnp.
So even if Gates ratchets up
the billions, the immensity
of the economy makes
it hard for him to
move up very far. By
the way, with the ex
ception of Sam Wal
ton of Wal-Mart (No.
14), everyone on the
list ahead of Gates
made most or all of his
fortune before there
was an income tax.
Other living Ameri
cans on the list: War
ren Buffett (39), John
Kluge (70), Paul Allen
(75), Sumner Red
stone (87) and Ron
Perelman (95).
-BY BERNARD BAUMOHL, DANIEL KADLEC, VALERIE MARCHANT, CHRISTOPHER OGDEN, STACY PERMAN AND BILL SAPOWTO_
TIME, MARCH 10,1997
29
A
SPECIALrePorT
o n
cloning
NE DOESN’T EXPECT Dr. Fran kenstein to show up in wool sweater,
baggy parka, soft British ac cent and the face of a bank clerk. But
there in all banal benignity h e was: Dr. Ian Wilmut, the first man
to create fully formed life from adult body parts
since Mary Shelley’s mad scientist.
The creator wore chinos. Wilmut may not look
the part, but he plays it. He took a cell nucleus from
a six-year-old ewe, fashioned from it a perfect twin
adding the nice Frankenstein touch of passing an
electric charge through the composite cell to get it
growing—and called it Dolly.
Dolly, the clone, is an epochal—a cataclysmiccreature. Not because of the technology that pro
duced it. Transferring nuclei has been done a hun
dred times. But because of the science. Dolly is
living proof that an adult cell can revert to embry
onic stage and produce a full new being. This was
not supposed to happen.
It doesn’t even happen in amphibians, those
wondrously regenerative little creatures, some of
which can regrow a cut-off limb or tail. Try to grow
an organism from a frog cell, and what do you get?
You get, to quote biologist Colin Stewart, “embryos
rather ignominiously dying (croaking!) around the
tadpole stage.”
And what hath Wilmut wrought? A fully formed,
perfectly healthy mammal—a mammal!—born from
a single adult cell. Not since God took Adam’s rib and
fashioned a helpmate for him has anything so fan
tastic occurred.
What, then, was the reaction to this break
through of biblical proportions?
There is a mischievous story (told mostly in Eng
land) that a leading Scottish newspaper reported
30
the Titanic sinking with the headline Glasgow m4^
lost AT SEA. Well, here was a story that deserved the
headline man creates life. And how does it play? A
Wall Street Journal headline urgently asks, who will
CASH IN ON BREAKTHROUGH IN CLONING? (Answer:
“Tiny company could emerge a big winner.”) The
President of the U.S. calls for a committee of experts
to gather and pull their beards.
And the New York Times, in a lovely coda to its ed
itorial titled cloning for good or evil, advises that
“society will need to sort through what is acceptable
and what is the nightmare beyond.”
Well, yes. The most portentous scientific achieve
ment since the explosion of the first atomic bom|B^
will need a weighing of pros and cons. No kidding.
And, no doubt, the pro-and-con weighing, tW
pontificating and the chin pulling will now go inW
high gear. Wilmut will spawn more ethics conclaves
than cloned sheep. No matter. There is nothing to
stop cloning, not even of humans.
What the politicians do not understand is that
Wilmut discovered not so much a technical trick as
a new law of nature. We now know that an adult
mammalian cell can fire up all the dormant genet
ic instructions that shut down as it divides and spe
cializes and ages, and thus can become a source of
new life.
You can outlaw technique; you cannot repeal bi
ology. And even the outlawing of this technique—
Britain, for example, forbids the cloning of hu
mans—will fail. It is too simple, too replicable. No
wrount of regulation by the U.S. government will
stop it.
Why? Not just because it is so easy, but because
its potential for good is so immense. The study of
cloning can give the world deep insights into such
puzzles as spinal cords, heart muscle and brain tis
sue that won’t regenerate after injury, or cancer cells
that revert to embryonic stage and multiply uncon
trollably. Repheating Wilmut’s work will elucidate
what he along the way did right that nature, in these
pathologies, does wrong.
Of course, the potential for evil is infinitely
greater. But there will be no stopping that either.
Ban human cloning in America, as in England, and
it will develop on some island of Dr. Moreau. The
possibilities are as endless as they are ghastly: hu
man hybrids, clone armies, slave hatcheries, “delta”
and “epsilon” sub-beings out of Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World.
But you don’t have to be mad to be tantalized. Be
ing human will do. Think of it: what Dolly—fat, in
sensible Dolly—promises is not quite a second
chance at life (you don’t reproduce yourself; you just
reproduce a twin) but another soul’s chance at your
life. Every parent tries to endow his child with the
wisdom of his own hard-earned experience. Here is
the opportunity to pour all the accumulated learn
ing of your life back into a new you, to raise your ex
act biological double, to guide your very flesh
through a second existence.
Oh, the temptation to know what might have
been. Or to produce an Albert Einstein, a Martin
Luther King, for every generation. Or to raise a
Thomas Jefferson in an artificial environment re
creating 18th century' Virginia. Create, nurture and
wait. Then bring him out one day, fully grown, to an
swer the question of the ages: VHrat would Jefferson
do today?
-CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
THE AGE OF
A line has been crossed, and reproductive biology wil
By J. MADELEINE NASH
ven now, a week after
news of the achievement
first flew around the globe,
linger
in of
the
air
like ancon
trail. The
landmark
paper
traces
astonishment
E
published late last week in the jour
nal Nature confirmed what the
headlines had been screaming’for
days: researchers at the Roslin Insti
tute near Edinburgh, Scotland, had
indeed pulled off what many ex
perts thought might be a scientific
impossibility. Krom a cell in an adult
ewe’s mammary gland, embryolo
gist lan Wilmutand his colleagues
managed to create a frisky Iamb
named Dolly (with apologies to Ms.
Parton), scoring an advance in re
productive technology as unsettling
as it was startling. Unlike offspring
produced in the usual fashion, Dol
ly does not merely take after her bi
ological mother. She is a carbon
copy, a laboratory counterfeit so ex
act that she is in essence her moth
ers identical twirS'
What enabled the Scottish team
to succeed where so many others
have failed was a trick so ingenious,
Illustration for TIME by Tim O’Brien
yet SO simple, that any skilled labora
tory technician should be able to
master it—and therein lies both the
beauty and the danger: once Wilm
and his colleagues figured out how to
cross that biological barrier, they ep-,
sured that others would follow. Anu
although the Roslin researchers had
to struggle for more than 10 years to
achieve their breakthrough, it took
political, and religious leaders
around the world no time at all to
grasp its import: if scientists can
clone sheep, they.can probably clone
people too.
Without question, this exotic
for people or for sheep
form of reproductive engineering
could become an extremely useful
.topi. Tire ability to clone adult mam,ds, in particular, opens up myriad
exciting possibilities, from propagat/“•g endangered animal species to
producing replacement organs for
transplant patients. Agriculture
stands to benefit as well. Dairy farm
ers, for example, could clone their
champion cows, making it possible
to produce more milk from smaller
herds. Sheep ranchers could do the
same with their top lamb and wool
producers.
But it’s also easy to imagine the
technology being misused, and as news
from Roslin spread, apocalyptic scenarios
proliferated. Journalists wrote seriously
about the possibility of virgin births, resur
recting the dead and women giving birth to
themselves. On the front page of the New
York Tinies, a cell biologist from Washing
ton University in St. Louis, Missouri,
named Ursula Goodenough quipped that if
cloning were perfected, “there’d be no
need for men.”
Scientists have long dreamed of doing
what the Roslin team did. After all, if
starfish and other invertebrates can prac
tice asexual reproduction, why can’t it be
extended to the rest of the animal king
dom? In the 1980s, developmental biolo
gists in Philadelphia at what is now Al
legheny University of the Health Sciences
came tantalizingly close. From the red
blood cells of an adult frog, they raised a
crop of lively tadpoles. These tadpoles were
impressive creatures, remembers Universi
ty of Minnesota cell biologist Robert McKinnell, who followed the work closely.
“They swam and ate and developed beauti
ful eyes and hind limbs,” he says. But then,
halfway through metamorphosis, they died.
Scientists who have focused their
cloning efforts on more forgiving em
bryonic tissue have met with greater suc
cess. A simple approach, called embryo
twinning (literally splitting embryos in
half), is commonly practiced in the cattle
industry. Coaxing surrogate cells to ac
cept foreign dna is a bit trickier. In 1952
researchers in Pennsylvania successfully I duce an animal with a desired trait—a pig
cloned a live frog from an embryonic cell. with a human immune system, perhaps—
Three decades later, researchers were you could make many copies.
In recent years, some scientists hare
learning to do the same with such mam- I
mals as sheep and calves. “What’s new," | speculated that the changes wrought by
observes University of Wisconsin animal differentiation might be irreversible, ja
scientist Neal First, “is not cloning mam which case cloning an adult mamiw
mals. It’s cloning mammals from cells that would be biologically impossible. The birth
of Dolly not only proves them wrong but
are not embryonic.”
also suggests that the difficulty scientists
have had cloning adult cells may have less
mbryo cells are infinitely easier to work with because they are, to do with biology than with technique.
To create Dolly, the Roslin team con
in the jargon of cell biologists,
largely “undifferentiated.” That is, centrated on arresting the cell cycle—the
they have not yet undergone the series of choreographed steps all cells go
progressive changes that turn cells through in the process of dividing. In Dolly’s
into skin, muscles, hair, brain and so on. case, tire cells the scientists wanted to clone
An undifferentiated cell can give rise to all came from the udder of a pregnant sheep.
the other cells in the body, say scientists, To stop them from dividing, researchers
because it is capable of activating any starved the cells of nutrients for a week. In
gene on any chromosome. But as develop response, the cells fell into a slumbering
ment progresses, differentiation alters the state that resembled deep hibernation.
At this point, Wilmut and his col
way dna—the double-stranded molecule
that makes up genes—folds up inside the leagues switched to a mainstream cloning
nucleus of a cell. Along with other struc technique known as nuclear transfer. Firsj^
they
removed the nucleus of an unfertijr
tural changes, folding helps make vast
stretches of dna inaccessible, ensuring ized egg, or oocyte, while leaving the sur
that genes in adult cells do not turn on at rounding cytoplasm intact. Then tl^
placed the egg next to the nucleus of a qw
the wrong time or in the wrong tissue.
The disadvantage of embryonic clon escent donor cell and applied gentle puls
ing is that you don’t know what you are es of electricity. These pulses prompted
getting. With adult-cell cloning, you can the egg to accept the new nucleus—and all
wait to see how well an individual turns the dna it contained—as though it were its
out before deciding to clone it. Cloning own. They also triggered a burst of bio
also has the potential to make genetic en chemical activity, jump-starting the pro
gineering more efficient Once you pro cess of cell division. A week later, the em
E
WE WILL SEE EWE AGAIN »—
Cells taken from the udder of a Finn
Dorset ewe are placed in a culture
with very low concentrations of nutrients.
the cells stop dividing and
1
34
Meanwhile an unfertilized egg
cell is taken from a Scottish
Blackface ewe. The
Blackface ewe
nucleus (with its
«
DNA) is sucked
,
out, leaving an
’
empty egg cell
containing all the
cellular machinery
necessary to
produce an embryo.
TIME, MARCH 10,1997
more was what it suggested about how
cells work.
Many scientists had suspected that the
key to getting a donor cell and egg to dance
together was synchronicity—getting them
started on the same foot. Normal eggs and
sperm don’t have that problem; they come
pre-divided, ready to combine. An adult
cell, though, with its full complement of
genes, has to be coaxed into entering an
embryonic state. That is probably what
Wilmut did by putting the donor cell to
sleep, says Colin Stewart, an embryologist
at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
Somehow, in ways scientists have yet to
understand, this procedure seems to have
reprogrammed the dna of the donor cell.
Thus when reawakened by the Roslin
team, it was able to orchestrate the pro
duction of all the cells needed to make up
Dolly’s body.
Like most scientists who score major
breakthroughs, Wilmut and his colleagues
have raised more questions than they have
answered. Among the most pressing are
questions about Dolly’s health. She is sev
en months old and appears to be perfectly
fine, but no one knows if she will develop
problems later on. For one thing, it is pos
sible that Dolly may not live as long as
other sheep. After all, observes nci’s Stew
art, “she came from a six-year-old cell. Will
she exhibit signs of aging prematurely?” In
addition, as the high rate of spontaneous
abortion suggests, cloning sometimes
damages dna. As a result, Dolly could de
each other,
fuse
2
J\/J
bryo that had already started growing into
Dolly was implanted in the uterus of a sur^hpte ewe.
^^An inkling that this approach might
work, says Wilmut, came from the success
1^ team experienced in producing live
9hbs from embryonic clones. “Could we
do it again with an adult cell?” wondered
Wilmut, a reserved, self-deprecating man
who likes gardening, hiking in the high
lands and drinking good single-malt
Scotch (but who was practical enough to
file for a patent before he went public).
It was a high-risk project, and in the
beginning Wilmut proceeded with great
secrecy, limiting his core team to four sci
entists. His caution proved to be justified;
the scientists failed far more often than
they succeeded. Out of 277 tries, the re
searchers eventually produced only 29
embryos that survived longer than six
days. Of these, all died before birth except
Dolly, whose historic entry into the world
was witnessed by a handful of researchers
a veterinarian.
19 Rumors that something had hap
pened in Roslin, a small village in the
agen, rolling hills just south of Edinfllgh, started circulating in scientific cir
cles a few weeks ago. It was only last
week, when the rumors were confirmed
and the details of the experiment re
vealed, that the real excitement erupted.
Cell biologists, like everybody else, were
struck by the simple boldness of the ex
periment. But what intrigued them even
velop any number of diseases that could i
shorten her life.
E
Indeed, cloning an adult mammal is I
still a difficult, cumbersome business—so*
much so that even agricultural and bio-?
medical applications of the technology?
could be years away. PPL Therapeutics,;
the small biotechnical firm based in Edin-j
burgh that provided a third of the funding;
to create Dolly, has its eye on the pharma-*
ceutical market. Cloning, says PPL’s man
agingdirector Ron James, could provide an
efficient way of creating flocks of sheep
that have been genetically engineered to
produce milk laced with valuable enzymes
and drugs. Among the pharmaceuticals
PPL is looking at is a potential treatment for
cystic fibrosis.
Nobody at Roslin or PPL is talking
about cloning humans. Even if they were,
their procedure is obviously not practical—
not as long as dozens of surrogates need to
be impregnated for each successful birth.
And that is probably a good thing, because
it gives the public time to digest the news—
and policymakers time to find ways to pre
vent abuses without blocking scientific
progress. If the policymakers succeed, and
if their guidelines win international accep
tance, it may take a lot longer than the ed
itorial writers and talk-show hosts think
before a human clone emerges—even from
the shadows of some offshore renegade lab.
“How long?” asks PPL’s James. “Hopefully,
an eternity.” —With reporting by Helen Gibson/
Roslin and Dick Thompson/ Washington
About six days later, the resulting
embryo is implanted in the uterus of
another Blackface ewe.
4
Egg
cell.
sDNA
After a gestation
period, the pregnant
Blackface ewe gives birth
to a baby Finn Dorset lamb,
named Dolly, that is
genetically identical to the
original donor.
5
Baby i
Finn Dorset V
TIME, MARCH 10,1997
35
SPECIAL
REPORT
WILL WE
. FOLLOW
THE SHEEP?
how to transfer the genetic schematics
from an adult cell into a living ovum and
keep the fragile embryo alive throughout
gestation—most of your basic biological
laboratory of the big-city hospital. As
work was finished. The social and philo
always, the list of people seeking the
sophical temblors it triggers, however,
lab's
services
is
a
long
one
—
and,
as
al
ways,
it’s a who
varied
one.
Over
are
the parents
have
flown
inhere
special
have merely begun.
ly to see if the lab can make them an exact
Only now, as the news of Dolly, the
copy oftheir six-year-old daughter, recent
sublimely oblivious sheep, becomes part of
ly found to be suffering from leukemia so
the cultural debate, are we beginning to
ressive that only a bone-marrow trans
come to terms with those soulquakes. How
nt can save her. The problem is
will the new technology be regulated?
finding a compatible donor. If, by
What does the sudden ability to
reproductive happenstance, the girl
I make genetic stencils of ourselves
been bom an identical twin,
= say about the concept of individualhdr matching sister could have pro
► ity? Do the ants and bees and Mao
duced all the marrow she needed.
ist Chinese have it right? Is a species
But nature didn’t provide her with
simply an iiberorganism, a collec
a twin, and now the cloning lab will
tion of multicellular parts to be die
try. In nine months, the parents,
cast as needed? Or is there somewho face the very likely prospect of
j thing about the individual that is lost
losing the one daughter they have,
when the mystical act of conceiving
couldfind themselves raising two of
a person becomes standardized into
her—the second created expressly to
a mere act of photocopying one?
help keep the first alive.
Last week President Clinton
took the first tentative step toward
JUST A WEEK AFTER SCOTTISH EManswering these questions, charg
bryologists announced that they
ing a U.S. commission with the task
had succeeded in cloning a sheep
of investigating the legal and ethical
from a single adult cell, both the
implications of the new technology
genetics community and the world
and reporting back to him with
at large are coming to an unset
their findings within 90 days. Later
tling realization: the science is the
this week the House subcommittee
easy part. It is not that the break
on basic research will hold a hearing
through was not decades in the
to address the same issues. The
making. It's just that once it was
probable tone of those sessions was
complete—once you figured out
established las’ week when Harold
CREATOR WO CtOrlt. ’A/llmut and the unsuspecting Dolly
Varmus, dire-.tor o: the Wii-raal Inhave made nows—and sparked debate—around the world
By JEFFREY KLUGER
T’S A BUSY MORNING IN THE CLONING
I
•
It will be up to
science to determine
if human cloning
can be done.
It is up to the rest of us
to determine
if it should be
Illustration for TIME by Matt Mahurin
ft O.J. would clone
himself and then
say,'It’s not me, it’s
the other 0177
ll
ft No longer have
The commissioner of basketball probably wouldft allow it
ftOne Imelda
DWIGHT MANLEY, agent for Dennis Rodman, to the Wall Street Journal, when asked about
cloning four copies to make a Rodman dream team
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .
stitutes of Health (nih), told another sub
committee that cloning a person is “re
pugnant to the American public.”
Around the globe, the reaction was just
as negative. France’s undersecretary for re
search condemned human cloning as “un
thinkable,” the Council of Europe’s Secre
tary General called it “unacceptable,” and
Germany’s Minister of Research and Tech
nology flatly declared: “There will never be
a human clone.” Agreed Professor Akira Iritani, an embryology expert at Osaka’s Kinki University, “We must refrain from ap
plying [the technique] to human beings.”
Though the official responses were pre
dictable—and even laudable—they may have
missed the larger point. The public may wel
come ways a government can regulate clon
ing, but what is needed even more is ways
a thinking species can ethically fathom it.
“This is not going to end in 90 days,” says
Princeton University president Harold
Shapiro, the chairman of President Clin
ton’s committee. “Now that we have this
technology, we have some hard thinking
ahead of us.”
ALSO WAITING IN THE CLONING LAB THIS
morning is the local industrialist. He does
not have a sick child to worry about; in
deed, he has never especially cared for
children. Lately he has begun to feel dif
ferent. With a little help from the cloning
lab, he now has the opportunity to have
a son who would bear not just his name
and his nose and the color of his hair but
every scrap of genetic coding that makes
him what he is. Now that appeals to the lo
cal industrialist. In fact, if this first boy
works out, he might even make a few more.
38
OF ALL THE REASONS FOR USING THE NEW
technology, pure ego raises the most
hackles. It’s one thing to want to be re
membered after you are gone; it’s quite
another to manufacture a living monu
ment to ensure that you are. Some ob
servers claim to be shocked that anyone
would contemplate such a thing. But
that’s naive—and even disingenuous. It’s
obvious that a lot of people would be ea
ger to clone themselves.
“IPs a horrendous crime to make a
Xerox of someone," argues author and
science critic Jeremy Rifkin. “You’re put
ting a human into a genetic straitjacket.
For the first time, we’ve taken the princi
ples of industrial design—quality control,
predictability-and applied them to a hu
man being.”
But is it really the first time? Is cloning
all that different from genetically engi
neering an embryo to eliminate a genetic
disease like cystic fibrosis? Is it so far re
moved from in vitro fertilization? In both
those cases, after all, an undeniable reduc
tiveness is going on, a shriveling of the
complexity of the human body to the cer
tainty of a single cell in a Petri dish. If we
accept this kind of tinkering, can’t we ac
cept cloning? Harvard neurobiologist Lisa
Geller admits that intellectually she does
not see a difference between in vitro tech
nology and cloning. “But,” she adds, “I ad
mit it makes my stomach feel nervous.”
More palatable than the ego clone to
some bioethicists is the medical clone, a
baby created to proride transplant materi
al for the original. Nobody advocates har
vesting a one-of-a-kind organ like a heart
from the new child—an act that would
TIME, MARCH 10,1997
amount to creating the clone just to kill it.
But it’s hard to argue against the idea of a
family’s loving a child so much that it will
happily raise another, identical child so one
of its kidneys or a bit of its marrow might
allow the first to live. “The reasons for op
posing this are not easy to argue,” says
John Fletcher, former ethicist for the nih.
The problem is that once you start
shading the cloning question—giving an
ethical O.K. to one hypothetical and a
thumbs-down to another—you begin mak
ing the sort of ad hoc hash of things the
Supreme Court does when it tries to defi^t
pornography. Suppose you could show t^|
the baby who was created to provide mar
row for her sister would forever be treated
like a second-class sibling—well cared®',
perhaps, but not well loved. Do you pro
hibit the family from cloning the first
daughter, accepting the fact that you may
be condemning her to die? Richard Mc
Cormick, a Jesuit priest and professor of
Christian ethics at the University of Notre
Dame, answers such questions simply and
honestly when he says, “I can’t think of a
morally acceptable reason to clone a hu
man being.”
In a culture in which not everyone
sees things so straightforwardly, however,
some ethical accommodation is going to
have to be reached. How it will be done is
anything but clear. “Science is close to
crossing some horrendous boundaries,”
says Leon Kass, professor of social thought
at the University of Chicago. “Here is an
opportunity for human beings to decide if
we’re simply going to stand in the path of
the technological steamroller or take con
trol and help guide its direction.”
FOLLOWING THE LOCAL INDUSTRIALIST ON
the appointments list is the physics laure
ate. He is terminally ill. When he dies, one
of the most remarkable minds in science
will die with him. Reproductive chance
might one day produce another scientist
just as gifted, but there is no telling when.
The physics laureate does not like that
kind of uncertainty. He has come to the
cloning lab today to see if he can’t do
something about it.
IF THE HUMAN GENE POOL CAN BE SEEN AS
gjjort of species-wide natural resource, it’s
JPly sensible for the rarest of those genes to
be husbanded most carefully, preserved so
every generation may enjoy their ben. Even the most ardent egalitarians
v/ould find it hard to object to an Einstein
appearing eveiy 50 years or a Chopin every
century. It would be better still if we could
be guaranteed not just an Einstein but the
Einstein. If a scientific method were devel
oped so that the man who explained gen
eral relativity in the first half of the cen
tury could be brought back to crack the
secrets of naked singularities in the second,
could we resist using it? And suppose the
person being replicated were researching
not just abstruse questions of physics
but pressing questions of medicine. Giv
en the chance to bring back Jonas Salk,
would it be moral not to try?
Surprisingly, scientific ethicists seem
to say yes. “Choosing personal characteris
tics as if they were options on a car is an in
vitation to misadventure,” says John Paris,
professor of bioethics at Boston College.
“It is in the diversity of our population that
we find interest and enthusiasm.”
M
Complicating things further, the traits
a culture values most are not fixed. If
cloning had existed a few centuries ago,
men with strong backs and women with
broad pelrises would have been the first
ones society would have wanted to repro
duce. During the industrial age, however,
brainpower began to count for more than
muscle power. Presumably the custodians
of cloning technology at that historical
juncture would have faced the prospect
of letting previous generations of strapping
men and fecund women die out and re
placing them with a new population of in
tellectual giants. “What is a better human
being?” asks Boston University ethicist
George Annas. “A lot of it is just fad.”
Even if we could agree on which indi
viduals would serve as humanity’s tem
plates of perfection, there is no guarantee
that successive copies would be everything
If you had the chance, would you
clone yourself?
Yes
7%
No 91%
Is it against God’s will to clone
human beings?
Yes 74%
No 19%
the originals were. Innate genius is not al
ways so innate, after all, coming to nothing
if the person bom with the potential for ex
cellence doesn't find the right environ
ment and blossom in it. A scientific genius
who is beaten as a child might become a
mad genius. An artist who is introduced to
alcohol when he is young might merely be
come a drunk. A thousand track switches
have to click in sequence for the child who
starts out toward greatness to wind up
there. If a single one clicks wrong, the
high-speed rush toward a Nobel Prize can
dead-end in a makeshift shack in the Mon
tana woods like the one that hid the trou
bled soul believed to be the Unabomber.
THE DESPOT WILL NOT BE COMING TO THE
cloning lab today. Before long, he knows,
the lab’s science will come to him—and not
a moment too soon. The despot has ruled
his little countryfor 30 years, but now he’s
getting old and will have to pass on his
power. That makes him nervous; he has
seen what can happen to a cult of person
ality if too weak a personality takes over.
Happily, in his country that is not a
danger. As soon as the technology of the
cloning lab goes global—as it inevitably
must —his people can be assured of his
leadership long after he is gone.
THIS IS THE ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE SCE-
Shotdd the federal Government
regulate the cloning of animals?
Yes 65%
No 29%
t*, W->. 'llPeV. 'il". Sal
:1 r ■
TIME, MARCH 10,1997
. S“ ■ :
nario. The Pharaohs built their pyramids,
the Emperors built Rome, and Napoleon
built his Arc de Triomphe—all, at least in
part, to make the permanence of stone
compensate for the impermanence of the
flesh. But big buildings and big tombs
would be a poor second choice if the flesh
39
MONEY IN MOTION
could be made to go on forever. Now, it
appears, it can.
The idea of a dictator’s being geneti
cally duplicated is not new—not in pop
culture, anyhow. In Ira Levin’s 1976 book
The Boys from Brazil, a zealous ex-Nazi
bred a generation of literal Hitler Youth
boys cloned from cells left behind by the
Fiihrer. Woody Allen dealt with a similar
premise a lot more playfully in his 1973
film Sleeper, in which a futuristic tyrant
is killed by a bomb blast, leaving nothing
behind but his nose-a nose that his fol
lowers hope to clone into a new leader.
Even as the fiction of one decade be
comes the technology of another, it is
inevitable that this technology will be
used—often by the wrong people.
If anything will prevent human clon
ing—whether of dictator, industrialist or
baby daughter—from becoming a reality,
it’s that science may not be able to clear
the ethical high bar that would allow
basic research to get under way in the
first place. Cutting, coring and electrical
ly jolting a sheep embryo is a huge moral
distance from doing the same to a human
embryo. It took 277 trials and errors to
produce Dolly the sheep, creating a cel
lular body count that would look like
sheer carnage if the cells were human.
“Human beings ought never to be used
as experimental subjects,” Shapiro says
simply.
Whether they will or not is impossible
to say. Even if governments ban human
cloning outright, it will not be so easy to
police what goes on in private laboratories
that don’t receive public money—or in
pirate ones offshore. Years ago, Scottish
scientists studying in vitro fertilization
were subjected to such intense criticism
that they took their work underground,
continuing it in seclusion until they had
the technology perfected. Presumably,
human-cloning researchers could also
do their work on the sly, emerging only
when they succeed.
Scientists do not pretend to know
when that will happen, but some science
observers fear it will be soon. The first
infant clone could come squalling into
the world within seven years, according
to Arthur Caplan, director of the Center
for Bioethics at die University of Penn
sylvania. If he is right, science had better
get its ethical house in order quickly. In
calendar terms, seven years from now is
a good way off; in scientific terms, it is
tomorrow afternoon.
—Reported by
Dick Thompson/Washington, with other bureaus
For more about the ethics ofcloning, visit
time.com/cloning on the World Wide Web
40
Daniel Kadlec
BEARISH ON BIOTECH
Laymen should stay away lest they get fleeced
ormant for years, the biotech bug is once again infesting
stocks. This nasty man-made microbe, hatched in the labs of Wall Street,
surfaces every few years to prey on susceptible (i.e., gullible) investors.
Symptoms include feverish optimism followed by cold chills of reality.
The cyclical critter was due to hatch again anyway, but last week’s reve
lation that Scottish scientists had succeeded in cloning a sheep amounted to
a final whack at the snooze button. Now investors are wide awake to the
potential wonders of biotechnology for the first time since a euphoric rally
in those stocks in 1991. If you are a doctor or scientist, go ahead and take ^0
your best shot. Biotech certainly holds great promise, and you may well un
derstand enough to pick the few stocks that will thrive. But overall the in
dustry has been so consistently disappointing that laymen should stay away A
lest they get fleeced.
Consider that of the 300 or so publicly traded U.S. biotech firms, only
about a dozen stirred up a profit last year. Many are one-drug research out
fits in a field where only 1 in 10 drugs gets
approved. In many cases, three or four
one-note companies are working on the
American Stock Exchange
same basic treatment, like wound healing.
Biotechnology Index, weekly closings
It’s a dicey business.
Recall the Flavr Savr, a tomato bio
engineered to ripen on the vine and last
months on the shelf. It might have been a
huge moneymaker if only the thing had
tasted like a tomato. Its maker, Calgene
Inc., traded above $20 a share in 1992, but
the stock subsequently rotted to $5, and
Monsanto Co. has offered to buy the com
pany for $7.25 a share.
That is by no means the most devas
tating loss stemming from a biotech failure
in the ’90s. Centocor Inc. fell from $60 to
'
$5; Xoma Corp., from $32 to $1; Synergen
Inc., from $73 to $4—all because of hyped A
septic-shock drugs that didn’t work. Inject those babies into your 401(k) re- T
tirement fund, and you’ll never retire. And these aren’t isolated cases. Viren
Mehta, a biotech expert at Mehta and Isaly, keeps track of biotech bombs. He
says there have been 14 major disasters this decade. But even if you avoid spe
cific product failures, it isn’t enough. Biotech stocks fly in swarms. The whole
group gets clipped when a few failures surface. In the three years that ended
in December 1994, the average biotech stock fell 63%.
The average biotech stock has doubled in two years and reached a fouryear high. Following the cloning news out of Scotland, investors indiscrimi
nately bid up stocks of cloning companies. Shares of PPL Therapeutics of Ed
inburgh, which helped fund the sheep-cloning research, jumped 16% in a day.
There have been some genuine commercial successes, such as Biogen Inc.’s
drug Avonex, approved last year to treat multiple sclerosis. Still, a dangerous
froth is forming. “During the next six months you’re going to see quite a few
disasters,” predicts Evan Sturza of Sturza’s Medical Investment Letter.
There are lots of reasons to root for these companies. High stock prices
raise more money to seek important treatments. But after much exposure, I’ve
been able to develop a resistance to the biotech bug. And until the gene
bending gods can separate the hype from the glory, they’re not getting any of
my savings.
b
D
HOT AGAIN
Daniel Kadlec is Time’s Wall Street columnist. Reach him at kadlec@time.com
TIME, MARCH 10,1997
By ROBERT WRIGHT
HE WORLD HAS HAD A
CAN
BE XEROXED?
week to conjure up
nightmare scenarios,
yet no one has articu
lated the most fright
ening peril posed by
human cloning: rampant self
satisfaction. Just consider. If
cloning becomes an option,
what kind of people will use
it? Exactly—people who think
the world could use more of
them; people so chipper that
y have no qualms about
towing their inner life on a
dozen members of the next
generation; people, in short,
^>vith high self-esteem. The
rest of us will sit there racked
with doubt, worried about in
flicting our tortured psyches
on the innocent unborn, while
all around us shiny, happy
people proliferate like rab
bits. Or sheep, or whatever.
Of course, this assumes
that psyches get copied along
with genes. That seems to be
the prevailing assumption.
People nod politely to the
obligatory reminder about
the power of environment in
shaping character. But many
then proceed to talk excitedly
about cloning as if it amounts
__ to Xeroxing your soul.
What makes the belief in
genetic identity so stubborn?
In part a natural confusion
Aver headlines. There are zil» lions of them about how
genes shape behavior, but the underlying
stories spring from two different sciences.
The first, behavioral genetics, studies ge
netic differences among people. (Do you
have the thrill-seeking gene? You do?
Mind if I drive?) Behavioral genetics has
demonstrated that genes matter. But does
that mean that genes are destiny, that your
clone is you?
Enter the second science, evolutionary
psychology. It dwells less on genetic differ
ence than on commonality. In this view,
the world is already chock-full of virtual
clones. My next-door neighbor-or the av
erage male anywhere on the globe—is a
99.9%-accurate genetic copy of me. And
paradoxically, many of the genes we share
empower the environment to shape behav
ior and thus make us different from one
another. Natural selection has preserved
these “malleability genes” because they
ences that exert certain ef
fects on the mind. Early in this
century, a fledgling effort at
behavioral genetics divided
people into such classes as
mesomorphs—physically ro
bust, psychologically assert
ive—and ectomorphs—skinny,
nervous, shy. But even if these
generalizations hold some wa
ter, it needn’t mean that ecto
morphs have genes for shy
ness. It may just mean that
skinny people get pushed
around on the school play
ground and their personality
adapts. (This is one problem
with those identical-twinsreared-apart studies by be
havioral geneticists: Do the
twins’ characters correlate
because of “character genes”
or sometimes just because ap
pearance shapes experience
which shapes character?)
People who assume that
genes are us seem to think
that if you reared your clone,
you would experience a kind
of mind meld—not quite a fu
sion of souls, maybe, but an
uncanny empathy with your
budding carbon copy. And
certainly empathy would at
times be intense. You might
know exactly how nervous
your frail, gawky clone felt
before the high school dance
or exactly how eager your at
tractive, athletic clone felt.
On the other hand, if you
really tried, you could simi
larly empathize with people
who weren’t your clone.
We’ve all felt an adolescent’s nervousness,
and we’ve all felt youthfully eager, because
these feelings are part of the generic hu
man mind, grounded in the genes that
define our species. It’s just that we don’t ef
fortlessly transmute this common experi
ence into empathy except in special cases—
with offspring or siblings or close friends.
And presumably with clones.
But the cause of this clonal empathy
wouldn’t be that your inner life was exact
ly like your clone’s (it wouldn’t be). The
catalyst, rather, would be seeing that famil
iar face—the one in your high school year
book, except with a better haircut. It would
remind you that you and your clone were
essentialhj the same, driven by the same
hopes and fears. You might even feel you
shared the same soul. And in a sense, this
would be true. Then again, in a sense, you
share the same soul with everyone.
Your clone might be
eerily like you. Or perhaps
eerily like someone else
adroitly tailor character to circumstance.
Thus, though some men are more ge
netically prone to seek thrills than others,
men in general take fewer risks if married
with children than if unattached. Though
some people may be genetically prone to
high self-esteem, everyone’s self-esteem
depends heavily on social feedback. Genes
even mold personality to our place in the
family environment, according to Frank
Sulloway, author of Bom to Rebel, the
much discussed book on birth order. Par
ents who clone their obedient oldest child
may be dismayed to find that the resulting
twin, now lower in the family hierarchy,
grows up to be Che Guevara.
This malleability could, in a round
about way, produce clones who are indeed
soul mates. Your clone would, after all, look
like you. And certain kinds of faces and
physiques lead to certain kinds of experi
TIME, MARCH 10,1997
41
SCIENCE FICTION BY DOUGLAS COUPLAND
CLONE.
CLONE ON
THE RANGE
An aging actor seeks immortality
through cloning—and gets more
than he bargained for
1990s
days of film
screenings,
rallies
and
fragrance
launches,
guestsanimal-rights
at events invariably
do I send my
money?
In thosediscussions
glorious latedivided intoWhere
the anticloners,
with
their ”earnest
of
ethics, inbreeding and hillbilly’ed gene pools, and those like
durable
film
star Corey
Holiday
—who
said, “Hey!
myself, so eager
and so
thrilled
to be able
to bring
humanity
the
gift of such tried-and-true looks, talent and industry savvy.
It was a heady era. Overnight it felt as though so many aspects
ack
when
the those,
first news
of successful
Hu
demonic!
”cremation
and
like myself
beloved
of life were changing:
became
a thing—of
the pastand
as
man cloning was announced, humanity split into
franchised dna storage-facility stocks became the afterworld dar
two; the
irreconcilable
those
said,
“How
lings of nasdaq
cost of most camps:
medicines
fellwho
to the
price
of a
Mars candy bar; and meat became much tastier. Lawyers expe
rienced what can only be described as a renaissance as all di
mensions of law—particularly entertainment, copyright, con
veyance, deeds and titles—underwent profound rethinking.
Of course, as the years wore on, the hubbub died. And it was
at this time that my poor sweet face, while not becoming fully
haggard, was definitely looking somewhat ... puffy. Even
worse, it was showing on film. The dailies can be cruel.
Makeup calls got earlier and earlier. One box-office flop
and—boom!—I’d enter the never-to-return ghetto of geriatric
buddy comedies. Yikes.
Yet as time ravaged my looks, I predicted to anyone who
might listen that entrepreneurs in retail human cloning would
emerge quickly enough. And so they did. First in abandoned In
dian Ocean oil rigs and Antarctica—and then slowly and dis
creetly in more traversed parts of the world.
B
Douglas Coupland is the author of Generation X, Shampoo
Planet, Life After God and Microserfs. His latest novel, Girl
friend in a Coma, will be published thisfall by ReganBooks.
42
It was at this point that I, Corey Holiday—magnificent, ad
mired, talented and feted the world over—after countless years
of enthusiastic compliance with the rigors of beauty and the
surgeon’s scalpel, decided at age 50 it was time to obey Mother
Nature’s gentle call.
I quietly checked into an exclusive (naturally) cow-based
Saskatchewan cloning spa—a spa combining the best of
Saskatchewan’s cattle country with Canada’s lax cloning laws.
My public relations staff told folks I was up in the fresh air of
Lake Tahoe battling chronic-fatigue syndrome triggered by sil
icone migration—a plausible alibi if ever there was one.
The spa’s rates were steep, but its results were guaranteed.
Only superior cattle with modified immune systems were
used—cows being the cross-species surrogate of choice. (No
cow will ever phone the tabloid press with juicy palimony^fc
clusives.) Clonees were allowed up to five babies per surrogB!
mom (no womb sharing). Those wishing more than five re
ceived generous volume-discount rates.
Myself? I chose five. A single clone might take a dislik^
me—and then what? Besides, if I wanted just one kid, why not
go out and have one the normal way? The whole point of this
procedure was to have lots of exact genetic copies of me—to cre
ate a flock of worshipful children who would love me as much
as I’d enjoy watching them worship me.
REGULATIONS REQUIRED THAT WE REMAIN AT THE SPA FOUR
weeks, lest new tissue samples be called for or some other drea
ry flaw need mending. The spa itself was bags of fun. Most
evenings felt like the Polo Lounge in the old days, and dinner
was as star-packed as Morton’s on a Monday night.
Thus the snowy Canadian winter passed in a zing. One un
expected treat for me was the arrival, shortly after myself, ofvet
eran film star Lori Breckner, who had been my date for the 1998
Academy Awards ceremony, and who played opposite me in the
critically successful box-office dud Car Crash 500. (“Yes, Don,
I know movies are young young young. But what do a bunch of
brats in Glendale know about pain?")
Oh, it was a happy, happy time. Lori and I would sit by the
windows, sharing our hopes and dreams about how much m
new children would love us, of how we could steer them aw
from certain types of drugs that they might have too much fim
with and toward those cosmetic procedures that would flatter
their looks. “Imagine,” Lori dreamed aloud one night. “Know
ing what seasons your colors are before you’re even bom!
Lucky, lucky children.”
While sipping Reverse-Scriptase martinis, Lori and I
glanced outside to see the hundreds of beautiful Hereford
mommies, glorious and dumb as posts under the great Cana
dian sky, chewing vitaminized, antibioticized alfalfa while in
side each of them our own future little fan clubs incubated.
“Look, over there, the one with a white patch on the eye, No.
388—that’s yours, honey!” Bliss.
Lori and I discussed how we would transmute all our selfknowledge into our clones so completely that when we died we
would technically still be alive—our “death” merely being a
technical bookkeeping notation. Imagine feeling as if you are
sharing a soul with five others! Lori was indeed a special
woman to me. She was the only one I’d met who could connect
with me on my own level. We were fated for each other.
And then came that dark morning when we stepped down
TIME, MARCH 10,1997
for coffee and brioches to see the staff aflutter, alarms flaring
like hangovers and a platoon of Mounties interviewing griev
ing guests. Other patrons were on the pay phones calling their
lawyers to alter their wills. “What’s gone on?” I asked a passing
nurse. Fretful, she told me the news: cattle rustlers.
Dissolve into: the Chicago stockyards. Cut to: ... Sorry
about the movie jargon. I can’t help it. Being a part of the posse
was the most real thing that had ever happened to me. Lori too.
We looked at each other and said, “It’s just like a movie!" I felt
so close to this woman.
I agreements barring them from revealing anything. One had
; escaped, garnered our cell number from a local Webzine ad and
I whispered instructions as dogs barked in the background.
I
We drove along a thin, wooded road and found the entryI way into the ranch: laser-guarded, barbed-wired and accom' panied by the anxious grrrrr of concealed attack Dobermans. A
i good omen—they had something in there worth hiding. A walk
; around the property"s perimeter at first yielded only more of the
; same. Then we turned a comer and through the trees saw chil! dren playing a game of some sort—little houses moved around
! a board with sticks. The children spotted Lori and me and sevLORI AND I WERE ON SCANNING DUTY, FLUOROSCOPING CATTLE I eral of them came over.
like airport carry-on bags as they galumphed through our stock- I
“Hello,” I said. “I’m film star• Corey
i
Holiday.”
yard receiving line—a novel
“And I’m box-office magic
j^slaughter activity back
Lori Breckner.”
H, but now compulsory
The children stared. Then
in the U.S. and Canada. We
one efficient-looking boy,
fo,und two cows, each coneight, tops, said, “Excuse me,
t®ing seven embryos-obdo you have an appointment?
viously not ours. These cows
Is somebody expecting you?”
were then removed to the
We were agog. His twin
bmf, the Bovine Midwifing
(ha!) brother asked, “What
Facility. Only full gestation
might this be regarding?”
would reveal the tots’ genetic
identity. Software mogul?
THE YOUNGER GIRL NEXT TO
Pop-song diva? Corporation
him said, “Geoff, was there a
head? Somewhat like waiting
memo on this? I don’t re
for Polaroids to develop over
member getting the memo.”
a period of years.
“Perhaps you should wait
Shortly after finding the
Would you like a cup of coffee
rogue septuplets we learned
or some water?” asked the
that our “deluxe” Saskatch
first boy.
ewan cloning facility had not
Lori asked the young girl,
embedded locator chips in
“What’s that game you’re
the cows as advertised. That’s
playing over there?”
when we realized our own
“That? Real Estate. It’s
J|mmy cows could be prac
fun. I just traded Amy’s air
tically anywhere. Were they
rights in exchange for alter
nulled for their meat? Were
ing my TV networks’ 9 o’clock
tS taken by terrorists? Kid
slot.” A bell rang. “Have to go
nappers? Blackmailers? Adop
now,” she said. “Facials and
tion agencies wanting only
colonics. Hope your next pic
pedigree children?
tures gross well.” Two of the
The media got wind of
youngsters slipped us scripts
our story, and the Saskatch
beneath the fence. Bingo.
ewan facility was top news for
We knew we’d found our
weeks; no doubt the rustlers
rustlers.
would be on extra guard now. After Lori spoke with her crys- ;
Cloning is old news now. We all live with the new reality:
tallographer, ChrySanda, in North Hollywood, we roamed ;. blackmailers holding hairbrushes hostage (“Give us your monnorthern Montana on an “energy hunch.” When we showed up I ey or we’ll make 10 of you”)... grandmothers reading bedtime
in small-town cafds and feedlots to show photos of cow No. 388 I stories to 118 baby grandmas ... captains of industry rearrang(Lori’s brood) and No. 441 (mine), we invariably created a sen i ing their wills, deeding everything to themselves down the line
sation—the old good/evil polarity, plus, well, we were and are I forever and always. Plus ca change, plus qa—wait, that’s not restars. Citizens were both righteous and helpful, and we always ; ally true anymore!
drove away feeling bathed in love of the common man. Sigh.
„ shortly
... after. It was „a big tick
1
And us? Lori and I married
Some years passed, and then we got a tip. A garbled cell call ; et—three helicopters more than my previous wedding. But we
told us of a private boarding school and ranch near Bozeman, ; didn’t go back into movies. Instead, we chose to dedicate our
Montana, where “students” were either exceptionally attrac- ’ lives, possibly forever, to fight:-, g embryo poaching. Us and our
tive, exceptionally intelligent, exceptionally devious or all ; 10 beautiful children: Ccri Kvrie. Corry. Korey, Korrey. Luuthree. So-called school employees signed draconian pre- ; rie, Lorrie, Laurey, Lorrey and Lorri.
a
TIME, MARCH 10,1997
Champion Garry Kasparov will soon battle a
smarter version of Deep Blue, the IBM computer
that spooked him—and mankind—a year ago
By MICHAEL KRANTZ
T’S MOVE 16, AND DEEP BLUE IS THINK-
ing. Or rather, Deep Blue’s 512
create theAnd
illusion
Deep
Blue
is
thinking.
isn’that
t really
Deep
Blue
processors
areitreviewing
million
chess positions
per second200
in order
to
either. It’s what the guys at IBM’s Thomas
J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown
Heights, New York, call Deeper Blue: the
second generation of the original Deep
Blue, the infamous chess program that one
year ago threw a stunning uppercut to hu
man self-esteem by winning the first game
of its six-game match against world cham-
I
44
pion Garry Kasparov. Kasparov, of course,
went on to score three victories and two
draws to win the match and save mankind;
the 33-year-old Russian isn’t considered
the best player in history for nothing.
The Deep Blue team, led by senior
manager C.J. Tan, has been plotting re
venge ever since, and is now prepping for
the rematch, which will take place in Man
hattan in May. Today, in this cramped lab
at TJ. Watson, Deep and Deeper are play
ing their first father-son game, a sort of
silicon Oedipal struggle. The first 15 moves
are what chess types yawn at as “stan
dard”—established openings. Very safe.
No surprises.
TIME. MARCH 10,1997
Move 16 is when Deeper Blue pauSs
to “think.” Finally, its human monitor an
nounces, “F4.” F4? An excited buzz sweeps
the room. F4! Deeper Blue has advanced
the knight’s pawn two squares, loosening its
kingside defense with an assumption of the
superiority of its position that would surely
be considered arrogant if a carbon-based
life-form were making it. “This move was
special,” murmurs Joel Benjamin, a former
U.S. champion and current Deep Blue con
sultant. The room nods in agreement.
Deeper Blue is thinking.
Pretty soon, Deeper Blue is kicking
butt. From F4 onward, its inexorable
kingside march swallows one pawn after
another, and Deep Blue resigns 18 moves
later. The room erupts in applause. The
same thought is on everyone’s mind: the
new program is better. The new program
is a lot better. We’re gonna crush Kasparov like a bug.
EDUCATION_______________________________________________________
What About the
3.2 cr Left Out?
A World Bank report pegs India’s literacy rate at 52.2%, but
other related social and economic indices give the game away
be 0.12 sq ft, that's a square 4.2 inches by
4.2 inches, barely enough for a cockroach.
WO-thirds full, one-third empty. • Between 1881 and 1991, the literacy rate
That's how the World Bank has has risen from 6.3 per cent to 52.2 per cent.
defined the state of India's prim • Even so, India lags behind the East Asian
ary education glass. For 6.7 crore economies. Compared to a literacy rate of
children between ages six and 10 71 per cent and 68 per cent for South
who attend primary school, there are Korea and Thailand in 1961, India's stood
at 28.3 per cent. The country will reach full
another 3.2 crore who do not.
In a comprehensive 307-page report, primary enrolment after other fast-grow
Primary Education in India, principal educa ing Asian economies like Malaysia, Indon
tion specialist and task manager Marlaine esia and China. Some respite for the jingoLockheed had more than just structures to ists: India is ahead of Pakistan.
reveal: "India's low average educational
Says Abusaleh Shariff, associate director,
attainment has not reached the critical National Council of Applied Economic
threshold where benefits are the greatest Research (ncaer): "This is one of the few,
and high economic growth rates are sus rare, good reports and is an excellent eff
ort. In spite of having numerous organisa
tained." The major findings of the report:
• Although more than four-fifths of six- tions and universities doing similar work
year-olds do enrol in school, as many as 15 in the country, we have not been able to
to 20 per cent of these do not attend take this kind of perspective."
school regularly.
The advantages of primary education in
• Between 1986 and 1993, the enrolment the overall development of a country can
of girls increased by a fifth, but the growth not be overstressed, as reams of paper and
in overall enrolment stood at a modest scores of economists including Nobel con
tender Amartya Sen have pointed out over
|13.8 per cent in these eight years.
la About 70 per cent of children between the last half-a-century. This report is yet
ages six and 10 attend school regularly, but another step in that direction and its find
feore than a third of them drop out before ings are supported by hard data.
Consider one factor: infant mortality rate.
completing even the primary school cycle.
• There's a severe shortage of teachers and This is directly correlated to primary educa
classrooms. In Orissa, if all children enro tion. According to the report, in 1991, Ori
lled in school started attending, the class ssa, one of the lesser educated states with a
room area available to each of them would 35 per cent literacy, recorded an infant morBy GAUTAM CHIKERMANE
48
OUTLOOKS
May 14.1997
EDUCATION.__________________________________________
(Vhat About the
THE DROPOUT RATE
(1993 figures in %)
State
Andhra Pradesh
Bihar
Gujarat
Haryana
Karnataka
Kerala
Madhya Pradesh
Maharashtra
Orissa
Punjab
Rajasthan
Tamil Nadu
Uttar Pradesh
West Bengal
All India
3.2 cr Left Out?
A World Bank report pegs India’s literacy rate at 52.2%, but
other related social and economic indices give the game away
By GAUTAM CHIKERMANE
WO-thirds full, one-third empty.
That’s how the World Bank has
defined the state of India’s prim
ary education glass. For 6.7 crore
children between ages six and 10
who attend primary school, there are
another 3.2 crore who do not.
In a comprehensive 307-page report,
Primary Education in India, principal educa
tion specialist and task manager Marlaine
Lockheed had more than just structures to
reveal: "India's low average educational
attainment has not reached the critical
threshold where benefits are the greatest
and high economic growth rates are sus
tained.” The major findings of the report:
• Although more than four-fifths of sixyear-olds do enrol in school, as many as 15
to 20 per cent of these do not attend
school regularly.
• Between 1986 and 1993, the enrolment
of girls increased by a fifth, but the growth
in overall enrolment stood at a modest
jl 3.8 per cent in these eight years.
la About 70 per cent of children between
ages six and 10 attend school regularly, but
fcore than a third of them drop out before
Completing even the primary school cycle.
• There’s a severe shortage of teachers and
classrooms. In Orissa, if all children enro
lled in school started attending, the class
room area available to each of them would
About 70 per
cent of children
between ages 6
and 10 attend
school, but
more than a
third drop out
before the
primary cycle.
48
be 0.12 sq ft, that’s a square 4.2 inches by
4.2 inches, barely enough for a cockroach.
• Between 1881 and 1991, the literacy rate
has risen from 6.3 per cent to 52.2 per cent.
• Even so, India lags behind the East Asian
economies. Compared to a literacy rate of
71 per cent and 68 per cent for South
Korea and Thailand in 1961, India's stood
at 28.3 per cent. The country will reach full
primary enrolment after other fast-grow
ing Asian economies like Malaysia, Indon
esia and China. Some respite for the jingoists: India is ahead of Pakistan.
Says Abusaleh Shariff, associate director,
National Council of Applied Economic
Research (ncaer): "This is one of the few,
rare, good reports and is an excellent eff
ort. In spite of having numerous organisa
tions and universities doing similar work
in the country, we have not been able to
take this kind of perspective."
The advantages of primary’ education in
the overall development of a country can
not be overstressed, as reams of paper and
scores of economists including Nobel con
tender Amartya Sen have pointed out over
the last half-a-century. This report is yet
another step in that direction and its find
ings are supported by hard data.
Consider one factor: infant mortality rate.
This is directly correlated to primary educa
tion. According to the report, in 1991, Ori
ssa, one of the lesser educated states with a
35 per cent literacy, recorded an infant mor
INDIA: THE PRIMARY LAG
Primary net enrolment ratio (%)
alaysia Indonesia
GOING TO SCHOOL
(1993 figures In %)
Dropouts
Male
Female
42
42
66
62
42
51
7
2
37'
44
0
0
23
35
24
32
53 '
52
21
23
35
56
16
18
20 '
20
36
46
39
35
tality rate of 112.1 per thousand. For Bihar
—with 23 per cent literacy, the lowest in the
country—the figure was 89.2. The figures
for Uttar Pradesh were 25 per cent and 99.9
respectively. On the other hand, Kerala,
with the highest literacy rate of 86 per cent,
saw the lowest infant mortality: less than 24
out of a thousand infants died prematurely.
Or, take birth control. In Uttar Pradesh,
the more women received education, the
more they started using birth control mea
sures. From around 12 per cent of non-literate women using birth control, the figure
steadily jumped to 35 per cent for those
educated up to secondary level and above.
There is a similar high correlation bet
ween the mother's education and her
child's immunisation. In Uttar Pradesh,
compared to around 17 per cent immuni
sation for children of non-literate mothers
in 1995, the figure was over 50 per cent for
secondary educated mothers. In Tamil
Nadu, the numbers stood at 58 per cent
and 86 per cent respectively.
The problem is aggravated by social ills—
the haplessness of the more vulnerable secNG0 school in Bihar: a drop in the ocean
THE FINANCING GAP
GOVERNMENT'S KITTY
FT9.6655Ga
Elementary
Enrolled,
all ages
in school,
ages 6-10
Not in school,
ages 6-10
0 U T L 0 0 K ■ May 14,1997
tions—scheduled caste and tribes, Mus
lims, the poor. In 1986-87, a survey of stu
dents of ages six to 22 in Maharashtra
found that compared to 54 per cent of
rural scheduled caste males dropping out
of school, the figure for others stood at 38
per cent. Against 34 per cent of urban
scheduled tribe males dropping out, only
29 per cent of general students did so.
If data doesn't convince you, Shariff
could. "There is a vested interest of the rul
ing class to prevent the lower classes from
getting educated. In Gujarat for instance,
the dominant caste of Patels does not
allow children of scheduled castes and
tribes to attend school." But there are
structural problems too. The report cites
two interesting examples.
In Kayipady, a fishing hamlet in Kerala
which is also the most literate state in the
country, not one of the 250 children
between ages five and 14 was enrolled in
school, just 3 km away. Reason: to reach the
school, the children had to wade through a
river, hop across a railway line and then
cross the main highway twice. Concerns
over their safety prevented the parents from
sending them to school. Later, when a
(Figures in %)
Resources required^ ..
Children,
ages 6-10
Graphxs by AH00P KAMATH
LITERACY AND LIFE
Infant mortality
Literacy rate.
rate
State
1991 (%) (deaths per 1000)
Andhra Pradesh
33
70.4
Bihar
23
89.2
Gujarat
49
68.7
Haryana
40
73.3
Karnataka
44
65.4
Kerala
86
23.8
Madhya Pradesh
29
85.2
Maharashtra
52
50.5
Orissa
35
112.1
Punjab
50
53.7
Rajasthan
20
72.6
Tamil Nadu
51
67.7
25 "
Uttar Pradesh
99.9
West Bengal
47
75.3
All India
39
78.5
government
expenditure
OUTLOOK a May 14. 1997
EDUCATION
school was established in Kayipady, 185
children between ages five and 10 enrolled.
Likewise, in Andhra Pradesh, researchers
studying the Kondareddy and Khammom
tribes found that a third of the children of
school-going age preferred to spend time
"moving freely, swimming, catching fish,
climbing trees, hunting birds, riding on
buffaloes etc." Reason: socialisation in tri
bal society presents children with a lot of
freedom, conspicuously absent from the
highly disciplined and rigid model of a
classroom. Shariff reacts: “Indian educa
tion has alienated itself from the local
society. This has to change.”
At the lowest end of the education spec
trum is the girl child. Her plight is the
Sundown
There are severe
infrastructural
shortages. In
Orissa, if all the
children enrolled
started attending,
the classroom
area available to
each would be
barely enough for
a cockroach.
in Exile
Old-age homes for Asians boom in England as piety dies
3y SANJAY SURI in London
ROW old along with the old. The
^^■■1 best is over, but actually it's not
‘ / ■ so bad in one of those homes we
thought were only for White peopie who grew old and unwanted.
One after another, now 'homes' are com
ing up in Britain for the Indian elderly.
Thousands of Indian parents have been
sent to these homes, and the waiting lists
are lengthening with time.
Pratapbhai has forgotten his age, he
has almost forgotten his two sons and
daughters who live in London. One of
them last came to visit him two months
ago. He has not seen two of his children in
years. There are other parents in the same
home in Leicester, about 100 miles north
of London, whom no one visits. A nursing
home built on a road named Asha Marg in
Leicester provides plenty of parking space
for families visiting parents. It's a lot of
^wasted space. A couple of cars or so on
worst in all segments. The report found 75
per cent of the rural scheduled caste girl
children and 60 per cent from the sched
uled tribes dropping out of school. The fig
ure for urban scheduled tribe girlchildren
was 48 per cent. The gender gap was sig
nificant: compared to 38 per cent of rural
and 29 per cent of urban boys dropping
out of school, the respective figures for
girls stood at 57 per cent and 36 per cent.
This has invisible but damaging social
and economic repercussions. For, the
incremental non-market rate of return on
education for girls is much higher than for
the boys. Or, every Re 1 of primary educa
tion spent on girls will generate more non
market benefits—healthier children, birth
control, and the like. More, since girls start
much behind the boys, the effect of extra
education goes longer. Of all scheduled
caste women in UP and Bihar between ages
15 and 45—the reproductive age—only 6
per cent are literate, says Shariff.
If this fails to move you, then a dose of
50
economics might work. Consider this: the
more literate states are economically bet
ter off than the less literate ones. For this,
the study compared the state domestic
product with growth in educational
attainment. The results: Haryana, Punjab
and Maharashtra had the highest growth
rates, and were among the better educat
ed states. On the lowest rung were Assam,
West Bengal and Orissa.
N an otherwise remarkable report, the
quality of data may be suspect.
Government data on enrolment of stu
dents is highly overstated. What happens
is that state officials find out the number
and names of children belonging to a cer
tain age group, which is translated into the
school registers. And during spot scrutiny,
the balance is termed as "dropouts”.
Confirms Shariff: “We don't have reliable
data on enrolment rates, and the numbers
in this report could be overstated and
I
0 U T L 0 0 K ■ May 14,1997
weekends is all that comes.
"We are now one another’s family," says
Sushilaben, an elderly Gujarati woman at
the Mahatma Gandhi House in Leicester.
"Let them not come to us, we do not wait
for them anymore." Sushilaben is not
angry. "My grandchildren were growing
up, they needed the rooms," she says. "My
children put me in the drawing room but
it did not look nice when guests came. So
they sent me here. They said they will see
me every weekend. Now nobody comes
but it’s ail right. They never looked after us
but now we are here to look after one
another." A neighbour who has walked up
agrees. "They didn't want me then, I don't
want them now either."
Two other-women walk up to join the
chat. "You want to bring your parents
here? Wait," says one. Down the corridor
she fetches the agreed spokesman for the
lot. "There are no rooms just now," he says
in clipped English. He has known years of
success in Kenya. "You will have to wait for
should not be used for planning."
4
Shariff also feels the report has "grossl™
understated" the financial needs for mak
ing the country fully literate. While ncaer's
own survey placed the outlay at Rs 22,810
crore in 1996, the report puts it at just
Rs 10,464 crore. The government spends
only 1.6 per cent of its gdp on elementary
education. "This should rise to 4 per cent—
even of a higher gdp,” he says.
The problem of primary education does
not end here. The next step is child labour.
India has the largest number of child
labourers in the world who, according to
the voluntary organisation, The Concer
ned for Working Children, contribute 20
per cent of its gnp. Almost 8 crore children
begin work very early and toil for more
than 12 hours a day. According to volun
tary groups, any non-school going child is
a child labourer. That should be reason
enough to make primary education a fun
damental right. ■
Inside a ‘home’ in Leicester; (bottom left)
Jalaram Jyot: Indian flavour in the West
one of us to die, and there are plenty wait
ing for rooms before you." But, he says,
"we keep getting vacancies".
Downstairs in the common room a por
trait of Gandhi and a map of India are put
up on the walls to make inmates feel at
home. An old man is watching TV alone.
His wife died years ago, his son went back
to Kenya. He is now alone but insists he is
not unhappy. "We all get along very well,"
he says. "Singhs, Muslims, Gujaratis, peo
ple of all castes, we are now one family
here." Finally, everyone has come together
in this pre-death club.
Bipinbhai is partially paralysed after a
stroke. He came to Britain during the Uga74
OUTLOOKb May 21,1997
S0C1ETY___________________________
Sundown
in Exile
Old-age homes for Asians boom in England as piety dies
SANJAY SURI in London
ROW old along with the old. The
best is over, but actually it’s not
so bad in one of those homes we
thought were only for White peoWPH pie who grew old and unwanted.
One after another, now 'homes' are com
ing up in Britain for the Indian elderly.
Thousands of Indian parents have been
sent to these homes, and the waiting lists
are lengthening with time.
Pratapbhai has forgotten his age, he
has almost forgotten his two sons and
daughters who live in London. One of
them last came to visit him two months
ago. He has not seen two of his children in
years. There are other parents in the same
home in Leicester, about 100 miles north
of London, whom no one visits. A nursing
home built on a road named Asha Marg in
Leicester provides plenty of parking space
for families visiting parents. It's a lot of
^wasted space. A couple of cars or so on
weekends is all that comes.
"We are now one another's family," says
Sushilaben, an elderly Gujarati woman at
the Mahatma Gandhi House in Leicester.
“Let them not come to us, we do not wait
for them anymore." Sushilaben is not
angry. "My grandchildren were growing
up, they needed the rooms," she says. "My
children put me in the drawing room but
it did not look nice when guests came. So
they sent me here. They said they will see
me every weekend. Now nobody comes
but it’s ail right. They never looked after us
but now we are here to look after one
another." A neighbour who has walked up
agrees. "They didn’t want me then, I don't
want them now either."
Two other-women walk up to join the
chat. "You want to bring your parents
here? Wait," says one. Down the corridor
she fetches the agreed spokesman for the
lot. "There are no rooms just now," he says
in clipped English. He has known years of
success in Kenya. "You will have to wait for
Inside a 'home' in Leicester; (bottom left)
Jalaram Jyot: Indian flavour in the West
one of us to die, and there are plenty wait
ing for rooms before you." But, he says,
"we keep getting vacancies".
Downstairs in the common room a por
trait of Gandhi and a map of India are put
up on the walls to make inmates feel at
home. An old man is watching TV alone.
His wife died years ago, his son went back
to Kenya. He is now alone but insists he is
not unhappy. "We all get along very well,"
he says. "Singhs, Muslims, Gujaratis, peopie of all castes, we are now one family
here." Finally, everyone has come together
in this pre-death club.
Bipinbhai is partially paralysed after a
stroke. He came to Britain during the Uga-
74
OUTLOOK! May21,1997
j
j
j
J
I
j
nda expulsions of 1972 with a brother and
seven sisters. Over the last three years only
one sister has ever called him. "We were
like one family there. Here I don't know
what happened, it must be this country,
what else can it be?" Conservative leader
John Major never tires of pointing to
Indian family values as a model for the
crumbling British family to follow. But in
the nuclear times, the Indian family itself
seems eager to go the other way.
The homes carry the quietness of death.
"We like it here because we have to,"
Kumudben says. "You don't always get
what you want." And what does she think
of her son who sent her here? "No, it was
not him, it was his wife, what could he
do?" Kumudben is waiting only for days to ■
repeat themselves. "We do what we would i
do anywhere," she says. "Get up, make | council, which pays for these homes, also
breakfast, clean, cook lunch, sleep, come funds parties for Christmas and Diwali.
to the common room for tea, watch TV, I Leicester, where a third of its population
have dinner, then sleep." But two days last I of about 280,000 is Asian, is among the first
year were different. "We were taken in a I cities where homes for the Asian old with
bus on a day trip for picnics." There are | familiar names—Mahatma Gandhi House,
other days to wait for. The government I Jalaram Jyot et al—began to mushroom.
i Polite social workers say they were driven
out by "family conflicts." The English have
| another term for it: granny-bashing. Offers
John Major used to hold
I of refuge for the .Asian elderly were pioup the Indian family as a l neered by a group called asra (Asian
model. But granny-bashing i Sheltered Residential Accommodation). Its
‘ report on the need for such homes speaks of
is now a well-adopted
, the "myth that Asian people in this country
arc able to care for their old as well as their
habit among Indians in the
, young under one roof because of the
UK as well.
extended family." The truth, the repor says,
is that ' some Asians are treated Jegradingiy
OUTLOOKS May 21. 1997
75
SOCIETY
by their children and such treatment would
include granny-bashing, taking away of
supplementary benefits, not giving them
enough food to eat, locking them out, mak
ing them do the housework and so on."
ER Majesty's government has opened
the doors for parents to leave, or be
thrown out. Social security is alive at
£90 billion (Rs 5.3 lakh crore) a year despite
the trimmings by Thatcher. The Leicester
city council spends something between
£212 (Rs 12,500) and £330 (Rs 19,500) a
week on an elderly person in a private nurs
ing home. In London, the expenses range
up to £384 (Rs 22,500) a week. That inclu
des room rent and a personal allowance for
an elderly person of about £70 a week paid
out by the Benefits Agency.
"The state is our mother, the state is our
father," says Nitesh Chohan. The children
know their parents can stay there for free
and get enough money to live on. "They
say why should they look after us when
the state can do it better?" Parents who get
thrown but usually have more spending
money. "Yes, we manage to save some
money from what we get," says Ashaben,
nearing 70, who has moved several homes
over the past three years because the next
one seemed better. "But we don’t know
H
76
what to do with the money we save."
Children who push parents out are not
usually short of money. A young Gujarati
woman drives up in her red Mercedes spo
rts car to visit her mother now and then.
She left the mother at a city council shelter
as a homeless woman. Social workers bro
ught her into residential care. Ramanbhai
Kotecha sees her come and go with some
bitterness. "In India, the children have no
choice but to be tolerant, where will they
send their parents?" he asks. "Maybe that
is good, maybe not, I don't know." But he
did not hope to retire in such indepen
dence. "The government will cremate us,"
he says. "We will die on our own two feet."
For the enterprising, there is money in
eviction of parents and the duty of the state
to shelter them. There is no business like
the nursing home business now. Everyone
The nursing home
business is growing. An
Indian doctor who has set
up several is now on the
list of Asian millionaires.
OUTLOOK! May21,1997
Mahatma Gandhi House: Indian haven
is growing older, most people are living
longer. More and more want them to live
in government homes at government exp
ense. It's a growing market. "We don't h^
enough place in our homes any more," sl^
a spokeswoman for the Leicester city coun
cil. "It is easier to pay private nuqte
homes than set up more of our own." "
Nursing homes to look after the south
Asian elderly are coming up quickly in
London, Leicester, Birmingham, Wolver
hampton and other cities with a large
Asian population. The Times recently ran a
story on an Indian doctor who gave up his
practice to open nursing homes. He is now
on one of those lists of Asian millionaires.
Property is still cheap in many places.
Backed by bank loans, nursing homes can
be opened with relatively small personal
capital. Much of the government grant
averaging £300 per person per week goes
to nursing home or residential care man
agers. This breed of people never discusses
budgets. But there seems to be plenty left
over for them, enough to make quick mil
lionaires of the men who launched into
this business early. Resigned to professio
nal care, the old are more defiant of the
past than bitter. ■
Great Beams of Antimatter
A vast plume of exotic particles is shooting out from
tire center of tire Milky Way. What’s it doing there?
strophysicist
william
purcell
knew that if he looked at the center of
the Milky Way, he would see what is
known as antimatter: bizarre sub
atomic particles that resemble ordinary
protons and electrons but carry an opposite
charge. But when National Aeronautics
and Space Administration controllers
ned the orbiting Compton Gamma Ray
;ervatory on this core region and
beamed the data back, Purcell saw someJjung on his computer screen at North
western University that nobody could have
predicted: a colossus of antimatter, a vast
fountain spewing out from the center of
our galaxy and reaching trillions of kilo
meters into space.
What could have produced such a
huge outpouring? That’s what mystified
astrophysicists meeting in Williamsburg,
Va., last week. As most college freshmen
A«
know, antimatter is unstable stuff. When
ever antimatter and matter collide, they
annihilate each other, disappearing in a
blast of intense radiation. Thus while the
Big Bang probably created almost as much
antimatter as matter, virtually all of it, sci
entists believe, was consumed in a frenzy
of annihilation long ago. In today’s uni
verse, antimatter must be created anew.
And it is-in the form of subatomic parti
cles, at least—in giant particle accelerators
on earth and, in space, by one of several
physical processes.
When massive stars explode as super
novas, for example, they create a periodic
table’s worth of radioactive elements,
some of which decay into antielectrons,
known as positrons. A black hole, scientists
believe, can also produce electron-positron
pairs by superheating the material that spi
rals into its gravitational sinkhole. It was
the radiation produced by annihilating
positrons and electrons, not the antimatter
itself, that was actually observed by Purcell
at Northwestern and his collaborators at
the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in
Washington.
The real mystery, scientists say, is not
that the positrons were created. It’s that they
were lobbed so many thousands of lightyears above the galactic plane, like water
droplets scattered by a giant geyser. Scien
tists offered several competing explana
tions last week. Rice University astrophysi
cist Edison Liang thinks black holes may
be the key. While most of the stuff that
falls into a black hole stays there, he ob
serves, some of it gets
blasted out in the
form of a hot wind.
Liang’s hypothesis
draws strength from
the fact that there ap
pear to be a good half
a dozen black holes
near the center of the
Milky Way.
A competing the
ory, which Purcell fa
vors, suggests that
exploding supernovas
may be the force that
creates the positrons
and catapults them to
such great heights.
There are certainly
plenty of massive stars
close to the Milky Way"s core that are capa
ble of generating explosions with sufficient
force. The rate at which such explosions
would have to occur, however, is mindboggling: around one a century, Purcell es
timates. Since supernovas have never been
observed to go off at that rate in our galaxy,
this theory suggests that the antimatter
fountain originated in a more violent epoch
in the distant past.
It’s a puzzle, in other words, that could
take years to solve. And that’s what Purcell
and others find most exciting. The Milky
Way—so familiar and in many ways so
humdrum—still hasn’t lost its ability to
surprise.
—By J. Madeleine Nash
TIME, MAY 12,1997
Mighty Mouse
Muscle-bound mutants
could point the way to
beefier cows and humans
rom the outside, the new strain
of mice looked a little, well, lumpy.
But when scientists peeled back their
fur and skin, what had seemed like ex
tra baggage in the shoulders and hips
turned out to be pure muscle—two to three
times the muscle mass of the average pip
squeak rodent. These were not your ordi
nary genetically engineered laboratory
mice; these were Mighty Mice.
Dr. Se-Jin Lee and his colleagues at
the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
didn’t set out to create muscle-bound lab
specimens. As reported in last week’s Na
ture, they wanted to find out how a partic
ular protein, a growth factor called myo
statin, regulates the development of tissue.
So they produced a strain of mice in which
the gene that codes for myostatin had
been deleted, or “knocked out.” The re
sulting mutant animals grew up normal in
every way—except for their extraordinari
ly well-developed musculature.
Why hasn’t evolution produced more
mice with rippling chests? “We’re just
starting to look into this,” Lee explains. The
burly mice seem to be a little slower and
less timid than their normal counterparts.
“That probably wouldn’t be much of an ad
vantage in the wild,” says Lee.
It could prove to be an advantage to
farmers, however, since chickens and cows
make their own myostatin. In the future,
artificially brawny beef cattle could be a
profitable source of fat-free meat.
Humans make myostatin as well, and
researchers speculate that a myostatin
blocking drug could one day add muscles to
the frames of people wasting away from
cancer or aids. A drug that could triple
muscle mass might also find a market
among body builders, but that’s a long way
off. Scientists today know only what myo
statin does in mice, and they still haven’t
determined at what cost to the animals’
health or longevity.
-By Christine Gorman
F
45
MEDICINE
By J. that
MADELEINE
NASH of potent molecules surge through
shot,
trillions
your
bloodstream
and into your brain. Once there, they
ment you take that slug, that puff, that toke, that snort,
set off
a cascade
chemical
electrical
events,AaPUFF
kindOF
of
MAGINE
YOUof
ARE
TAKINGand
A SLUG
OF WHISKEY.
neurological
chain
reaction
that on
ricochets
around
the
a cigarette.
A toke
offor
marijuana.
Athe
snort
of
cocaine.
Askull
shot
legal.
Concentrate,
now,
chemistry.
The
mo
and rearranges
theaside
interior
realitythese
of the
mind.
of heroin. Put
whether
drugs
are legal or il
Given the complexity of these events—and the inner
workings of the mind in general—it’s not surprising that sci
entists have struggled mightily to make sense of the mecha
nisms of addiction. Why do certain substances have the pow
er to make us feel so good (at least at first)? Why do some
people fall so easily into the thrall of alcohol, cocaine, nico
tine and other addictive substances, while others can, lit
erally, take them or leave them?
The answer, many scientists are convinced, may be simpler
than anyone has dared imagine. What ties all these mood
altering drugs together, they say, is a remarkable ability to el
evate levels of a common substance in the brain called dopa
mine. In fact, so overwhelming has evidence of the link
between dopamine and drugs of abuse become that the dis
tinction (pushed primarily by the tobacco industry and its sup
porters) between substances that are addictive and those that
are merely habit-forming has very' nearly been swept away.
The Liggett Group, smallest of the U.S.’s Big Five ciga
rette makers, broke ranks in March and conceded not only
that tobacco is addictive but also that the company has
known it all along. While RJR Nabisco and the others con
tinue to battle in the courts—insisting that smokers are not
hooked, just exercising free choice—their denials ring in
creasingly hollow in the face of the growing weight of evi
dence. Over the past year, several scientific groups have
made the case that in dopamine-rich areas of the brain, nico
tine behaves remarkably like cocaine. And late last month a
federal judge ruled for the first time that the Food and Drug
Administration has the right to regulate tobacco as a drug and
cigarettes as drug-delivery derices.
Now, a team of researchers led by psychiatrist Dr. Nora
Volkow of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York
has published the strongest evidence to date that the surge of
dopamine in addicts’ brains is what triggers a cocaine high.
I
In the latest edition of the journal Nature
they described how powerful brain-imaging
technology can be used to track the rise of
dopamine and link it to feelings of euphoria.
Like serotonin (the brain chemical af
fected by such antidepressants as Prozac),
dopamine is a neurotransmitter-a mole
cule that ferries messages from one neuron
within the brain to another. Serotonin is
associated with feelings of sadness and
well-being, dopamine with pleasure and
elation. Dopamine can be elevated by a
hug, a kiss, a word of praise or a winning
poker hand—as well as by the potent plea
sures that come from drugs.
The idea that a single chemical could
be associated with everything from snort
ing cocaine and smoking tobacco to get
ting good grades and enjoying sex has
electrified scientists and changed the way
they look at a wide range of dependencies,
chemical and otherwise. Dopamine, they
now believe, is not just a chemical that
transmits pleasure signals but may, in fact,
be the master molecule of addiction.
This is not to say dopamine is the only
chemical involved or that tire deranged
thought processes that mark chronic drug
abuse are due to dopamine alone. The
brain is subtler than that. Drugs modulate
the activity of a variety of brain chemicals,
each of which intersects with many oth
ers. “Drugs are like sledgehammers," ob
serves Dr. Eric Nestler of the Yale Univer
sity School of Medicine. “They profoundly
alter many pathways.”
Nevertheless, the realization that
dopamine may be a common end point of
all those pathways represents a signal ad
vance. Provocative, controversial, unques
tionably incomplete, the dopamine hy
pothesis provides a basic framework for
understanding how a genetically encoded
trait—such as a tendency to produce too lit
tle dopamine—might intersect with envi
ronmental influences to create a serious
behavioral disorder. Therapists have long
known of patients who, in addition to hav
ing psychological problems, abuse drugs as
well. Could their drug problems be linked
to some inborn quirk? Might an inability to
absorb enough dopamine, with its plea
sure-giving properties, cause them to seek
gratification in drugs?
Such speculation is controversial, for it
suggests that broad swaths of the population
may be genetically predisposed to drug
abuse. What is not controversial is that the
social cost of drug abuse, whatever its cause,
is enormous. Cigarettes contribute to the
death toll from cancer and heart disease. Al
cohol is the leading cause of domestic vio
lence and highway deaths. The needles used
to inject heroin and cocaine are spreading
aids.
Directly or indirectly, addiction to
drugs, cigarettes and alcohol is thought to
account for a third of all hospital admissions,
a quarter of all deaths and a majority of seri
ous crimes. In the U.S. alone the combined
medical and social costs of drug abuse are
believed to exceed $240 billion.
or nearly a quarter-century
the U.S. has been waging a war on
drugs, with little apparent suc
cess. As scientists learn more
about how dopamine works (and
how drugs work on it), the evi
dence suggests that we may be
fighting the wrong battle. Americans tend
to think of drug addiction as a failure^k
character. But this stereotype is beginning
to give way to the recognition that drug de
pendence has a clear biological bas^
“Addiction,” declares Brookhaven’s \'W
kow, “is a disorder of the brain no different
from other forms of mental illness.”
That new insight may be the dopamine
hypothesis’ most important contribution in
the fight against drugs. It completes the loop
between the mechanism of addiction and
programs for treatment. And it raises hope
for more effective therapies. Abstinence, if
maintained, not only halts the physical and
psychological damage wrought by drugs but
in large measure also reverses it.
F
j
■
Genes and social forces may conspire to
turn people into addicts but do not doom
them to remain so. Consider the case of Ra
fael Rios, who grew up in a housing project
in New York City’s drug-infested South
Bronx. For 18 years, until he turned 31,
Rios, whose father died of alcoholism, led a
double life. He graduated from Harvard
Law School and joined a prestigious Chica
go law firm. Yet all the while he was se
cretly visiting a shooting gallery once a day.
His favored concoction: heroin spiked with
a jolt of cocaine. Ten years ago, Rios suc
ceeded in kicking his habit—for good, he
hopes. He is now executive director of A
Safe Haven, a Chicago-based chain of res^Bntial facilities for recovering addicts.
How central is dopamine’s role in this
familiar morality play? Scientists are still
A'ing to sort that out. It is no accident,
^rey say, that people are attracted to
drugs. The major drugs of abuse, whether
depressants like heroin or stimulants like
cocaine, mimic the structure of neuro
transmitters, the most mind-bending
chemicals nature has ever concocted.
Neurotransmitters underlie every thought
and emotion, memory and learning; they
carry the signals between all the nerve
cells, or neurons, in the brain. Among
some 50 neurotransmitters discovered to
date, a good half a dozen, including dopa-
DOPAMINE MAY BEUNKED TO GAMBLING, CHOCOLATEAND EVEN SEX
HIGH AND LOWS
in the past month
Heroin
Triggers release of dopamine-, acts on other
neurotransmitters
Amphetamines BHEiEIEIiMB
Stimulate excess release of dopamine
Cocaine/Crack ■BBSDEMB
Blocks dopamine absorption
Marijuana
EZZIIIOIKO
Binds to areas of brain involved in mood and
memory; triggers release of dopamine
Alcohol
Triggers dopamine release; acts on other
neurotransmitters
Nicotine
■EEBEIBBI
Triggers release of dopamine
Caffeine
May trigger release of dopamine
Sources SAMSA. National Coffee Associaton
'coffee dnnkeis
mine, are known to play a role in addiction.
The neurons that produce this molecu
lar messenger are surprisingly rare. Clus
tered in loose knots buried deep in the
brain, they number a few tens of thousands
of nerve cells out of an estimated total of
100 billion. But through long, wire-like pro
jections known as axons, these cells influ
ence neurological activity in many regions,
including the nucleus accumbens, the
primitive structure that is one of the brain’s
key pleasure centers. At a purely chemical
level, every experience humans find enjoy
able—whether listening to music, embrac
ing a lover or savoring chocolate—amounts
to little more than an explosion of dopa
mine in the nucleus accumbens, as exhil
arating and ephemeral as a firecracker.
Dopamine, like most biologically impor
tant molecules, must be kept within strict
bounds. Too little dopamine in certain areas
of the brain triggers the tremors and paraly
sis of Parkinson’s disease. Too much causes
the hallucinations and bizarre thoughts of
schizophrenia. A breakthrough in addiction
research came in 1975, when psychologists
Roy Wise and Robert Yokel at Concordia
University in Montreal reported on the re
markable behavior of some drug-addicted
rats. One day the animals were placidly dis
pensing cocaine and amphetamines to
themselves by pressing a lever attached
to their cages. The next they were angrily
banging at the lever like someone trying to
summon a stalled elevator. The reason? The
scientists had injected the rats with a drug
that blocked the action of dopamine.
In the years since, evidence linking
dopamine to drugs has mounted. Amphet
amines stimulate dopamine-producing
cells to pump out more of the chemical.
Cocaine keeps dopamine levels high by in
hibiting the activity of a transporter mole
cule that would ordinarily ferry dopamine
back into the cells that produce it. Nico
tine, heroin and alcohol trigger a complex
chemical cascade that raises dopamine lev
els. And a still unknown chemical in ciga
rette smoke, a group led by Brookhaven
chemist Joanna Fowler reported last year,
may extend the activity of dopamine by
blocking a mopping-up enzyme, called
mao B, that would otherwise destroy it.
The evidence that Volkow and her
colleagues present in the current issue of
Nature suggests that dopamine is direct
ly responsible for the exhilarating rush
that reinforces the desire to take drugs, at
least in cocaine addicts. In all, 17 users
participated in the study, says Volkow,
and they experienced a high whose in
tensity was directly related to how exten
sively cocaine tied up available binding
sites on the molecules that transport dop
amine around the brain. To produce any
high at all, she and her colleagues found,
cocaine had to occupy at least 47% of
these sites; the “best” results occurred
when it took over 60% to 80% of the sites,
effectively preventing the transporters
from latching onto dopamine and spirit
ing it out of circulation.
cientists believe the dopa-
mine system arose very early in
the course of animal evolution
because it reinforces behaviors
so essential to survival. “If it
were not for the fact that sex is
pleasurable,” observes Charles
Schuster of Wayne State University in De
troit, “we would not engage in it.” Unfor
tunately, some of the activities humans are
neurochemically tuned to find agreeableeating foods rich in fat and sugar, for in
stance—have backfired in modem society.
Just as a surfeit of food and a dearth of ex
ercise have conspired to turn heart disease
and diabetes into major health problems, so
the easy availability' of addictive chemicals
has played a devious trick. Addicts do not
crave heroin or cocaine or alcohol or nic
otine per se but want the rush of dopa
mine that these drugs produce.
Dopamine, however, is more than just a
feel-good molecule. It also exercises extraor
dinary power over learning and memory.
Think of dopamine, suggests P. Read Mon-
S
tague of the Center for Theoretical Neuro
science at Houston’s Baylor College of Med
icine, as the proverbial carrot, a reward the
brain doles out to networks of neurons for
making survival-enhancing choices. And
while the details of how this system works
are not yet understood, Montague and his
colleagues at the Salk Institute in San Diego,
California, and M.I.T. have proposed a mod
el that seems quite plausible. Each time the
outcome of an action is better than expected,
they predicted, dopamine-releasing neu
rons should increase the rate at which they
fire. When an outcome is worse, they should
decrease it. And if the outcome is as expect
ed, the firing rate need not change at all.
As a test of his model, Montague creaflb
a computer program that simulated the ne^
tar-gathering activity of bees. Programmed
with a dopamine-like reward system and A
loose on a field of virtual “flowers,” somew
which were dependably sweet and some of
which were either very sweet or not sweet at
all, the virtual bees chose the reliably sweet
flowers 85% of the time. In laboratory ex
periments real bees behave just like their
virtual counterparts. What does this have to
do with drug abuse? Possibly quite a lot, says
Montague. The theory is that dopamineenhancing chemicals fool the brain into
thinking drugs are as beneficial as nectar to
tire bee, thus hijacking a natural reward sys
tem that dates back millions of years.
The degree to which learning and mem
ory sustain the addictive process is only now
being appreciated. Each time a neurotrans
mitter like dopamine floods a synapse, sci
entists believe, circuits that trigger thoughts
and motivate actions are etched onto tl^fe
brain. Indeed, the neurochemistry suppoiWP
ing addiction is so powerful that the people,
objects and places associated with drug tat
ing are also imprinted on the brain. Stirr®
lated by food, sex or the smell of tobacco,
former smokers can no more control the
urge to light up than Pavlov’s dogs could
stop their urge to salivate. For months
Rafael Rios lived in fear of catching a
glimpse of bare arms—his own or someone
else’s. Whenever he did, he remembers, he
would be seized by a nearly unbearable
urge to find a drug-filled syringe.
Indeed, the brain has many devious
tricks for ensuring that the irrational act of
taking drugs, deemed “good” because it en
hances dopamine, will be repeated, petscan images taken by Volkow and her col
leagues reveal that the absorption of a
cocaine-like chemical by neurons is pro
foundly reduced in cocaine addicts in con
trast to normal subjects. One explanation:
the addicts’ neurons, assaulted by abnormal
ly high levels of dopamine, have responded
defensively and reduced the number of sites
(or receptors) to which dopamine can bind.
50
TIME, MAY 12.1997
In the absence of drugs, these nerve cells
probably experience a dopamine deficit,
Volkow speculates, so while addicts begin by
taking drugs to feel high, they end up taking
them in order not to feel low.
PET-scan images of the brains of recov
ering cocaine addicts reveal other striking
changes, including a dramahcaily impaired
ability to process glucose, the primary en
ergy source for working neurons. More
over, this impairment—which persists for
up to 100 days after withdrawal—is greatest
in the prefrontal cortex, a dopamine-rich
area of the brain that controls impulsive
and irrational behavior. Addicts, in fact,
display many of the symptoms shown by
^feients who have suffered strokes or in^ffies to the prefrontal cortex. Damage to
this region, University of Iowa neurolojKt Antonio Damasio and his colleagues
Wve demonstrated, destroys the emo
tional compass that controls behaviors
the patient knows are unacceptable.
Anyone who doubts that genes influ
ence behavior should see the mice in
Marc Caron’s lab. These tireless rodents
race around their cages for hours on end.
They lose weight because they rarely stop
to eat, and then they drop from exhaus
tion because they are unable to sleep.
Why? The mice, says Caron, a bio
chemist at Duke University’s Howard
Hughes Medical Institute laboratory, are
high on dopamine. They lack the genetic
mechanism that sponges up this powerful
stuff and spirits it away. Result: there is so
much dopamine banging around in the
poor creatures’ synapses that the mice,
though drug-free, act as if they were strung
out on cocaine.
For years scientists have suspected that
genes play a critical role in determining
who will become addicted to drugs and
who will not. But not until now have they
had molecular tools powerful enough to go
after the prime suspects. Caron’s mice are
just the most recent example. By knocking
out a single gene—the so-called dopaminetransporter gene—Caron and his colleagues
may have created a strain of mice so sated
with dopamine that they are oblivious to the
allure of cocaine, and possibly alcohol and
heroin as well. “What’s exciting about our
mice,” says Caron, “is that they should allow
us to test the hypothesis that all these drugs
funnel through the dopamine system.”
Several dopamine genes have already
been tentatively, and controversially, linked
to alcoholism and drug abuse. Inherited
variations in these genes modify the ef
ficiency with which nerve cells process
dopamine, or so the speculation goes. Thus,
some scientists conjecture, a dopaminetransporter gene that is superefficient,
clearing dopamine from the synapses too;
rapidly, could predispose some people to a"
form of alcoholism characterized by violent?
and impulsive behavior. In essence, they?
would be mirror images of Caron’s mice.;
Instead of being drenched in dopamine, z
their synapses would be dopamine-poor. 3
The dopamine genes known as D2 and?
04 might also play a role in drug abuse, fori
similar reasons. Both these genes, it turns °
out, contain the blueprints for assembling?
what scientists call a receptor, a minuscule,*
bump on the surface of cells to which bio-5
logically active molecules are attracted.’
And just as a finger lights up a room?
by merely flicking a switch, so dopamine *
triggers a sequence of chemical reactions o
each time it binds to one of its five known '
receptors. Genetic differences that reduce ?
the sensitivity of these receptors or de-s
crease their number could diminish the|
sensation of pleasure.
The problem is, studies that have pur->
In the absence of drugs, these nerve cells
probably experience a dopamine deficit,
Volkow speculates, so while addicts begin by
taking drugs to feel high, they end up taking
them in order not to feel low.
PET-scan images of the brains of recov
ering cocaine addicts reveal other striking
changes, including a dramatically impaired
ability to process glucose, the primary en
ergy source for working neurons. More
over, this impairment—which persists for
up to 100 days after withdrawal—is greatest
in the prefrontal cortex, a dopamine-rich
area of the brain that controls impulsive
and irrational behavior. Addicts, in fact,
display many of the symptoms shown by
ients who have suffered strokes or inies to the prefrontal cortex. Damage to
this region, University of Iowa neurolo' Antonio Damasio and his colleagues
e demonstrated, destroys the emo
tional compass that controls behaviors
the patient knows are unacceptable.
Anyone who doubts that genes influ
ence behavior should see the mice in
Marc Caron’s lab. These tireless rodents
race around their cages for hours on end.
They lose weight because they rarely stop
to eat, and then they drop from exhaus
•
«
tion because they are unable to sleep.
Why? The mice, says Caron, a bio
chemist at Duke University’s Howard
Hughes Medical Institute laboratory, are
high on dopamine. They lack the genetic
mechanism that sponges up this powerful
stuff and spirits it away. Result: there is so
much dopamine banging around in the
poor creatures’ synapses that the mice,
though drug-free, act as if they were strung
out on cocaine.
For years scientists have suspected that
genes play a critical role in determining
who will become addicted to drugs and
who will not. But not until now have they
had molecular tools powerful enough to go
after the prime suspects. Caron’s mice are
just the most recent example. By knocking
out a single gene—the so-called dopaminetransporter gene—Caron and his colleagues
may have created a strain of mice so sated
with dopamine that they are oblivious to the
allure of cocaine, and possibly alcohol and
heroin as well. “What’s exciting about our
mice,” says Caron, “is that they should allow
us to test the hypothesis that all these drugs
funnel through the dopamine system.”
Several dopamine genes have already
been tentatively, and controversially, linked
to alcoholism and drug abuse. Inherited
variations in these genes modify the ef
ficiency with which nerve cells process
dopamine, or so the speculation goes. Thus,
some scientists conjecture, a dopaminetransporter gene that is superefficient,
clearing dopamine from the synapses toofe
rapidly, could predispose some people to a^
form of alcoholism characterized by violent?
and impulsive behavior. In essence, they!
would he mirror images of Caron’s mice. J
Instead of being drenched in dopamine, z
their synapses would be dopamine-poor. 5
The dopamine genes known as D2 and?
04 might also play a role in drug abuse, fort
similar reasons. Both these genes, it turns?
out, contain the blueprints for assembling;;
what scientists call a receptor, a minuscule!
bump on the surface of cells to which bio-*
logically active molecules are attracted.!:
And just as a finger lights up a room?
by merely flicking a switch, so dopamine J
baggers a sequence of chemical reactions g
each time it hinds to one of its five known’
receptors. Genetic differences that reduce S
the sensitivity of these receptors or de-s
crease their number could diminish thej
sensation of pleasure.
J
The problem is, studies that have pur-J
ported to find a basis for addiction in varia
tions of the D2 and 04 genes have not held
up under scrutiny. Indeed, most scientists
think addiction probably involves an intri
cate dance between environmental influ
ences and multiple genes, some of which
may influence dopamine activity only in
directly. This has not stopped some re
searchers from promoting the provocative
theory that many people who become alco
holics and drug addicts suffer from an inher
ited condition dubbed the reward-deficien
cy syndrome. Low dopamine levels caused
by a particular version of the D2 gene, they
say, may link a breathtaking array of aberrant
behaviors. Among them: severe alcoholism,
pathological gambling, binge eating and at
tention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The more science unmasks the pow
erful biology that underlies addiction, the
brighter the prospects for treatment be
come. For instance, the discovery by Fowl
er and her team that a chemical that in
hibits the mopping-up enzyme mao b
may play a role in cigarette addiction has
already opened new possibilities for ther
apy. A number of well-tolerated mao binhibitor drugs developed to treat Parkin
son’s disease could find a place in the
antismoking arsenal. Equally promising, a
Yale University team led by Eric Nestler
and David Self has found that another
type of compound-one that targets the
dopamine receptor known as Dl—seems
to alleviate, at least in rats, the intense
craving that accompanies withdrawal from
cocaine. One day, suggests Self, a Dl skin
patch might help cocaine abusers kick
their habit, just as the nicotine patch at
tenuates the desire to smoke.
Like methadone, the compound that
activates di appears to be what is known
as a partial agonist. Because such med
52
ications stimulate some of the same brain
pathways as drugs of abuse, they are often
addictive in their own right, though less
so. And while treating heroin addicts with
methadone may seem like a cop-out to
people who have never struggled with a
drug habit, clinicians say they desperate
ly need more such agents to tide addicts—
particularly cocaine addicts-over the
first few months of treatment, when the
danger of relapse is highest.
ealistically, no one believes
better medications alone will
solve the drug problem. In fact,
one of the most hopeful mes
sages coming out of current re
search is that the biochemical
abnormalities associated with
addiction can be reversed through learn
ing. For that reason, all sorts of psychosocial
interventions, ranging from psychotherapy
to 12-step programs, can and do help. Cog
nitive therapy, which seeks to supply peo
ple with coping skills (exercising after work
instead of going to a bar, for instance), ap
pears to hold particular promise. After just
10 weeks of therapy, before-and-after pet
scans suggest, some patients suffering from
obsessive-compulsive disorder (which has
some similarities with addiction) manage
to resculpt not only their behavior but also
activity patterns in their brain.
In late 20th century America, where
drugs of abuse are being used on an un
precedented scale, the mounting evidence
that treatment works could not be more
welcome. Until now, policymakers have
responded to the drug problem as though
it were mostly a criminal matter. Only a
third of the $15 billion the U.S. earmarks for
the war on drugs goes to prevention and
treatment. “In my view, we’ve got things
R
TIME, MAY 12,1997
upside down,” says Dr. David Lewis, di
rector of the Center for Alcohol and Ad
diction Studies at Brown University School
of Medicine. “By relying so heavily on a
criminalized approach, we’ve only added
to the stigma of drug abuse and prevented
high-quality medical care.”
Ironically, the biggest barrier to mak
ing such care available is the perception
that efforts to treat addiction are wasted.
Yet treatment for drug abuse has a failure
rate no different from that for other chron
ic diseases. Close to half of recovering ad
dicts fail to maintain complete abstinence
after a year-about the same proportion of
patients with diabetes and hypertension
who fail to comply with their diet, exerci^^
and medication regimens. What doctd^J
who treat drug abuse should strive for, says
Alan Leshner, director of the National Im
stitute on Drug Abuse, is not necessaril®
cure but long-term care that controls the
progress of the disease and alleviates its
worst symptoms. “The occasional relapse is
normal,” he says, “and just an indication
that more treatment is needed.”
Rafael Rios has been luckier than
many. He kicked his habit in one lengthy
struggle that included four months of in-pa
tient treatment at a residential facility and a
year of daily outpatient sessions. During
that time, Rios checked into 12-step meetings
continually, sometimes attending three a day.
As those who deal with alcoholics and drug
addicts know, such exertions of will power
and courage are more common than most
people suspect. They are the best reason
yet to start treating addiction as the
medical and public health crisis it really
is.
—With reporting by Alice Park/New York
For more on addiction and alcoholism, see
our Web report at time.com/alcoholism
^conomy
Illustrations: Sauratrh Singh
Piratechnics
Mobile Bite
aged to find one. If
things work out the
ET another software
way Iridium hopes,
breakthrough from India.
all those satellites
ND now even mobile phones are
researchers say the virus, transmitted
Top executives of global soft
won’t be lost in
becoming the target of cyber vil
’ by e-mail, didn't destroy computer files
ware majors are queuing up in
space for much
lains. A new computer virus targeting
and was more an annoyance than a
a nondescript Kerala village to
longer. The former
mobile phone users—calling them up
real danger. But by taking the same
satellite communi
to deliver an insulting e-mail
basic recipe that spread the
cations firm, which
about a telephone companotorious “I Love You" virus
went broke after
ny-has dramatically
around the globe last month
sinking millions
demonstrated what could
and applying it to cell
into a telephone
be the newest headache
phones, the Spanish bug
network nobody
to afflict the wireless
could presage a new breed
uses, has asked a
world. The worm-type
of viral attack against pocket
court to allow the
virus, called "Timofonlca",
communicators, palm organ
investment firm of
hit customers of Spain’s
isers and the rest of the wire
Movistar service, sending
less world. In fact, it's already
Castle Harlan to
text messages scrolling
invaded the short Messaging
buy most of its
^^gotiate with a 25-year-old
assets. Castle will
across the phone screens.
. Services (sms) by sending a mes
computer programmer who
Although mobile operators say the
sage to an sms gateway, a computer
purchase the assets
^daims to have created perhaps
for $50 million in
virus Isn’t a big threat, the most impor
server that converted the message to
We most solid anti-piracy soft
tant thing is it’s wireless and the first
cash plus $900,000
telephone signals reaching thousands
virus that targets cellphones. Security
of cellphone users.
ware. Divine Logic 2000, cre
a month. It would
ated by Shaju Chacko, a dipl
also give Iridium's
oma holder in software applisenior lenders 5 per
cations, can both detect pira
cent of the equity of the purc
have formed a lobby group
the auto industry's largest
ted software and destroy it
hasing entity. The purchase
saying credit card companies
sales promotion on the
And this program cannot be
is also likely to include
are treating them like
Internet, just in time for the
detected or debugged using
inventory, rights to
'redheaded stepchil
summer selling blitz, GM, the
any assembly language. Once
satellites, certain rela
dren'. This was the
world's largest automaker,
installed, no one can copy an
ted contracts and lic
final straw for the
launched the website, Ticket
illegal applications or software
enses, trademarks,
Adult Internet Trade
to Ride, offering incentives of
from that system. Manufact
patents and even
Associations who
up to $750 available only on
urers can specify the number
Iridium’s furniture.
launched Credit
the Net. The deals are on
of copies to be taken from a
Card Watch, a
selected mid-size cars and
licensed program included in
“watchdog group of
sports utility vehicles from
Cardinal Sin
floppies or CDs and illegal
adult industry lead
Chevrolet, gmc, Oldsmobile,
copying beyond that specified
ers" to lobby for
Buick and Pontiac. $uch
DULT websites
number will be detected and
better treatment
incentives were hitherto avail
have really been
stopped by the programme.
from the card com
able only for consumer
hit below the belt.
^Kivine Logic also prevents
panies. They claim the
Miffed at American
Wrackers from breaking into
major card companies have
Express' decision to reject
been lax in helping develop
the programme since they
transactions from porn sites,
^bnnot read or modify any
technology to reduce credit
adult Internet associations
fraud and other card
nls. Despite lucrative
disputes at porn sites,
offers, Chacko refuses to
Top 10 Sites of May 2000
sell the product to
choosing instead to
Unique
Visitors
levy heavy "chargeglobal IT biggies and is
Rank
Website
(000)
in the process of patent
back" penalties for
51,165
yahoo.com
ing the program.
card disputes. Amex,
durables, books and CDs. GM
43.546
aol.com
2.
Another Bill Gates in
however, is not ready
says Ticket to Ride uses the
40.329
msn.com
the making?
3.
to budge.
Internet to drive consumers to
4,
30,930
gcoclties.com
GM's centrepiece website
29,348
microsoft.com
5.
where potential buyers can
Satellite Deal
Hard Drive
passporl.com
28,929
find 6,300 car and truck deal
emember iridium,
HEN the world
ers and locate the exact vehi
AOLProprictary.aol
27.351
the satellite phone
is focused on
cle they're shopping for. The
lycos.com
21,482
8.
company that went bust
the Net, can big com
GM move is also a fallout of a
altavlsta.com
19,303
and was last seen frant
panies
be
far
behind?
slump
in showoom sales.
excite.com
18.440
10.
ically seeking a buyer?
Auto giant General
Daimler Chrysler is also going
Source: Dun & Bradstreet
Well, it has at last manMotors has unveiled
in for incentives of up to
$2,000 on almost all vehicles—but on showroom sales
and not in the virtual world.
“ln time, kids will learn French from Barbie dolls.”
Will it take GM's cue and
—Nicholas Negroponte, Director, mit Media Labs, on the future of digital technology.
drive on to the Net?
Y
A
A
W
R
OUTLOOK!
June26.2000
Dusk Falls
at Dawn
They are but children. But stalked by premature death,
it's a battle where hope is the only tenuous lifeline.
SHANE JUDE FERNANDES Seen here with his mother. This one-and-a-half month old baby from
Goa had to undergo surgery at Mumbai because she developed respiratory trouble.
NAVANEETA GOSWAMI (Right) This nine-year-old girl suffers from cancer. She celebrates what
may be her last birthday, with other kids who are victims of the same affliction.
By PAYAL KAPADIA
HIVAM Shinde's life depends on the machines around
him. Plastic tubes stick out like umbilical cords, connect
ing his fragile body to various modem-looking contrapt
ions. helps
A dialysis
out his
system.
A ventil
ator
him machine
breathe. flushes
Blood and
plasma
transfusions
prop his flagging haemoglobin count. The last time he was in hos
pital was five months ago. That was the day he was bom.
Shane Jude Fernandes is still to get home. Born one-and-a-half
months ago, he developed respiratory problems soon after and
was flown down from Goa on oxygen support. One heart surgery
later, it looks like Shane is finally homebound.
Varun Nagaonkar bends over his colouring book. He chooses
green for the doggie, like most four-year-olds would. His mother
says he has a problem with his haemoglobin count; his eyes and
tongue were white when he was brought in. What she doesn't
S
62
know, or isn’t telling, is that he's been diagnosed with leukaemia.
Prabhat (name changed) came to the children's home run by
Delhi-based ngo Sahara, after his parents succumbed to aids. He
thinks that his potent breakfast of four tablets and a spoonful of
syrup is treating his tuberculosis. He will probably never grow up
to understand that he also has Htv.
All these children are newcomers to this world. But sickness and
pain are not new to them. While kids their age are warding off
schoolyard bullies and chicken pox, these children are fighting a
battle they can’t afford to lose. The battle for life in a paediatric
icu where death is always around the corner and where life means
chemotherapy, or regular hospital checks, or just looking over
your shoulder every once in a while.
Says Shane's mother Elizabeth: "You have to be a strong mother
and have a positive outlook." And though optimism is hard to
come by in such circumstances, Shivam's parents, who have been
camping outside the icu for days, are determined not to crumble
Photographs by ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR
with despair. "We hope that he gets better," they say. But it's Varun's mother, Varsha Nagaonkar, who exhibits perhaps the highest
degree of sang-froid. The abyss gapes at her and yet she musters the
will to hope: "Of course he's in a hospital so I'm scared, but he'll
be fine soon." Cryptic words shut out the dark.
NT1RE families are waiting gracefully, with for■■ titude. By the bedside, until a sleeping child
lD awakes. In the playroom, armed with paintbr
ushes and crayons. In the corridors, talking to others
like them. With their doctors, measuring up their
chances and haggling for a little more time. Courage
for them, it seems, is hereditary. And faith too.
Mina Goswami though is running out of faith. Her
only child Navanita was diagnosed with cancer two
months ago. The Goswamis made their first visit to
Mumbai to find treatment for their daughter. “I
thought she'd be a doctor," Mina's voice peters out.
Navanita has just turned nine. This birthday might be her last. So
this year, the celebrations are very special. In more ways than one.
There are more than 20 kids at the party. They all have cancer. Age,
gender, all distinguishing features vanish; with their
tonsured heads and their protective face-masks, only
their eyes speak—they light up in unison with the
The terminally
on the birthday cake. The trappings of can
ill child gets by on candles
cer can't hide the fact that they are just children,
braving a disease that makes grown-up men cry'.
wish-fulfilment.
"If she is not here, our lives will be over,” cries
It is the parents, Navanita’s father, Nishikanta. "We will never leave
Bombay." The child is not the patient as much as
however, who
the parents are, according to Dr Soonu Udani, head
are the real
of the paediatrics department at Mumbai's Hinduja
Hospital. "The child is on medication, or under
‘patients’.
sedation. But it’s very hard for parents to accept
OUTLOOKS June 26,2000
63
VARUN
He, like any other 4-year-old,
loves his drawing book. His
mother doesn’t know or won’t
say that he has leukaemia.
MANISH
This new-born baby, currently in
SGPGIMS, Lucknow, had to undergo
a heart surgery. His parents had
lost hope as they didn't have
money. Donations saved the day.
R.K. GUPTA
SAMINUR
This 8-year-old boy in Calcutta
has acute haemophilia. He
suffers from internal bleeding
in his stomach.
KARTHIK
KAWAUIT KAUR SINGH
This 14-year-old suffers from thalassemia major
(average life-span 21 years) and aspires to be a judge.
She also met one besides filmstar Sunil Shetty.
Hospital, a speciality wing of
the All India Institute of Medical
Sciences. She belongs to a
village in Badayun, UP.
why they lost a child. Counselling also helps
prepare the parents and maybe, even the
child, for the bleak road ahead—whether par
ents should tell an older child that he might
die. Or urge them to express their emotions to
the child before it's too late. And to include
other siblings who might be feeling left out.
No wonder then that voluntary organisati
ons are targeting the entire family. VCare, a
non-profit emotional support group for cancer
survivors, organises family outings to involve
parents and siblings in the healing process.
ARTHIK'S parents had to walk the same tightrope between Cancer patients are introduced to two other
saving one child's life and ensuring a secure future for the oth cancer survivors to emphasise that cancer isn't
ers. Their eight-year-old son quit school after he was diagno another word for terminal. "People say you are
sed with leukaemia 15 months ago. He has gone through che dying with cancer—why don't they say that
motherapy and radiation; and the expenditure incurred so far has you are living with it?", asks Vandana Gupta,
been Rs 2 lakh. "He needs treatment for another 16 to 18 months," founder of VCare, herself a cancer survivor.
Emotional support, according to Gupta,
cries Shivakumar, Karthik's father, who is employed in a power
means many things. To some, it means
loom unit. "It's very difficult to bear the expenses with my salary."
For Manish Yadav's parents too, financial constraints were prov financial help; to others it means finding a
ing to be a great hurdle in saving their son's life, but thanks to the place to stay; and there are also those for
publicity provided by the electronic medium and the local press, whom it means talking to somebody who
the situation was brought under control in the nick of time. "This isn’t wearing a doctor's coat.
For younger children, death itself means
is his (Manish's) second life," his surgeon Nirmal Gupta, at the
Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences in very little. "They know that they are not feel
ing well, but what they fear
Lucknow, proclaims proudly.
most is that they'd wished
Manish smiles at his mother Meera as she holds
him tightly. She had no idea what her son's ailment
Resignation often they'd become someone great, or take part in some
competition," says Gupta. "The interruption seems
was. Avers she: "He used to turn blue sobbing and
replaces
initial
to upset them more than death itself."
have irregular breathing, but now he seems fine."
Udai Joshi, founder of Make-A-Wish Foundation of
Manish had a hole in his heart.
panic as medical
India, understands the value of a wish all too well.
For chronic cases, resignation often replaces init
bills mount and
Especially for a sick child whose short existence
ial panic and fear as medical bills mount and the
doesn't give him enough time to fulfil the wish on
sickness takes a turn for the worse. Doctors get bla
the sickness
his own. Joshi's son, Gandhar, went to the US to get
med a lot by angry parents who feel shortchanged
takes a turn for
treatment for leukaemia. He died at the age of 10,
when a healthy child takes ill and dies. These are
after the US based Make-A-Wish Foundation granted
the parents who need counselling desperately, to
the worse.
him his last wish. A family trip to Disneyworld.
understand why the medical fraternity failed and
that the situation is unsalvageable." For doctors, communicating
their helplessness is a heartless task. Parents want to believe that
if their money can buy the best medical care, the road to recuper
ation will be a sure, if long, one.
It doesn’t help when the money lasts shorter than the treatment,
and a dying child becomes a drain on the family income. When
Nataraj and Amudha were told that their 10-year-old daughter,
Geetha, has Ewings Sarcoma and that the initial course of treatm
ent would cost Rs 4 lakh, they first contemplated suicide. For Nat
araj, a labourer, the cost was unimaginable, especially when there
were two other children to look after.
K
He is eight years old,
belongs to Bangalore and
he dropped out of school
when he was diagnosed
with leukaemia. His
father finds it tough to
pay for his medication.
says, her face aglow as she recalls the day and runs her
fingers lovingly over the photographs.
For a kid who loves singing and dancing, Navanita’s
wish was predictable: to dance before a large audience.
Make-A-Wish Foundation made the arrangements and
Navanita danced. Not to one song, as planned, but to
two. "We laughed more than we ever have," gushes
Mina, overwhelmed. Now Navanita has only one more
wish: to get well so that she can get her hair back.
These organisations provide the human touch. Not a
small thing. Only dwarfed in the face of huge medical
bills that need to be paid. Shivam’s parents are borrow
ing money to keep him alive; concerns about repaying
it have been deferred for now. And miracles do happen.
Since Outlook did this story, Shivam has made a startling
recovery. His cancer went into natural remission, his
kidneys recovered and he has gone home. Shane has
gone home too. For that half-a-chance that they would
: live, the cost was worth it. But for the majority of
Indians, even that half-a-chance is unaffordable.
In Mumbai. Kawaljeet’s treatment costs Rs 1,100 per
month. Her father, a cabdriver, has to shell out only Rs
350, the rest is covered by the Mumbai Thalassemic Soc
iety. In Bangalore, the Shristi Special Academy runs a
project called Drishti, to support terminally ill children
like Karthik and Geetha with the help of donations.
If a patent weathers the financial crunch, there is the
absence of formal bereavement counselling when a
Joshi set up the Indian foundation in 1996 to SHIVAM SHINDE
child dies. But in India, strong family support makes up
gift happiness to terminal kids. Make-A-Wish
where
professional services are missing. And the role of
volunteers visit hospitals regularly and find chi This five-month-old in
good, old-fashioned fortitude can’t be emphasised
ldren who have been certified as terminal cases. Mumbai is in an incubator
enough.
Grief is followed by relief that the child isn’t
with
tubes coming out of
"We build rapport with the parents and the
suffering anymore. And therapists say that parents even
his body like umbilical
child," says Joshi. "We can fulfil any wish."
visit them after the counselling period has helped them
Fourteen-year-old Kawaljeet Kaur Singh made cords. They are attached to
tide over the sorrow. Some of them come to talk and
two wishes—to meet Sunil Shetty and to meet a various life-saving gizmos.
.
u k
share photographs. Yet others come with the good news
judge. Kawaljeet suffers from thalassemia major; the average lifes- that they are expecting children again, a
pan for such patients is 21 years. Yet, she dreams of becoming a
With E.R. Srikanth, Ashis K. Biswas.
judge. "Even when I see the photographs, 1 feel so thankful," she
Sutapa Mukerjee and Dhiraj Singh
64
0 U T L 0 0 K ■ June 26,2000
OUTLOOKa June26,2000
65
For couples who can't have a child—
or who have lost one-the unthinkable
may soon be possible. Here are the perils
SI®
s
o
c
I
E
T
Y
Renegade scientists say they are ready to start applying the technology of cloning
to human beings. Can they really do it, and how scary would that be?
BEFORE WE ASSUME THAT THE MARKET FOR HUMAN CLONES CONSISTS MAINLY OF NAR-
BY NANCY GIBBS
cissists who think the world deserves more of them or neo-Nazis who dream of cloning
Hitler or crackpots and mavericks and mischief makers of all kinds, it is worth taking a tour of the marketplace.
We might just meet ourselves there.
Imagine for a moment that your daughter needs a bone-marrow transplant and no one can provide a match;
that your wife’s early menopause has made her infertile; or that your five-year-old has drowned in a lake and
your grief has made it impossible to get your mind around the fact that he is gone forever. Would the news
then really be so easy to dismiss that around the world, there are scientists in labs pressing ahead with
plans to duplicate a human being, deploying the same technology that allowed
•1 * J,TO Scottish scientists to clone Dolly the sheep four years ago?
•’«
'wSr
All it took was that first headline about the astonishing ewe, and fertility experts began to hear the questions every day. Our two-year-old daughter
died in a car crash; we saved a lock of her hair in a baby book. Can
you clone her? Why does the law allow people more freedom to
destroy fetuses than to create them? My husband had cancer and is sterile. Can you help us?
The inquiries are pouring in because some
scientists are ever more willing to say
yes, perhaps we can. Last month
a well-known infertility
BABY.
AND YOU, AND YOU
CLONING TO CREATE UFE
Zavos of the University of Kentucky, an
nounced that he and Italian researcher
Severino Antinori, the man who almost
seven years ago helped a 62-year-oId
woman give birth using donor eggs, were
forming a consortium to produce the first
human clone. Researchers in South Korea
claim they have already created a cloned
human embryo, though they destroyed it
rather than implanting it in a surrogate
mother to develop. Recent cover stories in
Wired and the New York Times Magazine
tracked the efforts of the Raelians, a reli
gious group committed to, among other
things, welcoming the first extraterrestrials
when they appear. They intend to clone
the cells of a dead 10-month-old boy
whose devastated parents hope, in effect,
to bring him back to life as a newborn.
The Raelians say they have the lab and
the scientists, and—most important,
considering the amount of trial and error
involved—they say they have 50 women
lined up to act as surrogates to carry a
cloned baby to term.
Given what researchers have learned
since Dolly, no one thinks the mechanics
Infertile because of cancer therapy, Corner, with wife Nancy, wants to make a baby through
cloning. Lesbian partners DeShazo and Thomas, right, also find the idea enticing
of cloning are very hard: take a donor egg,
suck out the nucleus, and hence the dna,
and fuse it with, say, a skin cell from the
human being copied. Then, with the help
of an electrical current, the reconstituted
cell should begin growing into a genetic
duplicate. “It’s inevitable that someone
will try and someone will succeed,” pre
dicts Delores Lamb, an infertility expert at
Baylor University in Texas. The consensus
among biotechnology specialists is that
within a few years—some scientists believe
a few months—the news will break of the
birth of the first human clone.
At that moment, at least two things will
happen-one private, one public. The
meaning of what it is to be human—which
until now has involved, at the very least,
the mysterious melding of two different
people’s dna—will shift forever, along with
our understanding of the relationship be
tween parents and children, means and
ends, ends and beginnings. And as a result,
the conversation that has occupied sci
entists and ethicists for years, about how
much man should mess with nature when
it comes to reproduction, will drop onto
TIME, FEBRUARY 26,2001
every kitchen table, every pulpit, every
politician’s desk. Fierce debate over issues .
like abortion and euthanasia will seem
tame and transparent compared with the
questions that human cloning raises A
That has many scientists scarerto
death. Because even if all these headlines
are hype and we are actually far away from
seeing the first human clone, the very fact
that at this moment the research is pro
ceeding underground, unaccountable,
poses a real threat. The risk lies not just
with potential babies born deformed, as
many animal clones are; not just with des
perate couples and cancer patients and
other potential “clients” whose hopes may
be raised and hearts broken and life savings
wiped out. The immediate risk is that a
backlash against renegade science might
strike at responsible science as well.
The more scared people are of some of
this research, scientists worry, the less like
ly they are to tolerate any of it. Yet varia
tions on cloning technology are already
used in biotechnology labs all across the
country. It is these techniques that will al
low, among other things, the creation of
IN THE FAMILY: Sabine Saltic experienced menopause prematurely.
She and husband Eyup prefer cloning to using a stranger's eggs
i
[
;
!
I
I
!
WHAT IF=□
‘
I
I
;
THIRD SHOT: Cloning is a fantasy of Matt Racquer and Desiree Boen;
she had a hysterectomy after bearing two kids in a previous marriage
cloned herds of sheep and cows that pro- Cloning Foundation, he is the face of clon thumb my nose at Mr. Death and say, "You
duce medicines in their milk. Researchers ing fervor in the U.S. “I took one step in this might get me, but you’re not going to get all
also hope that one day, the ability to clone adventure, and it took over me like quick of me,”’ he says. “The special formula that
adult human cells will make it possible to sand,” says Wicker. He is planning to have is me will live on into another lifetime. It’s
“^h>v” new hearts and livers and nerve cells. some of his skin cells stored for future a partial triumph over death. I would leave
^But some of the same techniques could cloning. “If I’m not cloned before I die, my my imprint not in sand but in cement”
also be used to grow a baby. Trying to block estate will be set up so that I can be cloned
This kind of talk makes ethicists con
one line of research could impede another after,” he says, admitting, however, that he clude that even people who think they
and so reduce the
know about cloningchances of finding
let alone the rest of
a child dies and one parent wants to clone but
cures for ailments
us—don’t fully under
such as Alzheimer’s
the other doesn’t? Who owns the rights io a dead person’s DNA? stand its implications.
and Parkinson’s, can
Cloning, notes ethicer and heart disease. Were some shocking hasn’t found a lawyer willing to help. “It’s cist Arthur Caplan of the University of
breakthrough in human cloning to cause hard to write a will with all these uncer Pennsylvania, “can’t make you immortal
“an overcompensatory response by legisla tainties,” he concedes. “A lot of lawyers will because clearly the clone is a different
tors,” says cloning expert Tony Perry of New look at me crazy.”
I person. If I take twins and shoot one of
York City’s Rockefeller University, “that
As a gay man, Wicker has long been | them, it will be faint consolation to the
could be disastrous. At some point, it will frustrated that he cannot readily have chil I dead one that the other one is still running
potentially cost lives.” So we are left with dren of his own; as he gets older, his desire i around, even though they are genetically
choices and trade-offs and a need to think to reproduce grows stronger. He knows | identical. So the road to immortality is not
through whether it is this technology that that a clone would not be a photocopy of | through cloning.”
him but talks about the traits the boy
alarms us or just certain ways of using it.
Still, cloning is the kind of issue so conmight possess: “He will like the color blue. 1 founding that you envy the purists at either
Middle Eastern food and romantic Spanish ' end of the argument. For the Roman
BY DAY, RANDOLFE WICKER, 63, RUNS A
lighting shop in New York City. But in his music that's out of fashion.” And then he ■ Catholic Church, the entire question is one
spare time, as spokesman for the Human hints at the heart of his motive. T can I of world vie w: whether lift is . y/.t of love
TIME, FEBRUARY 26.2001
or just one more industrial product, a little jority of people who view the prospect with clone human beings. “Cloning right now
more valuable than most. Those who be a vague alarm, an uneasy sense that science looks like it’s coming to us on a magic car
lieve that the soul enters the body at the is dragging us into dark woods with no paths pet, piloted by a cult leader, sold to whoev
moment of conception think it is fine for and no easy way to turn back. Ian Wilmut, er can afford it,” says ethicist Caplan. “That
God to make clones; he does it about 4,000 the scientist who cloned Dolly but has come makes people nervous.”
And it helps explain why so much of
times a day, when a fertilized egg splits out publicly against human cloning, was not
into identical twins. But when it comes to trying to help sheep have genetically related the research is being done secretly. We
massaging a human life, for the scientist to children. “He was trying to help farmers may learn of the first human clone only
do mechanically what God does naturally is produce genetically improved sheep,” notes months, even years, after he or she is bom—
to interfere with his work, and no possible ethicist Erik Parens of the Hastings Center if the event hasn’t happened alread^js
in New York state. “And surely that’s how some scientists speculate. The team mat
benefit can justify that presumption.
On the other end of the argument are the technology will go with us too.” Cloning, cloned Dolly waited until she was seven
the libertarians who don’t like politicians or Parens says, “is not simply this isolated tech months old to announce her existence. Cre
ating her took 277
clerics or ethics boards
tries, and right up un
interfering with what
people don’t want to be cloned after they die?
til her birth, scien
they believe should be
tists around the world
purely individual deci
Will they be able to insert a do-not-clone clause in their will?
were saying that clon
sions. Reproduction is
a most fateful lottery; in their view, cloning nique out there that a few deluded folks are ing a mammal from an adult cell was im
allows you to hedge your bet. While grieving going to avail themselves of, whether they possible. “There’s a significant gap between
parents may be confused about the tech think it is a key to immortality or a way to what scientists are willing to talk about in
nology-cloning, even if it works, is not res bring someone back from the dead. It’s part public and their private aspirations,” says
urrection—their motives are their own of a much bigger project. Essentially the British futurist Patrick Dixon. “The law of
business. As for infertile couples, “we are big-picture question is, To what extent do genetics is that the work is always signifi
interested in giving people the gift of life,” we want to go down the path of using re cantly further ahead than the news. In the
Zavos, the aspiring cloner, tells Time. productive technologies to genetically digital world, everything is hyped because
there are no moral issues—there is just me
“Ethics is a wonderful word, but we need shape our children?”
dia excitement. Gene technology creates so
to look beyond the ethical issues here. It’s
not an ethical issue. It’s a medical issue. We AT THE MOMENT, THE AMERICAN PUBLIC IS many ethical issues that scientists are
have a duty here. Some people need this to plainly not ready to move quickly on scared stiff of a public reaction if the end re
cloning. In a Time/cnn poll, 90% of re sults of their research are known.”
complete the life cycle, to reproduce.”
Of course, attitudes often change over
In the messy middle are the vast ma spondents thought it was a bad idea to
WHAT IF
[
40
TIME, FEBRUARY 26,2001
time. In-vitro fertilization was effectively
illegal in much of the U.S. 20 years ago, and
the idea of transplanting a heart was once
considered horrifying. Public opinion on
cloning will evolve just as it did on these is
sues, advocates predict. But in the mean
time, the crusaders are mostly driven un
derground. Princeton biologist Lee Silver
says fertility specialists have told him that
they have no problem with cloning and
would be happy to provide it as a service to
^beir clients who could afford it. But these
^Jnne specialists would never tell inquiring
reporters that, Silver says—it’s too hot a
fc right now. “I think what’s happened
iWiat all the mainstream doctors have tak
en a hands-off approach because of this
huge public outcry. But I think what they
are hoping is that some fringe group will pi
oneer it and that it will slowly come into the
mainstream and then they will be able to
provide it to their patients.”
All it will take, some predict, is that
first snapshot. “Once you have a picture of
a normal baby with 10 fingers and 10 toes,
that changes everything,” says San Mateo,
California, attorney and cloning advocate
Mark Eibert, who gets inquiries from
infertile couples every day. “Once they put
a child in front of the cameras, they’ve
won.” On the other hand, notes Gregory
Pence, a professor of philosophy at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham and
I author of Who’s Afraid ofHuman Cloning?,
“if the first baby is defective, cloning will be
banned for the next 100 years.”
“I WOULDN’T MIND BEING THE FIRST PERSON
cloned if it were free. I don’t mind being a
guinea pig,” says Doug Domer, 35. He and
his wife Nancy both work in health care.
“We’re not afraid of technology,” he says.
Dorner has known since he was 16 that
he would never be able to have children
the old-fashioned way. A battle with lym
phoma left him sterile, so when he and
Nancy started thinking of having children,
he began following the scientific develop
ments in cloning more closely. The more
he read, the more excited he got. “Tech
nology saved my life when I was 16,” he
says, but at the cost of his fertility. “I think
technology should help me have a kid.
That’s a fair trade.”
Talk to the Dorners, and you get a
glimpse of choices that most parents can
scarcely imagine having to make. Which
parent, for instance, would they want to
clone? Nancy feels she would be bonded to
MY SISTER, MY CLONE
have a clone. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and her name is Diana. She's my
body double: blond hair, hazel eyes and fair skin. She’s 1 cm taller, but we have the
same voices and the same mannerisms. We're both unmarried. We love to read, we
relish Mexican food, and we get the same patches of dry skin in winter. We both play
tennis and golf. O.K., she’s funnier than I am—but just a little.
In the debate over the ethical, emotional and practical implications of human
cloning, identical twins—distinct beings who share the same DNA—present the closest
analogy. Identical twins are in fact more similar to each other than a clone would be to
his or her original, since twins gestate simultaneously in the same womb and are raised
in the same environment at the same time, usually by the same parents.
But even with our genes and backgrounds the same, my sister and I are very different
„ people. Diana is a corporate lawyer;
| I’m a former magazine editor, now a
; literary agent. She studied classics
< at Bryn Mawr; I studied the history
| of religion at Vassar. She favors
\ clothes that have actual colors in
; them; I opt for black. She’s politically
’ conservative; I'm more liberal.
She's a pragmatist; I'm an optimist.
We're not the only twins with
differences in our family. My father,
a writer and former diplomat, had an
identical twin brother, Francis, who
was a right-brained banker. Francis,
who died in 1992, also had identical
twin daughters. My cousin Rose is an
intense adventurist while her sister
Peg is softer and more traditional.
Of course, there are ways in
which identical twins are bound
togetherthat are more profound
than the usual sibling links. When I
walk into a room, ittakesnomore
than a glance before I can sense
my twin's mood—if she's happy or
tense or upset. I know what it's
about and why. It's something I
suspect few people, maybe not
even all twins, experience. Would
clones? I suspect not. since their life
experiences would be so different.
Other connections between Diana and me may be more related to our matching
DNA and thus more applicable to clones. My twin and I fitter information in much the same
way, and we think, perceive and interpret things similarly. When we're together, we often
respond simultaneously with the same word or sentence. We have put on the same T shirt
on the same day in different cities. We have friends who are twins, both doctors, who have
similar experiences. They took a pharmacy class together in medical school but sat across
the classroom from each other and took separate notes. They studied separately for the
exam. When it was returned, they had missed the same questions, for the same reasons.
Despite these shared propensities, people who hope they can create a duplicate
of, say, a lost child may be setting up that clone for heartbreak. Imagine the
expectations that would be created for such a person. Comparisons are tough enough
on identical twins. Between Diana and me, there were issues such as who got the better
grade, who scored more points in a basketball game, who had more friends. But neither
of us had to live with the idea that she was created to match up to the other's best
features. A cloned child might not play the piano as well as the original. Or be as smart.
Identical twins are living proof that identical DNA doesn't mean identical people.
My sister and i may have the same hardwiring—and a wire that connects us. We have
fun with our similarities, butattheendoftheday, there's no confusion about who is
who. Just as the fingerprints of all individuals, even identical twins, are unique, so are
their souls. And you can't clone a soul.
—By Susan Reed
I
TIM E. FEBRUARY 26,2001
die child just from carrying him, so why ing on humans today. Even after four years maladies. Of course, we don’t euthanize ba
not let the child have Doug”s genetic mate of practice with animal cloning, the failure bies. But these kids would probably die
rial? Does it bother her to know she would, rate is still overwhelming: 98% of embryos very prematurely anyway. Wilmut pauses
in effect, be raising her husband as a little never implant or die off during gestation or to consider the genie he has released with
boy? "It wouldn't be that different. He al soon after birth. Animals that survive can Dolly and the hopes he has raised. “It seems
ready acts like a five-year-old sometimes,” be nearly twice as big at birth as is normal, such a profound irony,” he says, “that in try
or have extra-large organs or heart trouble ing to make a copy of a child who has died
she says with a laugh.
How do they imagine raising a cloned or poor immune systems. Dolly’s “mother” tragically, one of the most likely outcomes
child, given the knowledge they would was six years old when she was cloned. is another dead child.”
That does not seem to deter the scien
have going in? “I’d know exactly what his That may explain why Dolly’s cells show
basic drives were,” says Doug. The boy’s signs of being older than they actually are- tists who work on the Clonaid project run
by the Raelian sed^
dreams and aspira
They say they
tions, however, would
it becomes acceptable to clone a person once.
willing to try to clone
be his own, Doug in
a dead child. Thoggi
sists. “I used to dream
What about 10 times? One hundred?
their outfit is eas^o
of being a fighter pi
lot,” he recalls, a dream lost when he got scientists joked that she was really a sheep mock, they may be even further along than
cancer. While they are at it, why not clone in lamb’s clothing. This deviation raises the the competition, in part because they have
Doug twice? “Hmm. Two of the same Idd,” possibility that beings created by cloning an advantage over other teams. A formida
ble obstacle to human cloning is that donor
Doug ponders. “We’ll cross that bridge adults will age abnormally fast.
“We had a cloned sheep bom just be eggs are a rare commodity, as are potential
when we come to it. But I know we’d never
clone our clone to have a second child. Once fore Christmas that was clearly not nor surrogate mothers, and the Raelians claim
you start copying something, who knows mal,” says Wilmut. “We hoped for a few to have a supply of both.
Earlier this month, according to Brigitte
days it would improve and then, out of
what the next copies will be like?”
In fact, the risks involved with cloning kindness, we euthanized it, because it obvi Boisselier, Clonaid’s scientific director,
mammals are so great that Wilmut, the ously would never be healthy.” Wilmut be somewhere in North America a young
premier cloner, calls it “criminally irre lieves “it is almost a certainty” that cloned woman walked into a Clonaid laboratory
sponsible” for scientists to be experiment human children would be born with similar whose location is kept secret. Then, in a pro-
WHAT IF.
[
HOW TO CLONE A HUMAN
If it works in humans as it has in other mammals, cloning will be
technically possible, but also terribly inefficient and risky.
u“o40 donoTs
According to experts, producing a single viable clone will require
scores of volunteers to donate eggs and carry embryos—most of
which will have major abnormalities and never come to term. The
clones that do survive could suffer more subtle problems that
might show up well after birth. Here’s how it might be done.
AA
a «
SMM
Donor egg
© The nucleus of each egg is
sucked out with a fine needle.
Then the DNA-free eggs and the
donor cells are placed next to
one another and zapped with
electricity, which causes them to
fuse. Some of the rebuilt eggs
divide to form embryos.
know what the risks to the fetus are, but we
don’t do anything about it,” he notes. “If
we’re going to regulate cloning, maybe we
should regulate that too.”
OLGA TOMUSYAK WAS TWO WEEKS SHY OF
her seventh birthday when she fell out of
the window of her family’s apartment. Her
parents could barely speak for a week after
she died. “Life is empty without her,” says
her mother Tanya, a computer program
mer in Sydney, Australia. “Other parents
we have talked to who have lost children
say it will never go away.” Olga’s parents
cremated the child before thinking of the
cloning option. All that remains are their
memories, some strands of hair and three
baby teeth, so they have begun investigat
ing whether the teeth could yield the nuclei
to clone her one day. While it is theoreti
cally possible to extract dna from the
teeth, scientists say it is extremely unlikely.
“You can’t expect the new baby will
be exactly like her. We know that is not
possible,” says Tanya. “We think of the
clone as her twin or at least a baby who will
look like her.” The parents would consider
the new little girl as much Olga’s baby as
Surrogate mothers
5
9
9
9
9
Pregnancies
9
8
s e
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42
»
pursuing this route? “It’s a sign of our
growing despotism over the next genera
tion,” argues University of Chicago bioethicist Leon Kass. Cloning introduces
the possibility of parents’ making choic
es for their children far more fundamentai than whether to give them piano
lessons or straighten their teeth. “It’s not
just that parents will have particular
hopes for these children,” says Kass.
“They will have expectations based on a
life that has already been lived. What a
thing to do—to carry on the life of a per
son who has died.”
The libertarians are ready with their
answers. “I think we’re hypercritical about
people’s reasons for having children,” says
Pence. “If they want to re-create their dead
children, so what?” People have always had
self-serving reasons for having children, he
argues, whether to ensure there’s someone
to care for them in their old age or to relive
their youth vicariously. Cloning is just an
other reproductive tool; the fact that it is
not a perfect tool, in Pence’s view, should
not mean it should be outlawed altogether.
“We know there are millions of girls who
smoke and drink during pregnancy, and we
O©®®®®®®®®®®®©®®®®®
Personto
®®®®®®@®®®@®®@®©®®©® becioned
fertility drugs. ‘
About 400
eggs are
produced Q
U II w JJJ 44 44
cedure that has been done thousands of
times, a doctor inserted a probe, removed 15
eggs from the woman’s ovaries and placed
them in a chemical soup. Two weeks ago two
other Clonaid scientists, according to the
group, practiced the delicate art of removing
the genetic material from each of the
woman’s eggs. Within the next few weeks,
the Raelian scientific team plans to place
another cell next to the enucleated egg.
This second cell, they say, comes from
10-month-old boy who died during
®nrgery. The two cells will be hit with an
electrical charge, according to the scenario,
will fuse, forming a new hybrid cell that
longer has the genes of the young
woman but now has the genes of the dead
child. Once the single cell has developed
into six to eight cells, the next step is to fol
low the existing, standard technology of as
sisted reproduction: gingerly insert the em
bryo into a woman’s womb and hope it
implants. Clonaid scientists expect to have
implanted the first cloned human embryo
in a surrogate mother by next month.
Even if the technology is basic, and
even if it appeals to some infertile cou
ples, should grieving parents really be
q®®®®q®®®@©®®q®®®q®©
TIME, FEBRUARY 26.2001
Cells are
taken from
the cloning
candidate
Some babies
do not survive
‘
TIME Graphic Ey Jos lertola
g
W WJ
Baby clone
Because embryos often fail
.implant,
. . each
. surrogate
r mother
.. gets
several at once. Even so, up to 50
surrogates could be needed (not
necessarily ali at once) to ensure nine or 10
pregnancies. Of these, most will terminate
early by miscarriage or by abortion when
abnormalities are found. The single viable
baby may be normal. Or maybe not.
their own. “Anything that grows from her
will remind us of her,” says Tanya.
Though she and her husband are young
enough to have other children, for now,
this is the child they want.
Once parents begin to entertain the
option of holding on to some part of a child,
why would the reverse not be true? “Bill”
is a guidance counselor in Southern Cali
fornia, a fortysomething expectant father
who has been learning everything he can
about the process of cloning. But it is not a
lost child he is looking to replicate. He is in
terested in cloning his mother, who is dy
ing of pancreatic cancer. He has talked to
her husband, his siblings, everyone except
her doctor—and her, for fear that it will
make her think they have given up hope on
her. He confides, “We might end up mak
ing a decision without telling her.”
His goal is to extract a tissue specimen
from his mother while it’s still possible and
store it, to await the day when—if—cloning
becomes technically safe and socially ac
ceptable. Two weeks ago, as his mother’s READY TO GO: Zavos, above, and Antinori,
right, claim to have numerous infertile
health weakened, the family began consid clients waiting to buy their cloning services
ering bringing up the subject with her be
cause they need her cooperation to take Well, this would be an extension of that.” settling debate about designer babies, fu
A world in which cloning is common eled already by the commercial sperm
the sample. Meanwhile, Bill has already
contacted two labs about tissue storage, place confounds every human relation banks that promise genius dna to prospec
one as a backup. “I’m in touch with a cou ship, often in ways most potential clients tive parents. Sperm banks give you a shot
ple of different people who might be do haven’t considered. For instance, if a at passing along certain traits; cloning all
ing that,” he says, adding that both are in woman gives birth to her own clone, is the but assures it.
Whatever the moral quandaries, the
the U.S. “It seems like a little bit of an un child her daughter or her sister? Or, says
derground movement, you know—people bioethicist Kass, “let’s say the child grows one-stop-shopping aspect of cloning is a
are a little reluctant that if they announce up to be the spitting image of its mother. plus to many gay couples. Lesbians would
it, they might be targeted, like the abor What impact will that have on the relation have the chance to give birth with no ^e
ship between the father and his child if that involved at all; one woman could con
tion clinics.”
tribute the ovum, the
If Bill’s hopes
other the DNA. Chris
were to materialize
IF.. cloning becomes popular and supplants natural
tine DeShazo and her
and the clone were
partner
Michele
bom, who would that
selection? Will that skew the course of human evolution?
Thomas of Miramar,
person be? “It would
n’t be my mother but a person who would child looks exactly like the woman he fell in Florida, have been in touch with Zavos
be very similar to my mother, with certain love with?” Or, he continues, “let’s say the about producing a baby this way. Because
traits. She has a lot of great traits: compas parents have a cloned son and then get di they have already been ostracized as
sion and intelligence and looks,” he says. vorced. How will the mother feel about homosexuals, they aren’t worried about
And yet, perhaps inevitably, he talks as seeing a copy of the person she hates most the added social sting that would come
though this is a way to rewind and replay in the world every day? Everyone thinks with cloning. “Now [people] would say,
the life of someone he loves. “She really about cloning from the point of view of the ‘Not only are you a lesbian, you are a
didn’t have the opportunities we had in the parents. No one looks at it from the point of cloning lesbian,”’ says Thomas. As for po
tential health problems, “1 would love our
baby-boom generation, because her par view of the clone.”
If infertile couples avoid the complica baby if its hand was attached to its head,”
ents experienced the Depression and the
war,” he says. “So the feeling is that maybe tions of choosing which of them to clone she says. DeShazo adds, “If it came out
we could give her some opportunities and instead look elsewhere for their dna, green, I would love it. Our little alien ..
Just as women have long been able to
that she didn’t have. It would be sort of what sorts of values govern that choice?
like we’re taking care of her now. You Do they pick an uncle because he’s musi have children without a male sexual part
know how when your parents age and every cal, a willing neighbor because she’s bril ner, through artificial insemination, men
thing shifts, you start taking care of them? liant? Through that door lies the whole un- could potentially become dads alone: re
WHAT
[
44
TIME, FEBRUARY 26, 2001
4
'
’
place the dna from a donor egg with one’s
own and then recruit a surrogate mother
to carry the child. Some gay-rights advo
cates even argue that should sexual prefer
ence prove to have a biological basis, and
should genetic screening lead to terminadons of gay embryos, homosexuals would
have an obligation to produce gay children
through cloning.
^All sorts of people might be attracted to
the idea of the ultimate experiment in sin
gle parenthood. Jack Barker, a marketing
specialist for a corporate-relocation com
pany in Minneapolis, is 36 and happily un
married. “I’ve come to the conclusion that
I don’t need a partner but can still have a
child,” he says. “And a clone would be the
perfect child to have because I know ex
actly what I’m getting.” He understands
that the child would not be a copy of him.
“We’d be genetically identical,” says Bark
er. “But he wouldn’t be raised by my par
ents—he’d be raised by me.” Cloning, he
hopes, might even let him improve on the
original: “I have bad allergies and asthma.
It would be nice to have a kid like you but
with those improvements.”
Cloning advocates view the possibilities as a kind of liberation from travails as
sumed to be part of life: the danger that
your baby will be bom with a disease that
will kill him or her, the risk that you may
one day need a re
placement organ and
die waiting for it, the
helplessness you feel
when
confronted
with unbearable loss.
The challenge facing
cloning pioneers is
to make the case con
vincingly that the
technology itself is
not immoral, how
ever immorally it
could be used.
One obvious way
is to point to the
broader
benefits.
Thus cloning propo
nents like to attach
themselves to the
whole arena of stem
cell research, the
brave new world of
inquiry into how the
wonderfully pliable
cells of seven-dayold embryos behave.
Embryonic stem cells eventually turn into
every kind of tissue, including brain, mus
cle, nerve and blood. If scientists could
harness their powers, these cells could
serve as the body"s self-repair kit, provid
ing cures for Parkinson’s, diabetes, Alz
heimer’s and paralysis. Actors Christopher
Reeve, paralyzed by a fall from a horse, and
Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkin
son’s, are among those who have pushed
Congress to overturn the U.S. govern
ment’s restrictions on federal funding of
embryonic-stem-cell research.
But if the cloners want to climb on this
train in hopes of riding it to a public relations
victory, tire mainstream scientists want to
push them off. Because researchers see the
potential benefits of understanding embry
onic stem cells as immense, they are intent
on avoiding controversy over their use. Be
ing linked with the human-cloning activists
is their nightmare. Says Michael West, pres
ident of Massachusetts-based Advanced
Cell Technology, a biotech company that
uses cloning technology to develop human
medicines: “We’re really concerned that if
someone goes off and clones a Raelian,
there could be an overreaction to this crazi
ness—especially by regulators and Con
gress. We’re desperately concerned—and
it’s a bad metaphor—about throwing the
baby out with the bath water."
TIME, FEBRUARY 26, 2001
TIME/CNN POLL
■ Is it a good or bad idea to clone
animals such as sheep?
Bad idea ... .
Good idea
■ Is it a good idea to clone human
beings?
Good idea
Bad idea
■ What is the main reason you are
against cloning humans?0
Religious beliefs
Interferes with human
distinctiveness/individuality
Used for questionable purposes
like breeding a superior race
ESI
The technology is dangerous
•Asked of the 914 people who think human cloning is a bad idea
■ Is it against God’s will to clone
humans?
Yes
E3
S3
No
■ Do the following justify creating a
human clone?
To produce clones
whose vital organs can
be used to save others
YES
__
To save the life of the
person being cloned
To help infertile
couples have children.
__
NO
__
____
EJ3033
____
To allow parents to
have a twin child later
____ . —.
£133 SS3
To allow parents to create
clone of child they lost !|
To allow gay couples
to have children
To create genetically
superior human beings
EZEI '§33
____
■ Would a clone of a dead person
have his or her same personality?
Yes
E33
No..........
F7ES
■ If you had a chance, would you
clone yourself?
Yes
BS3
No
. EEES
When will it be possible to create a
human clone? In next:
10 years
20 years
50+ years
S3 Never
SES
IE3
From a telephone poll of 1.015 aduit Amencono taken fet ’IME/CNN
c::r,;b .’o-..Jir
• ’■
‘Not suras' omitted.
Scientists at ACT are leery of revealing
too much about their animal-cloning re
search, much less their work on human
embryos. “What we’re doing is the first
step toward cloning a human being, but
we’re not cloning a human being,” says
West. “The miracle of cloning isn’t what
people think it is. Cloning allows you to
make a genetically identical copy of an an
imal, yes, but in the eyes of a biologist, the
real miracle is seeing a skin cell being put
back into the egg cell, taking it back in time
to when it was an undifferentiated cell,
which then can turn into any cell in the
body.” Which means that new, pristine
tissue could be grown in labs to replace
damaged or diseased parts of the body.
And since these replacement parts would
be produced using skin or other cells from
the suffering patient, there would be no
risk of rejection. “That means you’ve
solved tire age-old problem of transplanta
tion,” says West. “It’s huge.”
So far, the main source of embryonic
stem cells is “leftover” embryos from ivf
clinics; cloning embryos could provide an
almost unlimited source. Progress could
come even faster if Congress were to lift
the restrictions on federal funding—
which might have the added safety bene
fit of the federal oversight that comes
with federal dollars. “We’re concerned
about George W. Bush’s position and
whether he’ll let existing guidelines stay
in place,” says West. “People are begging
Two weeks ago 160 bishops and five much saving a life as creating a new being
to work on those cells.”
Cardinals met for three days behind closed by manipulation of the raw materials, DjjA,
That impulse is enough to put the Ro doors in Irving, Texas, to wrestle with the the blueprint for life. You’re simply u^^j
man Catholic Church in full revolt; the issues biotechnology presents. But the it in a more creative manner.”
Vatican has long condemned any re cloning debate does not break cleanly even
A field where emotions run so strong
search that involves creating and exper along religious lines. “Rebecca,” a thirty and hope runs so deep is fertile ground for
imenting with human embryos, the vast something California resident, spent sev profiteers and charlatans. In her effort to
majority of which inevitably perish. The en years trying to conceive a child with clone her daughter Olga, Tanya Tochurch believes that the soul is created at her husband. Having “been to hell and musyak contacted an Australian firm,
the moment of con
Southern Cross Ge
ception, and that the
netics, which was
WHAT IF... a clone develops unforeseen abnormalities?
embryo is worthy of
founded three years
protection. It report
ago by entrepreneur
Could he sue his parents-orthe cloners-for wrongful birth?
edly took 104 at
Graeme Sloan to pre
tempts before the first ivf baby, Louise back” with ivf treatment, Rebecca is serve dna for future cloning. In an e-mail,
Brown, was born; cloning Dolly took now as thoroughly committed to cloning Sloan told the parents that Olga’s teeth
more than twice that. Imagine, say oppo as she is to Christianity. “It’s in the Bible— would provide more than enough dna—
nents, how many embryos would be lost be fruitful and multiply,” she says. “Peo even though that possibility is remote.
in the effort to clone a human. This loss is ple say, ‘You’re playing God.’ But we’re “All dna samples are placed in computermass murder, says David Byers, director not. We’re using the raw materials the controlled liquid-nitrogen tanks for long
of the National Conference of Catholic good Lord gave us. What does the doctor do term storage,” he wrote. “The cost of do
Bishops’ commission on science and hu when the heart has stopped? They have to ing a dna fingerprint and genetic profile
man values. “Each of the embryos is a do direct massage of the heart. You could and placing the sample into storage would
human being simply by dint of its genet say the doctor is playing God. But we save be $2,500. Please note that all of our fees
ic makeup.”
a life. With human cloning, we’re not so are in U.S. dollars.”
46
TIME, FEBRUARY 26,2001
When contacted by Time, Sloan ad
mitted, “I don’t have a scientific back
ground. I’m pure business. I’d be lying if
I said I wasn’t here to make a dollar out of
it. But I would like to see organ cloning
become a reality.” He was inspired to
launch the business, he says, after a
young cousin died of leukemia. “There
are megadollars involved, and everyone
is racing to be the first,” he says. As for his
own slice of the pie, Sloan says he just
MJ his firm to a French company, which
IK refuses to name, and that he is heading
for Hawaii. The Southern Cross factory
^^ress turns out to be his mother’s
house, and his “office” phone is answered
by a man claiming to be his brother
David—although his mother says she has
no son by that name.
The more such peddlers proliferate, the more politicians
will be tempted to in
voke prohibitions. Four
U.S. states—California,
Louisiana, Michigan and
Rhode Island—have al
ready banned human
cloning, and soon Texas
may become the fifth.
Republican state sena
tor Jane Nelson has in
troduced a bill in Austin
that would impose a fine
of as much as $1 million
for researchers who use cloning techndogy to initiate pregnancy in humans.
proposed Texas law would permit
embryonic-stem-cell research, but bills
proposed in other states were so broadly written that they could have stopped
those activities too.
“The short answer to the cloning
question,” says ethicist Caplan, “is that
anybody who clones somebody today
should be arrested. It would be barbaric
human experimentation. It would be
killing fetuses and embryos for no pur
pose, none, except for curiosity. But if
you can’t agree that that’s wrong to do,
and if the media can’t agree to condemn
rather than gawk, that’s a condemnation
of US all.”
—Reported by
David Bjerklie and Andrea Dorlman/New York,
Wendy Coie/Chicago, Jeanne DeQuine/Miami,
Helen Gibson/London, David S. Jackson/Los An
geles, Leora Moldofsky/Sydney, Timothy Roche/
Atlanta, Chris Taylor/San Francisco, Cathy Booth
Thomas/Dallas and Dick Thompson/Washington,
with other bureaus
COPYDOG, COPYCAT
’ve never met a human worth cloning," says
cloning expert Mark Westhusin from the cramped
confines of his lab at Texas A&M University. “It’s a
stupid endeavor." That's an interesting choice of
adjective, comingfrom a man who has spent millions
of dollars tryingto clone a 13-year-old dog named
Missy. So far, he and his team have not succeeded, though they have cloned two calves
and expect to clone a cat soon. They just might succeed in cloning Missy later this
year—or perhaps not for another five years. It seems the reproductive system of man’s
best friend is one of the mysteries of modem science.
Westhusin's experience with cloning animals leaves him vexed by all this talk of
human cloning. In three years of work on the Missyplicity project, using hundreds upon
hundreds of canine eggs, the A&M team has produced only a dozen or so embryos
carrying Missy's DNA. None have survived the transfer to a surrogate mom. The
wastage of eggs and the many spontaneously aborted fetuses may be acceptable
when you're dealing with cats or bulls, he argues, but not with humans. “Cloning is
incredibly inefficient, and also dangerous," he says.
Even so, dog cloning is a commercial opportunity, with a nice research payoff. Ever
since Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1997, Westhusin’s phone at A&M’s College of
Veterinary Medicine has been ringing with
people calling in hopes of duplicating their
cats and dogs, cattle and horses. “A lot of
people want to clone pets. A lot of people.
Especially if the price is right," says
Westhusin, raising his eyebrows. “A lot" Cost
is no obstacle for Missy’s mysterious West
Coast billionaire owner; he's plopped down
$3.7 million so far to fund A&M’s research.
Contrary to some media reports, Missy
is not deceased. The owner, who wishes to
remain anonymous to protect his privacy,
wants a twin to carry on Missy's fine
qualities after she does die. The prototype
is, by all accounts, athletic, good-natured
and supersmart. She’s not a show dog, as
SECOND CHANCE, a bull cloned from
one might expect, but a mongrel—collie
another called Chance, nuzzles its owner
and husky—rescued from a pound.
Missy's master does not expect an exact copy of her. He knows her clone may not have
her temperament. In a statement of purpose, Missy's owners and the A&M team say
they are “both looking forward to studying the ways that her clones differ from Missy."
Besides cloning a great mutt, in other words, the project may contribute insight
into the old question of nature vs. nurture. It could also lead to the cloning of special
rescue dogs and endangered canids like the Ethiopian wolf and African wild dog. At the
A&M labs, a picture of Missy’s cheerful mug hangs over the micromanipulator, where
technicians inject her genetic code into eggs from donors whose own DNA is of no
particular interest to anyone. The biggest problem is getting eggs. Because dogs
randomly go into heat only every six months to a year, there's a lot of waiting for one
of the lab’s 50 dogs to enter estrus. Last week a bitch named Betsy caused a flurry
of activity when she did just that, but no one knows whether she will actually
ovulate—or if another female will go into heat and thus be ready as a surrogate.
Despite the lack of a canine breakthrough, dog owners are the biggest clients of
Genetic Savings & Clone, a commercial spin-off of Missyplicity that offers to freeze
pet DNA for future cloning for $895 plus $100 annual storage. A white canister—
which looks like an Artoo Detoo unit—is already full of hundreds of trays containing
genetic material from cats and dogs, with a few prized horses and cattle nestled in
the whirling eddies of subzero liquid nitrogen.
The fate of the dog samples will depend on Westhusin's work. He knows that
even if he gets a dog viably pregnant, the offspring, should they survive, will face
the problems shown at birth by other cionec' animals: abnormalities like immature
lungsand cardiovascular and weigh', problems. “Why would you ever want to clone
humans," Westhusin asks, “whene re not even close to getting it worked out in
animals yet?"
—By Cathy Booth Thomas/Coilege Stau. a
I
TIME, FEBRUARY 26.2001
M p - IS ■
INFORMATION & GUIDELINES
HEARINGS ON THE ACHR SPECIAL REPORT
ON GENOMICS AND HEALTH
The ACHR Special Report
The Advisor.- Committee on Health Research (ACHR), the highest level scientific
advisory body in the World Health Organization, reporting directly to the Director General,
has been asked by her to prepare a Special Report on Genomics & Health. The Report will
focus primarily on the scientific issues and the potential of genomics in improving health in
developing countries. It is intended primarily as a road map (description & analysis) and
vision (future scenarios) document on the scientific potential of the genomics revolution. The
Report will also address the ethical, legal and social implications of genomics, especially in
relation to developing countries. The Report will not attempt to define specific WHO policies
or guidelines on the issues in question, rather it is a broad document outlining possible
processes to reach the objective of equitable access to the benefits produced by the genomics
revolution. The Report will target a very broad audience ranging from the Director General.
the staff of WHO. the ministries of health in the member countries, inter-governmental
organisations and the world community at large, and will thus be written in a manner which
balances scientific rigor and readability. The Report will also support WHO’s role as an
advocate of international health, in ensuring that underprivileged, marginalised and
disadvantaged peoples have access to scientific benefits resulting from the genomics
revolution. The Report would be a success if it helps developing countries to share in the
scientific benefits which genomics brings, and if it helps WHO's advocacy role for improving
the health of the disadvantaged and underprivileged.
Tire process for preparing the Report consists of three key components : (1)
Assistance from a Team of Consultants (Professor Sir David Weatherall-Lead Writer,
Professor Dan Brock. Professor Heng-Leng Chee) to help the ACHR in preparation of the
Report: (2) Building on previous work within and outside of WHO, e.g. the Daar-Mattei
Report in WHO (1998-99). the ongoing WHO ELSI Initiative (see box below), reports from
other organisations (e.g. UNESCO, the Nuffield Trust, National Bioethics Advisory
Committee, etc): (3) Transparent, open and wide-ranging consultations which provide an
opportunity for all interested parties to voice their opinions and concerns. This will consist of
regional consultations and hearings. The participants of the regional consultation will
consist of a diverse range of interested and informed individuals from WHO member states
(especially from developing countries) including researchers/scientists, experts in ethical
issues, policy makers, civil society, consumers and community leaders. They will be asked to
emphasize regional (rather than gencral/global) perspectives on the key issues. In contrast, the
participants of the hearings represent a spectrum of major international players who have
contributed to the discourse and debate in this area. The participants for the hearings will
come from public & private genome initiatives, industry/pharma, academia, international
organisations and community/civil society. Both sets of participants will be asked to consider
a common group of issues expressed as a list of questions for consideration.
Objective of Hearings
The objective of the hearings is to provide the ACHR with inputs on issues which
will be addressed in the Report. There is thus a clear need to focus the hearings on issues
which are of concern to the ACHR as they work to prepare the Report with the assistance of
the Consultant Team. It is highly desirable that presenters and participants are clear on what
the Committee hopes to obtain and that there is a common framework for these activities, that
they address a common set of issues.
ELSI Initiative
The ELSI (ethical, legal and social implications) initiative within the Non-Communicable
Diseases cluster of WHO was initiated in July. 2000. The aim of the initiative is to develop an
ELSI Agenda for WHO and it is focused on developing an ELSI research program which
specifically addresses the genomics-related concerns of developing countries, developing
guidelines for genetic data hanks and developing internal WHO expertise in these areas. The
relationship between the ELSI initiative and the ACHR Special Report is clearly
complementary and synergistic. The ELSI initiative is focused on developing specific
'products' in the form of projects and guidelines and will help WHO pursue a specific
agenda strategy in the future. The ACHR Special Report, as ‘one-off', primarily
informational document of high visibility will help promote the ELSI initiative in the longer
term: i.e. the ELSI initiative will build on the impact of the ACHR Special Report. The ACHR
Report will also include the ELSI initiative as an example of a specific process which WHO
has put in place to develop one area related to the genomics revolution.
Procedures
1.
2.
3.
4.
All participants for the hearings will be invited to prepare a brief statement/position paper
before the hearing for circulation to other participants (to be sent to the Secretariat by
June 1. 2001). Please refer to the series ofquestions & issues outlined below.
Selected participants will then be allocated 15-20 minutes to present the main points of
their organisation's position Due to time contraints, it will not be possible for all
participants to present their position papers-we seek your understanding on this
matter. Sec ANNEX 1 for outline of programme and ANNEX 2 for provisional
participants list.
ACHR members and the Consultant Team will then have the opportunity to ask questions
to the presenter (time allowing, questions from the floor may be allowed).
Time w ill be allocated for General Round Table discussion at the end of the proceedings
to be moderated by Professor Sir David Wcatherall.
Questions and Issues for Consideration
The issues which are of special concern to the Committee have been framed in the form
of a series of general questions. Participants/presenters at the hearings are free to select from
these questions, depending on their own organisational interests/experiences and personal
perspectives. In addition they arc free to express additional opinions they may have regarding
other issues in genomics & health. The general questions arc as follows :
♦
What are the potential benefits of genomics for developing countries ?. Which of the
technologies arising from genomics are most relevant, useful, beneficial and sustainable?
♦
What will be needed to ensure that developing countries will truly benefit from these
advances in an equitable and sustainable manner ?, i.e. What can we all do to make it
happen, what are the enabling processes ?, What action is needed at both the national and
international level ?. 'What will he required from the various parties (e.g. scientists, policy
makers, health workers, community, consumers, etc) in order to fulfil this unprecedented
scientific potential.
♦
What role is appropriate for WHO at the national and international level to facilitate these
enabling processes ?
♦
How can we ensure that the perspectives of developing countries are taken into
consideration in the international debate on these issues ?
♦
What are the ethical, legal, and social implications that developing countries should be
aware of and get ready for. and how do they differ from those in developed countries ?.
What steps can countries take to ensure that the rights and benefits of the populations
contributing to genomic research are respected ?. Are there issues which are unique to a
particular cultural/ethnic/religious setting ?
♦
What are the risks associated with genomics-based technologies and how can they be
assessed ?. Are developing countries as a whole (or sub groups within them) morevulnerable to such risks ?. Are some of the risks specific to developing countries and can
they be addressed at reasonable cost ?. How would developing countries go about doing
so and what conditions arc needed to make it possible for them to do so ?. Is there a role
for the ‘precautionary principle' with regard to all of the above ?.
♦
What are the gender implications and how can they be addressed ?
♦
What s the reality behind the hype of many of these new advances ? Are we creating false
expectations ?
•
Should developing countries strive to participate in cutting-edge research in genomics ?.
If yes. how and in which areas ?
[Important note : although a broad spectrum of issues related to genomics should be
considered, it has been decided that the issue of GM (genetically modified) crops should not
be a major item for discussion as this is a highly controversial area in relation to biosafetv and'
environmental impacts and has been widely covered by many other meetings and agencies
such as FAO |
ANNEX 1
Programme Outline (Provisional)
Venue : Salle B, WHO Headquarters. Geneva, Switzerland
Chair : Professor Mahmoud Fathalla, Chair of the ACHR.
Moderator : Professor Sir David Weatherall, FRS.
0830-0900
Registration
Opening by Dr. David Nabarro, Executive Director, DGO/WHO
Welcoming remarks by Chair, ACHR, Prof. Mahmoud Fathalla
'
0900-1030
Presentations (3)
1030-1015
Coffee break
1015-1245
Presentations (continued) (5)
1245-1400
Lunch Break
1400-1600
Presentations (4)
1600-1615
Coffee break
1615-1730
Round Table discussion (Moderator: Professor Sir David Weatherall)
1730-1745
Concluding Remarks - Professor Sir John Sulston
1745
Closing remarks by Chair, Professor Mahmoud Fathalla
(A more detailed programme will be provided nearer the date of the meeting when the
participants list is finalised)
ANNEX 2
PROVISIONAL LIST OF INVITED PARTICIPANTS
HEARING ON ACHR SPECIAL REPORT- JUNE 27, 2001
Name
Organisation
Professor Sir David Weatherall
Professor Dan Brock
Assoc. Prof. Heng-Leng Chee
Dr Francis Collins
Prof Abdallah Daar
Dr Michael Dexter
Dr Sigurdur Gudmundsson
Proflan Kennedy
Dr Georges Kutukdjian
Oxford University, UK
Brown University, USA
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
Director. NHGRJ, USA
University of Toronto
Director, Wellcome Trust, UK
Surgeon General of Iceland, Iceland
Chair, Nuffield Council on Bioethics, UK
Director, Division of Human Sciences.
UNESCO. Paris ___
Mine Noelle Lenoir (or nominee)
European Coinniission/European Group on
Ethics (EGE)
Prof J-F Mattei
Prof Alex Mauron
Dr Qasem Chowdhury
Member of Parliament, France
University of Geneva
Coordinator. People’s Health Assembly,
Dhaka, Bangladesh
National Bioethics Advisory Committee, USA
Council of Europe
Health & Biotechnology Coordinator, OECD,
Paris
Former Director, Sanger Centre, UK
Vice President, Celera Genomics
Coordinator, Citizen's Health Initiative,
Penang, Malaysia
Chair, ELSI Planning Group
Smith Kline & Beecham Pharmaceuticals
Chairman, Glaxo Wellcome
President, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer
Center
University College. London
President. World Medical Association
President, IFPMA
Co-Chair. Working Group 11, Commission on
Macroeceonomics & Health
President, Institute of Medicine
President, National Science Foiundation
President. National Academy of Sciences,
USA
Dr Alex Capron
Ms Sandrinc Sabatier
Dr Elettra Ronchi
Professor Sir John Sulston
Dr Stephen Hoffman
Dr Chan Chee Koon
Dr Robert Cook-Deegan
Dr George Poste
Sir Richard Sykes
Dr Harold Varmus
Dr Bernadette Model!
Dr Delon Human
Dr Harvey Bale
Dr Richard Feachem
Dr Ken Shine
Dr Rita Colwell
Dr Bruce Alberts
Other participants :
I.
2.
3.
Members of the Advisor)' Committee on Health Research (ACHR)
WHO staff members
Observers from other organisations and the media
SCIENCE ■ GENES AND CASTE
WHITE INDIA
ing have been invented. Accepted wis have returned from the grave and theo
dom on the question of an Aryan inva ries are being tossed about on all sides.
sion of India has veered from history How the European genes got here at all
NDIA, 1901. THE GREATEST book standard to disbelief after archae is among the most interesting points of
ever exercise in human nose ologists found evidence that the Aryans the debate. The paper infers that caste
counting had just been under did not ride into India, subjugate the na Hindus are descendants of Aryans to
taken. Her Majesty’s Indian tive population and set themselves up at explain the genetic data. The counter is
subjects were being counted, sifted the top of the caste heirarchy.
quick. “Dravidian and Aryan are lin
and sorted. The Census of India was on.
And now, this happens.
guistic, not racial terms. There is no
Census commissioner Sir Herbert Risley
Eighteen scientists from India and specific Aryan race." says social anthronoticed that upper caste Hindus were fair the US led by human geneticist Michael pologist V.N. Shrivastava. But the Aryan
and had sharp noses. Since these are Bamshad of the University of Utah com- invasion theory was based, among other
among the distinguishing features of the pared genetic signatures of modern-day things, on linguistic grounds: the simi
“white
man”—Cauca Indians of various castes with those of larity between Sanskrit and European
soids—he figured there today's Europeans and east Asians. Us languages was taken as evidence of peo
may be a relationship ing genetic markers, they traced back ple from Europe having migrated to In
between the two. To the paternal lineage of the Indians dia. The Rig Veda is the oldest known
make this scientific, through the Y-chromosome. Maternal Sanskrit text. It was dated to around
he took a few mea lineage was traced through mitochon 2000 B.c. which is about when the Indus
surements.
The drial dna (see box). The results of the Valley Civilisation is supposed io have
methodology: mea study, published in an American journal ended. “But it was an oral genre—how
sure nose length, di called Genome Research, conclude that can it be dated?" asks Nayanjot Lahiri,
vide by nose breadth. the upper castes are genetically closer to reader in history at Delhi University.
and call the number ar Europeans and the lower castes to Moreover there was no mention in the
rived at the “nasal Asians. Also, that we have a common Rig Veda of migration or any other
The conclu maternal ancestry buF^faj
sion, of course, different paternal stock. I
that upper
“This paper is clearly / j
are a landmark.” says*
Parlha Pratim Majum- poofoe matrhpc
dar.
head
Englishmen
head of anthropglanthropol- VdblKb HldlbllBb
ogy and human genetf” '
at the Indian Statistical
Institute in Kolkata. “It
PARTHAfflWTOAkj
uses a large battery of
Anthropologist
genomic markers to
show that the observed trend among homeland, which would have been nat
the different castes matches expectations ural if a great journey had been under
and (about caste differences)." Dr Peter taken or a war won. The people of Israel
since. Forster of The McDonald Institute for still talk with familiarity of their journey
Hitler Archaeological Research. University of to the “Promised Land” 2.500 years ago.
made in- Cambridge, says that “the conclusion
The Aryan invasion theory takes its
famous the that higher castes have greater genetic hardest blow from the skeletons found
^theory
of relatedness to west Eurasians is well at Indus sites. They show the same
Aryan supre- founded on the basis of their data”.
racial mix as any population of South
rihacy. Com
So then: are Brahmins and Kshat Asia. There was no evidence of the car
puters
and riyas really Europeans inside? They may nage that would have accompanied an
■genetic engineer- be. but the final verdict on that is far from invasion. “Of the skeletons found, only
out yet. The paper has unleashed the three showed any signs of injury.” says
academic equivalent of fistfights among S.P. Gupte of the Archaeological Society
historians and anthropologists across of India. 'And even those had wounds
the country. Controversies once buried that had healed—the people did not die
■ by Supriya BEZBARUAH with
Samrat CHOUDHURY
I
"The observed
trend among
expectations.”
The Central Bureau of
Investigation is
preparing to seek the
extradition of M.V. Raja,
an NR1 businessman
who cheated Indian
Bank of Rs 468 crore
November 19,1995 are those of crim
inal conspiracy (to defraud the Indian
Bank), abetment of corruption and
breach of trust. Between them, his
companies (see chart ) in India si
phoned off about Rs 333 crore, and
the balance through its front compa
nies in Singapore—Mountamount.
Nagova Exim Pvt Ltd and Sadeco Sari
Pvt Ltd.
Mountamount was the Singapore
front company that MVR Exports—
and Raja—used to purchase raw
cashewnuts, primarily from Nigeria.
for "export” to India. To do so. how
ever. they needed to be financed
against invoices by the bank. The CBl
has repeatedly pointed out in its
chargesheets that there was largescale overinvoicing by the banks.
Besides, the financing came only too
easy: the Mountamount loan requests
were processed rapidly and recom
mended by M.B.N. Rao. the bank's
then deputy general manager at its
Singapore branch, and sanctioned by
its then chairman M. Gopalakrishnan. who was later arrested in
the Rs 1.336-crore bank scam. The
loans never met the rbi's strict guide
lines. Often, loan limits were raised
with impunity. As it turns out. almost
30 per cent of the money sanctioned
to MVR has now been written off as
non-performing asset.
The cbi’s records also point out
that Raja had five front firms in
Rotterdam, the port which he used
extensively to ship his cashew to
SCAM COUNT
MVR Industries Ltd
Enkay Foods Pvt Ltd
Case filed: 19 Nov, 1996
Amount: Rs 84.26 crore
Case filed: 3 May, 1997
Amount: Rs 29.89 crore
Maxwell Exim Ltd
Well Stores
Case filed: 19 Nov, 1996
Amount: Rs 147.65 crore
Case filed: 12 Dec, 1996
Amount: Rs 6.48 crore
Arun Builders Ltd
Sanjeevi Packaging
Case filed: 24 Dec, 1996
Amount: Rs 2 crore
Case filed: 12 Dec, 1996
Amount: Rs 6.49 crore
Ramraj Trading
Indica Builders
Case filed: 15 Feb, 1996
Amount: Rs 6.49 crore
Case filed: 31 Dec, 1996
Amount: Rs 6.49 crore
Jaimatha Farms
Abhinav Exim
Case filed: 3 May, 1997
Amount: Rs 2.81 crore
Case filed: 31 Dec, 1996
Amount: Rs 6.49 crore
Anderson Industries
Satyam Food Ltd
Case filed: 3 May, 1997
Amount: Rs 2.81 crore
Case tiled: 3 May, 1997
Amount: Rs 31.76 crore
* Three more Singapore firms and another Indian company are under investigation
destinations in Europe. Africa. North
America.
The
firms—Hamilton
Ventures Pvt Ltd, Nutworld Trading,
Globenut, Richardson & Rogers Ltd.
and Dutch Flag Ltd—received
payments from Mountamount, but
they were, say investigators, just a way
of laundering the wealth. The cbi has
dispatched letter rogatories to the
Dutch Government to get details on
the firms. “It’s important for us to
know the money trail at the Dutch
end,” says cbi spokesman. S.M. Khan.
The request is still pending.
Raja, a 6-ft-tall graduate from
Pachaiyappa College. Chennai, started
the MVR Group of companies after
winding up his father's textile business
in 1962. His business involved im
porting raw cashew, processing it in
India and exporting the finished stuff.
His big break came in 1985. when he
managed to get a substantial Ioan from
the Indian Bank. Few saw the irony at
the time: only the previous year Raja
had defaulted on car loans taken from
the same bank.
Y sending Mountamount's
shipping documents (invoice.
packing list, bill of lading)
through
Indian
Bank,
Singapore, to the Indian Bank
accounts of MVR group companies in
India, and making payments on a
collection
basis—bypassing
the
established, and rbi stipulated, letter of
credit route, thanks largely to the col
lusion of the bank brass—he continued
to mint money. Later, even when no
shipments were due. shipping
documents were sent for collection of
money. These payments were sanc
tioned by Gopalakrishnan. The money
collected in Singapore was then
funnelled to the firms in Rotterdam.
Says Khan: “The arrest is a major
gain for us. Raja is a major player in the
Indian Bank case involving the biggest
bank scam in the country.” Raja’s
arrest has come at an opportune
moment for the cbi. Recently the
Madras High Court ordered the setting
up of a special court to deal with the
Indian Bank scam. With Raja in de
tention. Indian authorities will renew
their request to Singapore to make
available the details of his bank ac
counts. The cbi. on its part, will have to
establish that Raja was indeed the pro
tagonist who planned each move of his
various front firms in which "sleeping
directors" were appointed.
It certainly appears that Raja's
plans of retiring in Paris may have
been pushed back for quite a while.
B
—with Stephen David In Bangalore
Europe
THE LONG JOURNEY TO INDIA
Controversy erupts over a study
that says upper caste Indians
are of European descent
Persia
Arabia
INDJ
1
of those wounds." ;
Yet there is the evidence. “Their con
clusions are based on large sample sizes
and on three independently inherited
types of genetic loci—paternally in
herited Y-chromosomes. maternally in
herited mtDNA. and biparentally
inherited Alu insertions," says Forster.
Translation: the research team did their
homework. Which means they are prob
ably right about the European genes be
ing there. “Our results clearly show that
there are differences between upper and
lower castes, and the upper castes are
closer to Europeans." says B. Bhaskara
Rao, an Andhra University anthropolo
gist and one of the authors of the paper.
And the fact that Sanskrit is close to
European languages holds.
So, the plot thickens. If there was no
Aryan invasion like the archaeologists
say. and our upper castes are geneti
cally. closer to Europeans like the
anthropologists say. what could possi
bly have happened?
In their paper. Bamshad and col
leagues conclude that it was a migration,
mainly of males, that brought the west
Eurasians here, not invasion. The white
men didn't come in plundering and pil
laging. They just drifted in and, it must
follow, became sufficiently popular to
begin cohabiting with the local women
here. That there was migration to India is
not disputed. “India was never an ethnic
vacuum." says Shrivastava. “Palaeo
lithic hunters arrived in the Old Stone
Age, there was a stream of migrants—
onfYI RP
Fair |nvailers: The
uUlKJDU j Indo-Aryan Migrants
They arrived with horses and
chariots from Europe. They spoke
Sanskrit. Their culture shaped India.
VASUDEVA KUTUMBAXAM:
Brahmins and Kshatriyas may
• be of the caucasoid family
SCIENCE
types, from the mongoloids of North
east India to the tall. fair, sharpfeatured people who are at the centre of
the current controversy. “There's no
question of the genetic diversity of the
Indian population", says sociologist
Andre Beteille, “but it is quite another
thing to be divided into races."
Geneticists contest that. “There
are discernible genomic signatures
that are much more prevalent in
VERY answer leads to more groups such as Caucasoids and mon
questions. The Manu Sinriti goloids. These ancient signatures
talks of caste as based on profes characterise these groups in the
sion. Those who followed a par genomic sense and continue to be
ticular vocation were classified* as retained in spite of thousands of years
belonging to the corresponding caste. of evolution,” says Majumdar. So if
Bamshad holds that "caste may have someone has a caucasoid ancestor,
been based on profession, but a parti the gene experts can find out.
That's for individuals. But a few
cular profession was predominantly
onerace”. Of course, race itself is notso Brahmins having caucasoid ancestors
easily defined when one is speaking of would hardly mean all of them do.
entire continents. Asian, African and Which is one more argument against
European are geographical terms that the study. All the blood samples for the
do not indicate homogeneous popula different castes were from a specific
tions. points out Dilip Chakravarti, a geographic area in Andhra Pradesh.
Cambridge University archaeologist. and the sample size in some castes was
India alone now has people of all racial as smaUpfelO. “If more samples are
studied, the results
could be different,"
points out Shrivastava. Caste itself is
also highly elastic.
^s- B.N. Chattopadhyaya, professor of
ancient history at
Jawaharlal Nehru
/ NAYANJOT LAHIRI
University. Delhi,
Historian
cites the example of
builders of the Indus Valley—around
10.000 B.C.. and the Indo-Aryans
arrived around 3,000 B.c..” And caste
began? "There are more than 100
theories on how caste originated, but
one can be sure it didn’t emerge
because Aryans subjugated the native
population." So how did they then end
up at the top of the caste hierarchy?
And what, in any case, is caste?
E
“Tiie Rig Veda
was of an oral
genre—how can
it be dated?”
68 INVIA TODAY ♦ fW.Y10.M01
theBoya tribeof Andhra Pradesh.They
became warriors and claimed the sta
tus of Kshatriyas. Those among them
who performed religious rituals even
became Brahmins. In the 1960s an
thropologists Karve and Malhotra
compared four Brahmin sub-castes
with four peasant sub-castes. They
found that the variation within the
Brahmin sub-castes was greater than
the variations between Brahmin and
peasant castes. Caste mobility happens
even today, though post-Mandal the
traffic is bidirectional.
So what's the bottom line? “Unlike
other detective stories, with genetic
evidence we can't say 'the butler did
if." points out anthropologist Shiv
Vishwanathan. "but we shouldn't be
afraid of truth or data. Evidence
shrinks to shape with time." Perhaps it
will. Right now time itself is a bone of
contention. The study doesn't mention
when the Europeans came to India.
“Where does the genetic data show it
was during the Vedic Age?" asks Gupte.
A hundred years ago, Risley's nose
based theory of the European origin of
caste had met its match in B.N. Dutta's
nose-based theory of caste. Dutta,
Swami Vivekananda's brother, had
then disproved the theory that higher
castes have "European" noses merely
by making more measurements. Times
have changed, and tools too. Now it's
genetic tests, and it may take many
more of these to set to rest the contro
versy thaChas returned after a hundred
years of quietitude.
B
Mp-13.
Cloning
Eve’s second coming
Radians, who believe life on earth was created by aliens, claim to
have created the first human clone. Is it reality or a stunt?
By JERRY ADLER
wo thousand years ago a
Judean carpenter changed the
course of history by offering
humanity a path to eternal life. Two
days after Christmas, last year, a
French-born sometime journalist and
race-car driver who calls himself Rael
tried to do the same thing when his
followers announced they had solved
the mysteries of human cloning.
This was the high point of Rael’s
second career as a saviour, which
began when he was taken aboard an
alien spaceship and transported to a
faraway planet whose inhabitants, the
Elohim, had created all life on Earth.
For most ofthe past three decades Rael
has been on a mission to replace
outmoded religious bunkum with
modem, scientific bunkum. "Science is
love!” he grandly proclaimed in an
interview
at
his
Canadian
compound—UFOland—-near the
Vermont border. Soon, he promises,
people will be able to make exact
genetic copies of themselves, grow
them instantaneously and then
download all their accumulated
memories and traits into the new
bodies—the ideal solution for people
who want to live forever but find
Christianity so... unscientific.
In this contest of beliefs, the edge
has to go to Christianity, and not just
because it numbers 2 billion adherents
against 55,000 Raelians. The claims of
the former have never been verified by
science, but they were meant to be
taken on faith in any case. But Raelian
Bishop Brigitte Boisselier, the director
of the Raelian-backed company
Clonaid (which sells cloning services
to all comers), had promised to provide
unambiguous scientific proof of an
announcement
otherwise
conspicuously devoid of information:
that unnamed researchers in an
28 E353S3 J.vt 15,2003
T
unidentified country had implanted a
cloned embryo in an anonymous
woman—who had delivered a baby girl
“we call Eve, between us”.
That claim could easily be checked
by comparing the baby's DNA to the
donor’s. (In this case, the donor was
the mother herself.) A science
journalist, Michael Guillen, formerly
of ABC News, had been enlisted to
oversee the testing by independent
researchers. But later, Rael himself
implied the testing might be
abandoned out of concern for the
unnamed family’s “privacy”. Around
the same time, a Raelian spokesman
in the Netherlands announced the
birth of a second cloned baby, to a
lesbian couple. DNA testing wasn’t
mentioned.
If reporters suspended their
accustomed scepticism towards people
who believe in visits from aliens, it was
because the possibility of human
cloning long ago left the realm of
science fiction. With varying degrees
of hope and trepidation, scientists,
theologians and other interested
parties—like infertile couples and
parents of children who had died in
THE MAKING OF A CLONE
Conventional fertilisation involves a fusion
of sex cells—a sperm and an egg—which
carry half sets of chromosomes each.
In a sexual union, these halves come together
to provide the resultant embryo with a full
set of genetic material. Cloning uses the DNA
of only one individual to produce another
< individual. In cloning, the nucleus of an egg is
removed and replaced by that of an adult
I
cell which has a full set of chromosomes.
2 An unfertilised egg
is stripped of its
nucleus containing the
chromosomes.
4
\
i The donor \
'YSiV
DNAis taken
-----------from a cell, for
instance, a skin cell of the
person who wishes to be cloned.
A FIGHTER'S END: Thousands turned out to pay respects to Bapi Sen
that the assailants were constables of
the reserve force of the Kolkata police
and immediately arrested two ofthem.
The other three surrendered before
the chief metropolitan magistrate,
who remanded all of them to police
custody. One is still absconding.
Bapi, his wife and two sons were
living with his parents and elder
brothers. His wife Soma was inconsol
able as his body was brought home
and his father, Narayan Chandra Sen,
a retired government official, col
lapsed.
Police found out that the six con
stables had left their barracks for New
Year revelry without permission. They
used a taxi owned and driven by
Madhukant Jha, who was living ille
gally in the barracks. “I had to do what
they told me to do,” he said. The con
stables drank heavily and when they
saw the girl on the motorcycle, they
asked Jha to block the vehicle.
The chief minister has assured that
all help would be given to the slain
cop’s family, but the citizens are wor
ried. If a policeman gets killed for pre
venting molestation by lumpen ele
ments in his own force, what about
ordinary people?
A senior police officer said that the
incident was an aberration and not the(
norm. According to him, the number
of cases ofeve-teasing had come down.
In 2000,57 persons had been arrested
in 46 such cases and in 2001,36 cases
had been charged. Last year, 24 cases
had been registered.
However, clinical psychologist
Rajyashri Bandopadhyay felt it was
not an isolated incident. “It is a fall-out
of the media’s glamorisation of the
negative aspects of life. Impression
able minds fall for their allure. Police
men are no exception.”
IS
accidents—had been awaiting just
such an announcement ever since the
first mammal, Dolly the sheep, was
cloned in 1996. The same technique,
scientists say, could easily be applied
to humans. Technicians remove the
genetic material from an egg cell and
replace it with DNA from a donor, then
grow the embryo in a petri dish until
its ready to be implanted, by the same
process routinely used in fertilisation
clinics.
Human cloning, says Rudolf
Jaenisch, an MIT biologist, “is not a
bproblem of technolog)’, but principle.”
Only two other laboratories in the
world have acknowledged pursuing
reproductive cloning in humans. The
head of one of them, the well-known
Italian fertility expert Severino
Antinori, has said he expects to have a
baby born in January 2003—which
sceptics suggested might have had
something to do with the timing of
Clonaid's announcement.
Sweeping away the quibbling over ‘Eve’s’ actual existence, Rael
(above) declares that cloning of a human baby “is just a step”
towards his ultimate goal, of giving humanity eternal life.
Thus, the Raelians remarkably
managed to unite both theologians
and scientists in outrage. Whether true
or not, “the very attempt to clone a
human being is evil”, pronounced
Stanley M. Hauerwas, a professor of
theological ethics at Duke University,
North Carolina. “That the allegedly
cloned child is to be called Eve
confirms the God-like stature these
people so desperately seek.” On a less
of serious birth defects in cloned
animals, is as high as one in four or
five, a grossly unacceptable risk to take
with human beings.
Scientists’biggest concern was that
the Clonaid extravaganza would give
impetus to the demand by some in the
US Congress for a sweeping ban on
research involving any cloning of
human embryos. By employing the
same techniques of nuclear transfer,
but stopping the process short of
implantation, researchers can produce
embryonic stem cells that can develop
into any of the 200-odd kinds oftissue
found in the human body. This
technique has been used in animals to
repair damaged nerves, hearts and
kidneys, and could hold the key
to treatments for conditions as
diverse as heart disease,
Parkinson’s and crippling
spinal-cord injuries.
Raelians also claim to want to
alleviate suffering through science.
Early on, they managed to strake the
Cloning’
Rate of birth defects in cloned
animals is one in four or five,
an unacceptable risk to take
with humans, say research
ers; (left) Dolly the sheep.
deepest vein of pain known to
humankind, the grief of a parent for a
dead child. Clonaid, founded in 1997,
was funded to the tune of several
hundred thousand dollars by a West
Virginia couple, whose 10-month-old
son had died during heart surgery. The
couple pulled out in 2001, telling
reporters that Boisselier appeared
more interested in getting Raelism
into the newspapers than setting up an
actual laboratory. Since then,
information on the company’s
operations has been almost impossible
to come by.
Rael’s self-proclaimed mission is to
tear down “the myth of God”, which is
the major obstacle to world peace.
“Telling people to fly planes into
buildings—this is God at work," he
said, referring to the September 11,
2001, terrorist attacks. His other major
SO ETS533 Jan 19,2003
WITH NO PROOF IN HAND: Brigitte
Boisselier, director of Clonaid
goal is to construct a $10 million
'embassy" to receive the aliens when
they return to Earth in the near future.
He would like it to be in Israel, he says,
but the Israelis haven’t shown much
interest.
Rael stands in a crowded tradition
of prophets who saw salvation in af
flying saucer, a phenomenon observed"
by Carl Jung as far back as the 1940s.
University of Southern California
professor emeritus Robert S. Ellwood,
an authority on UFO religions, says
Jung called aliens “technological
angels”, a way for people to put their
comforting beliefin higher beings into
a scientific context.
But unlike strange things done by
people attracted to fringe beliefs—like
the 39 followers of the Heaven’s Gate
cult who committed suicide in 1997,
preparing for an ascent in an alien
spacecraft—ordinary Raelians seem
generally happy. They don't live in
communes, says Susan Palmer, a
professor at Dawson College in
Montreal and the author of a forthco
ming book on the Raelians, they don’t
collect weapons and they are taught to
abstain from drugs. Their apocalyptic
vision is uncommonly benign, and
involves training a cadre of attractive
young women (Rael’s ‘Order of
Angels’) to welcome the aliens when
they return, sometime before 2035.
And His Holiness Rael, as
journalists are required to address
him, relaxes in UFOland in his
gleaming space suit, appearing to
enjoy the onslaught of media
attention. Sweeping away the
epistemological quibbling over ‘Eve’s’
actual existence—“I told [Boisselier],
keeping the baby with the mother is
more important than proving to the
world that you did it”—Rael declares
that the cloning of a human baby “is
just a step” towards his ultimate goal.
“1 am here to give humanity' eternal
life,” he proclaims. It is a promise,
history reveals, that humanity could
never resist.
H
■ MEDICINE
The future of gene therapy
Interview with Dr. Nick Wood, Professor of Clinical Neurology and Neurogenetics.
Dr. Nicholas William Wood, Profes Project? How will it help our understand ago in rhe case of chemistry. According to
me, biology is 100 years behind the phys
sor of Clinical Neurology and Neuroge- ing of biology?
The Human Genome Project was an ical sciences in terms of its basic under
netics, National Hospital, Queens
Square, London, is a world-renowned ex international consortium that set out to standing. The genome project is one of
pert in neurosciences. He has received a sequence the whole genome. Everyone’s the major developments that would help
number of prestigious awards, including genome varies, but only very slightly. You bring rapid progress.
the Charles Symmonds Memorial Award and I, despite coming from different ► According to reports on the genome
in 1993, the Duroshiler Award of the parts of rhe world, are mostly alike. Most project, only mono-gene disorders have
British Medical Association in 1996, and of our base-pass or code is identical. We been sorted out. How will this help in our
: Linacre Medal in 1999 from the Roy- probably vary in about 1 per cent of our understanding of the causes and treat
College of Physicians, London. Co genome. So, if you sequence just one per ment of disorders arising from a single
editor of two books on neurology, Dr. son, you get 99 per cent of the informa gene?
You are right. Only simple, mono
Wood is on the review board of several tion about the human genome. A small
international journals. Dr. Wood has a part of the basic human genome is yet to gene disorders have been sorted out. But
doctorate in neurogenetics and training be decoded. But once done, you have even that is a major development. Such
in clinical neurology, which form a rare something like the periodic table for genes act in the family — either you have
chemistry. It is like how it was 100 years it or you don’t. If you don’t, you will not
combination.
Dr. Wood is the European
get the disease and if you have
coordinator of a study on the ge
g the gene, you will get it. Hunnetic basis of Parkinson’s disease.
2 tington Disease, for instance,
5 comes under this category. It is a
He recently mapped an autoso
mal recessive locus for the dis
” dominant disorder
coming
ease. He has done genome-wide
through the generations. The ge
search and homozygosity map
nome project helps find these
diseases very quickly.
ping in a consanguineous Italian
family. Over the past three years,
► From the genome project re
the group has mapped success
sults, how does Onego aboutfind
fully four other inherited move
ing out the existence of the gene
ment
disorders,
including
that causes a mono-gene disorder?
autosomal dominant ataxia, dys
You take a family with, say,
tonia gene, geniospasm and pa
20 affected individuals and have
roxysmal
kinesiogenic
markers scattered throughout the
chorearhetosis. Cloning projects
genome. You then apply the
markers to the family and look
are under way for each of these.
He collaborated with three
for the marker that segregates the
groups investigating the genetic
disease. Everyone in the family
who could get the disease will
basis of epilepsy. He is also a
member of an international in
have one type of marker and
terdisciplinary group to study
those who would not get it, an
cellular physiology.
other type of marker. Suppose
When he was in Chennai co
you apply rhe markers and those
deliver rhe 17th Gopalakrishna
who would not get die disease
Oration conducted by the K.
have the 200th marker and those
In the case of complex disorders
Gopalakrishna Department of
who could get the disease have
it
is
just
not
the
relative
Neurology at the Voluntary
the 201 sc marker, then you know
abnormality in the genes that
Health Services, Dr. Wood
that wherever the 201st marker is
spoke to Asha Krishnakumar
must be close to the diseased
causes the disease. By itself the
on the status of the Human Ge
gene. You then go to the data
gene
does
not
tell
you
anything.
nome Project, the genetic basis of
base provided by the genome
It is a combination of genes and
neurology, rhe future of gene
project, in the computer, and
therapy and state-of-the-art re
find out what genes are from the
environmental factors that causes
search in neurogenetics. Excerpts
region where the 201 st marker is.
complex
disorders
such
as
from the interview:
And let us say that you get a list
epilepsy.
of 20 genes. You then find out
► What is the Human Genome
which ones of those are expressed
t
FRONTLINE. FEBRUARY 14. 2003
they are wide-ranging and multi-seaoral vided to the sector.
tion of a clearing house of information
in their sweep, the implementation of
* Aquarian reform that will restrict pertaining to the WTO and Kerala. The
these recommendations would require a the rights to own fishing vessels to those Media Cell should work closely with yet
another body that the Commission has
high-level, yet fully representative, coor who actually fish.
* New measures for environmental recommended that the State government
dination body that must function, in the
words of the Report, “like a symphony protection and sustainable management set up, namely, a Virtual University for
orchestra”. The Commission has there of fishing grounds.
Agricultural Trade. This is vital if Kerala is
While the Commission has made a to become competitive in trade, knowl
fore recommended the constitution of a
Standing Committee on Agricultural blanker recommendation to the Govern edge and information empowerment for
Trade, which is to be chaired by the Chief ment of India to review periodically issues form families, traders, consumers and ex
Minister, with the Minister for Agricul such as Quantitative Restrictions (QRs), porters. “A computer-aided and Internetture as the co-chair. The Committee must variable tariffs and statutory MSP in re- connected Virtual University can be es
represent the principal stakeholders with spea of all cash and plantation crops, it tablished on a hub and spokes model. The
in agricultural trade. It must coordinate has also made specific recommendations hub can be located at an appropriate loca
programmes, provide policy direction, in respect of each of diese crops which tion like the Kerala Agricultural Universi
monitor trade, initiate pro-aaive action, have experienced sharp price declines in ty, with the spokes located in every
promote trade and Intellectual Property recent years. It has recommended that the district. The hub and spokes can be linked
Rights (IPR) literacy, and generate ideas government make efforts to have rubber to television channels and community ra^
and action to promote agricultural trade. re-categorised as an agricultural crop so dio stations, so that relevant informatidO
As a response to the extreme distress that it can be brought within the AoA. To reaches every form family every morning,’
faced by plantation labour owing to the avoid distress sales and price manipulation the Report notes. The Commission has
crisis in the plantation economy, the in plantation crops, it has called for partic called for a meeting of data generators and
Commission, in one of its first interim ipatory buffer stocking through a mod providers (the Indian Space Research Or
recommendations, asked the Government ification of the Rural Godown Scheme of ganisation, the India Meteorological De
of India to initiate a “Food for Wage and the Government of India. Such a system is partment, the Kerala Agricultural
Employment Stabilisation in Plantation best maintained by farmers’ unions/coop- University, the National Dairy Develop
ment Board, the many Commodity
Crops Programme” under the Sampoorn eratives.
Gramin Rozgar Yojana. The Kerala gov
Herbal medicine and ayurveda, along Boards, Ministries and departments of the
ernment acted on this recommendation. with tourism, are potential high-growth State and Central governments, and so
The Commission has proposed that a areas which the Commission has identi on); data seekers (form families, traders,
range of domestic support measures be fied as deserving of special attention. The consumers, exporters); and information
created to offer income support to small growing global demand for traditional managers (information technology or IT
and marginal farmers. These include:
systems of healthcare presents great op specialists, media representatives, exten
* Statutory Minimum Support Price portunities for Kerala but it also puts sions specialists, and so on) to work our a
(MSP) to field and plantation crops, a enormous pressure on the resource base of plan for the proposed university.
measure that is fully WTO-compatible.
medicinal plants, which must be safe
Writing 60 years ago, E.M.S. Nam* The use of variable tariffs to protect guarded by the groups concerned. The boodiripad had this to say in an essay encultivators against sharp fluemations in Commission has called for quality control titled “From Militarist to Colonial
international prices and import surges.
and certification for ayurvedic medicines Economy”: “It is thus clear that agricul
* Re-imposing quantitative restric and the formation of medicinal plants ture in Kerala is directed towards the pro
tions within the framework of a Liveli growers associations, each covering about duction of cash crops to be sold in the
hood Security Box.
100 hectares, for the cultivation and mar world market and diat only the barest
* Introducing policy measures like keting of medicinal herbs. Areas rich in minimum of goods are produced for the
crop insurance, imaginative rural credit herbal plants can be developed into herbal purpose of local consumption. Every
services, new forms of agricultural exten sanctuaries. The Commission has recom peasant is today dependent on the condi
sion; providing facilities for marketing, mended that the region from the Silent tion of the world market in a two-fold
storage and processing, and so on.
Valley Biosphere Reserve up to Wayanad way: he has to buy commodities produced
* Initiating multi-disciplinary policy be denoted a Herbal Biovalley. “The abroad; he has to sell his own produce
research on various forms of domestic Herbal Biovalley should provide the bi abroad.” Although the economy and so
support and their feasibility.
ological software essential for a dynamic ciety of Kerala have seen radical transfor
* Initiating a massive programme of medicinal plant industry,” the Commis mation since then, EMS’ observations on
replanting and rehabilitation of all peren sion has noted. The tourism sector must the predicament of the peasantry appears
nial crops such as coconut, cashewnut, be reoriented to cater to health (ayurve almost prescient. If the peasant’s depend
rubber, tea, coffee and cardamom.
ence on the world market during colonial
da), spirituality, and nature tourism.
The Commission has drawn special
Unique to this Commission is its rec times was dictated by the requirements of
attention to the revitalisation of fisheries, ognition of die media as playing an im British colonialism, the Kerala peasantry
where it has called, among other changes, portant role in meeting the challenges of is today caught in a modern-day global
for
the new trade dispensation. This is partic trade regime that is unfavourably weighed
* A movement to enhance the quality ularly so in a State where newspaper read against it. The impact of this has been
of domestically consumed fish.
ership and media consumption are so particularly hard on producers in Kerala
* A multi-stakeholder study of the widespread and the media so sensitised to and it will perhaps require a nationalist
current subsidies in the fisheries sector so livelihood concerns. The Commission has movement of a different kind to set right
that support that is non-actionable under recommended the setting up of a WTO the iniquities of the new global trade re
the relevant WTO agreements can be pro Media Cell that could perform the func gime. ■
FRONTLINE, FEBRUARY 14, 2003
in the central nervous system. Say, 10 of complex disorders it is just not die rela now.
them are. and suppose you already know tive abnormality in the genes that causes ► How can genetic studies give clues to
that five of them cause some other dis the disease. By itself the gene does not tell environmentalfactors that cause diseases?
ease, then you are left with only five you anything. It is a combination of
For example, in the case of Parkin
genes, which you then sequence to find genes and environmental factors that son’s disease, an idea that has arisen over
out which one of those causes the disease. causes complex disorders such as epilepsy. the years (though not proved as yet) is
This is the process by which you identify
To find out the cause of such diseases that probably some environmental poi
very rapidly a single gene responsible for a it is not enough to study one person or a son or toxin causes it. In such a case if a
particular disease.
few families, you need to study hundreds person is exposed to such an environment
► How was this done prior to the ge of people as you cannot separate them to it may be useful to study how his genetic
nome project?
start with as you do not know what com- basis would react to the exposure in order
It was done by a method
to find out whether he is going to
called linkage’. Once you know
get rhe disease or not. There is a
which chromosome the gene
biological possibility to it. For in
With the emergence of TB in the
causing the disease was on and
stance, if you are a slow metaboWest due to AIDS or lower
rhe marker associated with it,
liser at a number of different
resistance levels, people have
then you had to sequence the
genes, then, it would be only
DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid]
modesdy harmful and you know
turned attention to why certain
^^urself. To do that you had to
you can cope with ir.
people are more susceptible to TB
^R>ne it all and it was a huge task.
So, the idea is that if we study
than some others. They have found
Now it has been done for you.
those genetic factors and find
You just have to find die muta
them to react to toxins that cause
out that it is genetically driven.
tion.
such diseases, tlien we can prob
► So, do we now have the faci
ably identify the environmental
lity to sort out all single-gene
factors. But this is painting a rosy
disorders?
parisons to make. It is thus best to start picture of the future. There are obviously
In the next five to 10 years almost all the study with a large population and do more complex and difficult problems. I
disorders caused by a single gene will be the mapping. Then go back and say that am sure in another five to 10 years’ time,
sorted out. This is no mean achievement. this type of epilepsy is mostly because of we shall still be left with a lot of questions
► What are the dominant mono-gene these factors and so on. Even in this case about the common diseases. But we shall
disorders that are to be sorted out by the we are only guessing. But, surely, a ho surely be at least a bit further along in
genome project?
mogenous approach where one lumps understanding them.
Huntington, some forms ofAlzheim them to start with and splits them later is ► How does one determine the inherer’s, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease and good. In the past, what was done was to itability ofdiseases?
a lot of muscle diseases including muscu split patients into disease categories and
We can measure inheritability by
lar dystrophy. There is a long list of rare then say you have got this or that type of twin studies. For example, the chance of
diseases.
epilepsy. There is some basis in that but I identical twins being epileptic is quite
think
one
should
not
get
too
fixed
on
We make up about 30,000 genes;
high. Even a disease like TB [tuberculo
over half of them are expected to be in the that.
sis], which is infectious, has a genetic ba
central nervous system. Random muta ► Are there genetic differences across eth sis. It is quite clear from studies that not
tions go on across those genes. So, over nic groups? And would that make the everyone who was exposed to TB in a
half of the diseases that may occur are identification ofgenetic disorders easier? family got the disease. The chance of
going to be neurological. Ir is thus not
Yes, undoubtedly there are ethnic identical twins getting TB is more than
surprising chat the long list of genetic dis variations in the genetic make-up. Some non-identical twins exposed to the same
eases would express itself on the nervous common diseases vary in a particular fre environment. With the emergence of TB
quency throughout the world. For exam in the West due to AIDS [Acquired Im
system.
► What are poly-gene or complex dis ple, in Singapore, brain haemorrhage, a mune Deficiency Syndrome) or lower re
orders? Is there a possibility that they will common cause for stroke, is more com sistance levels, people have turned
be sorted out in the nearfiiture?
mon than in the West. The reason for attention to why certain people are more
For a single-gene disorder, everyone that is not very clear as yet. Ir may be susceptible to TB than some others. They
within a family who has a particular ge because of differences in diet, environ have found out that it is genetically
netic disease is likely to have the same ment and so on. But, as is being increas- driven.
genetic abnormality as there is a very ingly found out, it is to a large extent
Probably, the only problem that is
strong genetic factor that is causing the genetically driven. You will have to take not genetically driven is trauma - being
disease. This is easy to find out as it stands into account what the frequencies of the knocked over by a bus or a train. That is
out.
disease are in different populations. Alz plain bad luck.
But take, for example, epilepsy, heimer’s is a big problem in the United ► How can gene defects be corrected? Is
which is mostly not transmitted through Kingdom. But in some other parts of the gene therapy a possibility in the near
generations. You may just have one or world, where the life expectancy at birth future?
two people in a family with epilepsy and is low, people die before they can even get
Gene therapy is definitely something
that does not give you enough informa ir. Thus, there are diseases such as Alz for the future. I am sure something useful
tion. The disease may be a result of a heimer’s, Parkinson’s and stroke, as also will come out of gene therapy. But there
complex interplay of genetic and envi cancer, that are becoming major prob are several problems. Suppose you detect
ronmental factors. Thus in the case of lems because people are living longer a genetic defect and have to correct it,
FRONTLINE, FEBRUARY 14, 2003
By understanding the genetic proc drugs. This will bring down trial costs"
there are ways of doing it. One way is
gening a new gene into the cell. Most esses you will think of ways of either tremendously.
That is the real potence of drug re
cells are receptive of new genetic material modifying the genes or persuading them
when they are dividing. So it is relatively to turn themselves on or off, as the case sponsiveness and the genetic applications
easy to introduce new genes when the may be. In the case of, say, a nasty disease to it. The drug companies are very in
cells are dividing. Since liver, lungs and such as muscular dystrophy, people are terested in this as they can save a lot of
blood cells keep dividing all the time, it is now looking for small molecules that can money.
easy to introduce new cells to correct dis cross the barrier into the muscle and ► There are some ethical issues involved
eases connected with these organs. But switch on new trophyn to do the same in this, particularly when people are ge
this is not possible with the nervous sys job. Rather than trying to correct what is netically resistant to drugs and are kept
tem as its cells keep dying, becoming few wrong, people are working at persuading out of drug trials. How does one tackle
er over the years as in the case of muscles. the body to mimic in correcting the prob such issues?
That is a real problem as results of
So a vector system needs to be developed lem in some other way. I think this kind
that can transfer genetic material into of approach has a greater chance of cor drug trials will not be applicable to this
non-dividing tissues. That is a technolog recting gene defects than genetic therapy. group of people. There is a significant
Among the therapies that are to be ethical dimension to some of this work. It
ical issue and is being worked out. There
are some good vectors now. That is one found, only some would be based on ge is complex.
netics; more would be molecular based.
► What are the state-of-the-art research
problem.
The other problem is getting the ► Is there any relation between drug re efforts in pharmacology for neurologist^
disorders?
genes in the appropriate place. It need sponse and the genetic base?
The main issue is drug response. Not
As I mentioned earlier, pharmacoge
not be in the same place but should be
capable of regulating the defect. Often everyone responds to drugs the same way. netics is one — the genetic basis for drug
you have to put into the gene something And not all drugs work on everybody. responsiveness. And the other is geneticthat will listen to the other messages Now it is done in a hit-and-miss manner. ular molecular technology. In this, they
around and gets switched on and off at In future, the responsiveness to a drug take one element of protein known to be
good at binding neurons or getting into
the appropriate times. That is not trivial, will be genetically determined.
Our group has found the first genet neural cells and so on. You can design a
particularly because you do not want the
friendlier compound using mo
gene and protein to be expressed
lecular technology. That is going
all the time; only when it is
Rather than trying to correct what
to get a lot more sophisticated.
meant to. That is not straight
We know the periodic table
forward. The vector might be ve
is wrong, people are working at
ry good. But you may want to
(from die genome project) but
persuading the body to mimic in
send in 25 copies. But that
know very little about the pro
correcting the problem in some
would be very difficult to con
tein structures. There is going to
be layers and layers of sophisti
trol. So, you may want to send in
other way. I think this kind of
one copy to the right cell at the
cation in this.
approach
has
a
greater
chance
of
right time. That would lead to
► What is going to happen in
correcting gene defects than
significant technological prob
the post-genomic sequencing era?
First is population genetics
lems.
genetic therapy.
The therapy also depends on
and what is called ‘linkage’ or
the nature of the defect. For
equilibrium or haphazard map
some defects such as tetanus dis
ping. The NIH [National Insti
order, which is autosomal recessive — ically determined drug responsiveness in tutes of Health] in the United States has
that is, both parents are well but carry the epilepsy. We found that we can label a put in several millions of dollars in what
mutation and the two mutations come gene called ‘multiple drug resistance is called the ‘Hap Map Project’. The oth
together in the offspring giving rise to the gene’ (which has been thought of in can er thing is to understand what regulates
disease — if you can put in the right gene cer genes for a while). If you have a cer genes because we only produce 30,000
you can correct it. And since the parents tain form of this gene you have a high genes, far fewer than what we expected.
are well with 50 per cent activity, all you expression of the protein that stops for The explanation for this is that we prob
have to do is get 50 per cent of the level. eign substances from getting into the ably had one gene to make several pro
You will probably be fine even with 5 or cells. It is good if you do not want foreign teins by splicing itself in different ways. It
10 per cent levels.
substances to get in. But it is bad if you is probably regulated at different times
But many dominant diseases such as want drugs to get in. This leads to low and so forth. Understanding all those
Huntington are not owing to loss of level of drug inside the cell. We know the subdeties of the genetic structure can be
function; it is the gain of ftinction that genetic make-up of that and we have very complex. That is called genomics.
leads to the problem. So what you have shown that if you have a high expression
On top of that is to understand what
got is a new mutant gene that has a toxic of the protein there is a high epileptic proteins the genes make. We know the
new function — poisoning the nerve drug resistance. Epilepsy, for instance, is very basic structure from the Human Ge
cells. Putting in a new copy of the gene difficult to treat in such cases. With such nome Project. But how they are folded,
would not help in this case. You have got studies we shall be able to design drug how are proteins made, how they get
to put in genes that stop the mutant copy. trials better in the future. Instead of con modified and so on are issues that have to
You have to go to another level of sophis ducting trials in, say, 10,000 people, it be worked out. So it is going to be layers
tication there. This will come in the fu can be done with just 500 people who do of structures of work — genetic, genom
ture, but is not yet around the corner.
not get side-effects and respond better to ic, proteomic and so on. ■
FRONTLINE, FEBRUARY 14, 2003
DECCAN
HERALD
JANUARY 4,2004
SelHnng tonngnaes Boose
Ply them with wine, or better
still, stuff them with biryani and
deny them sleep. Or watch the
fun as a lizard is slipped up
the pants. One step ahead
would be to temporarily snuff
out all senses! RAKESH P
throws light on some changes
in police interrogation
of crime suspects
TRIPPED down to his undergarments, Raja
Ik’ sat in a corner of the cell trembling with
X?\fear. “Will they continue to torture me if I
l\ ) Iconfess to having committed the robbery or
will they stop the thrashing now?” was the
question that was running through his mind when
a constable yelled at him, “You son of a b@#$#, we
will show you hell if you do not tell us where the
stolen jewellery is.” And for more than a week,
Raja was illegally detained and subjected to the
worst forms of police torture - his nails were
plucked and his private parts bruised.
“Sir, that was seven years ago. Now things have
changed. We are packed off to thejail after three or
four rounds of caning as the policemen do not keep
us in the cell for more than a day,” says 31-year-old
Raja, a habitual offender and a resident of
Banashankari.
It is true. The Bangalore City Police is undergo>
ing a change in its mindset on the use of third
r degree methods (extremely violent forms) for
extracting information from crime suspects. In the
last five years, third degree methods have turned
• out to be a risky proposition for the police due to
increased awareness about human rights among
criminals, the poor physical conditions of suspects
and a pro-active judiciary.
.
Things have reached such a passe that crimi
nals have today started quoting the National
Human Rights Commission (NHRC) guidelines on
arrest In fact a few members of rowdy Tanveer's
gang and extortionist Praveen alias Malayali
Praveen have written to the NHRC stating that
there was a threat to their lives from about ten
police officers.
Weak physique of the criminals is another rea
son that prevents police from employing third
degree methods. A police inspector who has served
more than ten years in the City says, "Earlier, row
dies were strong-hearted and had a great physique.
When hit, lathis not only rebounded but used to
break. However, the physical build of criminals
are poor these days with as many as 95 per cent of
• them addicted to drugs and suffering frdm various
3 ailments. No officer would like to get suspended by
thrashing a weakling who is in his custody"
Well, even criminals have started pressing the.
panic button for the police. Recently one of the sus
pects bit his tongue when a constable raised his
lathi on him at Banaswadi police station. "On see
ing the suspect bleeding profusely , the police per
sonnel panicked and let him go. Even the other sus- I
pects were set free with a warning that they should
hot speak about the incident,” a'police officer said
■
1
is used on hardcore criminals and rowdy-sheeters.
Here, the police create an atmosphere that makes
the criminals feel that they will be bumped off if
they do not speak out “The style of threat is dif
ferent A constable constantly narrates to the sus
pect the extents to which his superior will go.
Fearing repercussions, the man confesses," an offi
cer said. It was this technique that made rowdy
Tanveer surrender before the Anti Rowdy Squad
chief two years back.
Injecting; This is another technique reserved
for extracting information from robbery/dacoity
gangs. Before the accused are brought to the police
station, one of the latter’s informants would have
been housed in the cell. Once the accused are
behind bars, the informant gains their confidence
and collects information about.their activities.
Subsequently the information is passed on to the
investigating officer. "Once the suspects know that
the police have some information about their crim
inal antecedents, they just open up,” said a police
officer.
Irritating: Though a bit primitive, this tech
nique works on people who fear insects and lizards.
The suspect is made to wear a loose pair of
trousers, which is tied at the bottom after a garden
lizard is slipped in. While the lizard moves all over
his legs in panic, the suspect screams out the truth.
This technique is rarely used as policemen are not
adept in catching lizards!
Insecurity: White-collared criminals and first
time offenders are subjected to this form of inter
rogation! Here, the suspect’s eyes are tied with a
piece of cloth, his ears are stuffed with cotton and
he is put in a cell No one will respond to the sus
pect's call. After some time, a sense of insecurity
prevails and fearing the worst, the suspect speaks
voluntarily.
With human rights organizations such as
Sichrem, Vimochana and the People’s Union for
Civil Liberties (Karnataka) constantly warning
the police against the use strong-arm tactics, the
emphasis today is more on scientific methods of
investigation. While the Finger Prints squad of the
City Police continues to track down offenders, cel
lular technology is increasingly becoming the
most sought-after tool for the policemen to catch
criminals. Though no formal training has been
given with regard to cellular technology, a few
police officers have become experts in nabbing the
criminals with the help of mobile phones. In fact,
none of the accused in the multi-crore stamp paper
racket have been subjected to third degree methods
by Stampit, the investigation team. All the arrests
have been effected on the basis of interception of
telephonic conversation the accused had with the
kingpin, Abdul Karim Telgi alias Lala.
Obviously, with white collared and cyber crimi
nals being more shrewd, it is high time the police
honed their investigative skills and came out with
innovative non-coercive methods of interrogation,
instead of rolling up shirt sleeves for that thrash
ingspree!
IN 1991, when Deputy
Conservator , of
Forests
Srinivas’s headless dead body
was found in the BR-MM hills
range, the body showed three
types of grievous injuries. Gun
shot wound, decapitation and
extensive burns. The CoD had
requested the expertise of
Forensic Science Specialist of
Karnataka State Laboratory Dr
B M Mohan in restructuring the
sequence of events, which fur
ther aided their investigations.
The alleged kingpin of the
stamp paper racket, Abdul
Karim Lala alias Telgi, was on
December 22 subjected to narco
analysis test, also' known as the
‘truth serum test’.
*******
The Forensic Science Labora
tory, Bangalore adopted latest
techniques such as the Newtron
Activation Analysis and accu■ rate ballistic methods which led
to the' conviction of Ponnappa,
the man who shot his brother
Chengappa dead in front of their
mother following a property dis
pute in Coorg, three years ago.
Ponnappa’s counsel argued that
the accidental gun shot was trig
vftUle pointing out Yiow ttie lathi was being relegat
gered in a scuffle, but the ballis
tic tests pointed out that the shot
was on purpose.
Changing scenario
While some old-hands in the police department
crib that criminal cases cannot be detected unless
lawsarebent,amajorityof the officers are turning
The Forensic scientists man
aged to unravel the truth in the
sensational Halikhed B human
sacrifice case, that rocked. Gulbarga district two years back, by
ed. to the background. In fact, the City that used to
witness at least three lock-up death cases a year
has not seen a single one in the last two years.
**AA* * AAA * * AA
between the mind and the body. of inducing hypnosis in the sub
When a deceptive examinee is ject Due to lack of inhibition
subjected to this test, his or her produced by the drug, the
intrinsic pattern of reacting to accused talks freely and
stressful situation will elicit cer responds truthfully to verbal
tain body responses. These questions. We make sure that all
responses are recorded by the file emergency medical meas
three components or the sensors ures are available to the person
of a polygraph machine, which while, undergoing the test,
are attached to the subject (or the including the presence of an
suspect). The pneumograph anaesthetist to monitor the vital
records respiratory variations body functions,” says Dr Malini,
Origins
ers, traces of the drug could get such as a subject’s rhythm, depth stressing that a neuro-psycholo
The word‘Forensic’is derived deposited at the hair roots. In and rate of breathing, a gy background of the examiner
from the Latin word ‘Forensis’ this case no deposits of any Galvanometer records the skin is very essential
“Narcoanalysis is a very sci
which means 'of the Forum’. In ■ drugs was found. It was an obvi responses to electrical stimula
Rome, 'Forum' was the meeting ous conclusion that the lady was tion and a cardio-spygmograph entific and a humane approach
place where civic and legal mat administered an overdose of records a subject’s blood volume, in dealing with an accused’s psy
pulse
rate
and
blood
pressure.
chological
expressions, definite
sedatives
and
was
buried
alive
in
ters were discussed by those
“Polygraph test is conducted ly better than third degree treat
vested with public responsibility a state of semi-coma. Our find-.
Forensic medicine was earlier ings corroborated the details in three phases. A pretest inter ment to extract truth from an
view, chart recording and diag- accused,” affirms Dr Malini.
known as ‘Medical jurispru
dence’. In 1858 Sir William
Herschel of the Indian Civil
Service first used'Modern dacty
Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science recording. Authenticity analysis is used to deter
lography' or application of fin
Laboratory at Hyderabad is equipped with mine if a recording has simultaneous origins as
ger prints for personal identifi
JLL state-of-art technology
find answers to the acoustic events it represents or if it has been
__________
______ „ to
____
cation. In fact, it was the
questions that beat detectives of the highest order altered or edited.
Government of India which first
So when CBI wanted an answer.to the question if
To help the forensic expert in the detection
adopted ‘identification of per
sons by finger print comparison ’ Dilip Singh Judeo claimed correctly that the video process the instrumental tools used a cross-pulse
in which
he is seen accepting
cash to help
generators,• video
methods’. Thus, a finger print
—
--------------------------umhi----------- an _monitor, frequency
___
■------signal
;—-• genbureau was established in 1897—Australian mining company corner a lease in’ “ erators, oscilloscopes, waveform mohitors/vec-
From a simple lie detector test to DNA
analysis and brain mapping,forensic
science has gone ahead.
VEENA BHARATHI highlights some of
the behind-the-scene action
in crime detection
The present day Sherlock Holmes
in Bengal. Only later <w was this
method introduced in Scotland
Yard in 1901.
Now, for the last two decades
with the changing crime.sce
nario and the high professional
ism and integrity shown by
forensic scientists, there have
been more interactive and pro
ductive analytical sessions tak-
India was a ploy, it sent, the video cassette to
torscopes, alignment tapes, and magnetic develop
APFSL. The lab is the only one'in the country that
has sophisticated state of the art digital enhance
ment systems equipment to carry out such tests.'
And the Judeo tape was the first one it tested. Two
years ago the Tehelka cassettes had to be sent
abroad for similar tests. .
After putting it through various tests con
cerned with video forensics, the APSFL declared
the Judeo cassette as genuine.
» . i, i.ai-x- < >
of the authenticity
ing solutions.
Lastly magnetic development of the original
videotape can often yield important audio and
control track timing and misalignment informa
tion. For example if an 8 mm original tape was
subsequently subjected to the firll-width erase
head action of a VCR, the resultant erase head sig
nature could be visualized on the video micro
scope and documented to establish the authentic
ity
degree methods (extremely violent forms) for Civil
~
Liberties (Karnataka) constantly warning
extraetinginformationfrom crime suspects. In the u
the police against the use strong-arm tactics, the
last five years, third degree methods have turned emphasis today is more on scientific methods of
out to be a risky proposition for the police due to investigation. While the Finger Prints squad of the
increased awareness about human rights among City Police continues to track down offenders, cel
criminals, the poor physical conditions of suspects lular technology is increasingly becoming the
and a pro-active judiciary.
.
most sought-after tool for the policemen to catch
Things have reached such a passe that crimi criminals. Though no formal training has been
given with regard to cellular technology, a few
Human Rights Commission (NHRC) guidelines on • police officers have become experts in nabbing the
arrest In fact, a few members of rowdy Tanveer's criminals with the help of mobile phones. In fact.
gang and extortionist Praveen alias Malayali none of the accused in the multi-crore stamp paper
Praveen have written to the NHRC stating that racket have been subjected to third degree methods
there was a threat to their lives from about ten by Stampit, the investigation team. All the arrests
police officers.
have been effected on the basis of interception of
Weak physique of the criminals is another rea telephonic conversation the accused had with the
son that prevents police from employing third kingpin, Abdul Karim Telgi alias Lala.
degree methods. A police inspector who has served
Obviously with white collared and cyber crimi
more than ten years in the City says, “Earlier, row nals being more shrewd, it is high time the police
dies were strong-hearted and had a great physique. honed their investigative skills and came out with
When hit, lathis not only rebounded but used to innovative non-coercive methods of interrogation,
break. However, the physical build of criminals instead of rolling up shirt sleeves for that thrash
are poor these days with as many as 95 per cent of ingspree!
them addicted to drugs and suffering frdm various
ailments. No officer would like to get suspended by
> E= thrashing a weakling who is in his custody"
Well, even criminals have started pressing the .
panic button for the police. Recently, one of the sus
pects bit his tongue when a constable raised his
lathi on him at Banaswadi police station. "On see
ing the suspect bleeding profusely the police per
sonnel panicked and let him go. Even the other sus
pects were set free with a warning that they should
7 ■ not speak about the incident,” a'police officer said
\
while pointing outhow the lathi was being relegat- .
ed to the background. In fact, the City that used to
witness at least three lock-up death cases a year
has not seen a single one in the last two years.
nals have today started quoting the National
Changing scenario
While some old-hands in the police department
crib that criminal cases cannot be detected unless
laws are bent, a majority of the officers are turning
out to be dynamic dissenters. Sandwiched between
human rights activists and output-demanding
superiors, police, officers in Bangalore City are
coming out with indigenous methods of interroga
tion, besides taking advantage of the strides being
made in forensic sciences.
The interrogation technique to be adopted
depends on the officer who is investigating the
case. Some of the non-lathi techniques used by the
City Police in recent times are given below.
Boozing z.Here, the investigating officer will
speak to the suspect in such a way that the latter
begins to feel that the officer is not serious in pur
suing the case. Next, the officer offers him the
liquor of his choice. Under the influence of alco
hol, the narration starts. In fact, using this tech
nique, the police managed to recover a service
revolver stolen from a City Armed Reserve consta
Third degree methods used by Bangalore
ble who was attached to a High Court judge. "The
Police-;
suspect was subjected to interrogation for two days
A crime suspect, on being brought to the poo but he maintained that he knew nothing. It was
lice.station, could either be subjected to a ques
only after he was offered his favorite drink,
McDowell Whisky, that he admitted that he was in ‘ tion-answer session or to third-degree methods.
It all depends on the heinousness of the crime
possession of the weapon," said an investigator.
and the psyche of the investigator If the suspect
Sleeping: This is a technique used on criminals
is a hard nut to crack, the methods employed to
with a strong appetite. The suspect is served with
bring out the truth will also be harsh.
D biriyani and other food from time to time, but will
Some of the common third degree methods
not be allowed either to sit on the floor or to sleep
used by the City police are;
for two days. Lack of proper sleep leads to indiges
Basunde: Also called lathi, this is the first
tion and subsequently body ache, besides causing •
step. The suspect is made to keep both his hands
sweating and irritation in the eyes. As the suspect
on the table and his fingers are hit with a lathi (a
suffers he is asked to reveal the truth if he has to be
stick).
•
o allowed to sleep. This worked in the case of Kumar
Lala: The suspect is beaten with a lathi on the
Yeriyur, from whom the police managed to recover
-soles of his feet
50 stolen two-wheelers.
Ulta: The accused is hung upside down and
Probing: One of the most effective methods,
tortured. (A lean person cannot withstand this
„ here the suspect is questioned non-stop for about
eight to ten hours. All the minute details given by ; treatment)
Aeroplane: The hands of the suspect are tied
:
him are written down. The lengthy question?
answer session will usually frustrate the suspect : tightly behind his back and he is lifted in the air
with a pulley. The suspect will not be able to bear
' n and chances of him making contradictory state
the pain, in the shoulder as the entire body
ments or trying to fix his associates are quite high.
, . Following this, the investigating officer checks the ■ weight is passed on to the shoulder
Bombay Cut: Hands of the suspect are tied
i
veracity of statements made by the suspect This is
behind his back, a pipe is placed under his knees
i
a laborious job, but it pays. Secondly, the officer can
and he is elevated just above the ground level.
;
not only ascertain the truth but also trap others
j involved in the crime. This technique was used in The entire body weight is on his knees causing
enormous pain.
the Vineet Vachani kidnap case that rocked the
iBurmappa: A small leather belt is used to hit
City in the year 2000. The mastermind of the kidthe suspect onhis posterior and back after pour
I
nap, Sanjay Saighal spilled the beans after he was
ing water all over his body.
i
subjected to intense grilling.
Ruler: The suspect is made to lie down with
Assuring: This technique is used on criminal
gangs. The officer identifies a weak-minded mem- . his hands tied behind his back and two consta
bles rub his body with a huge wooden ruler (This
. ber of the gang, picks him and coaxes him to
•
is
dangerous as it can rupture the veins and
become an approver. But this does not work with
cause haeinorrhage.)
organized gangs that operate in the City’s
Bellary Gundu: Also known as Hyderabad
Shivajinagar and adjoining areas as a majority of
: Gundu, chilli powder is put into the anus of the
them do not trust the police.
suspect. (This is not tried on suspects who have
Browbeating: When assurances do not work,
piles).
i■
intimidation works, police believe. This technique
■ The third degree!
.
+OO OI
u
1991,
when
ueputy
Conservator
of
Forests
Srinivas’s headless dead body
was found in the BR-MM hills
range, the body showed three
types of grievous injuries. Gun
shot wound, decapitation and
extensive burns. The CoD had
requested the expertise of
Forensic Science Specialist of
Karnataka State Laboratory Dr
B M Mohan in restructuring the
sequence of events, which fur
ther aided their investigations.
The auegcu
alleged kingpin of
me
-- the
—
_stamp paper ---*
Ahrtill
racket,
Si
<11 Up
--------, Aoaui
..
. Lala
. ... alias Telgi, was on
on
Karim
December 22 subjected to narco
analysis test, also known as the
Truth serum test’.
*******
The Forensic Science Labora
tory Bangalore adopted latest
techniques such as the Newtron
Activation Analysis and accu
rate ballistic methods which led
to the'conviction of Ponnappa,
the man who shot his brother
Chengappa dead in front of their
mother following a property dis
pute in Coorg, three years ago.
Ponnappa’s counsel argued that
the accidental gun shot was trig
gered in a scuffle, but the ballis
tic tests pointed out that the shot
was on purpose.
The Forensic scientists man
aged to unravel the truth in the
sensational Halikhed B human
sacrifice case, that rocked. Gulbarga district two years back, by
subjecting the suspects to poly
graph test The police, who sus
pected the handiwork of black
magicians behind the death of
the ten-year-old boy, were sur
prised when forensic investiga
tions revealed that it was a case
of murder for vengeance. .
OR the HOD of Forensic
medicine at the Victoria
Hospital, Bangalore, Dr P
K Devdas, 'each day is a
challenge’. Since it is not
only the ‘autopsy or the post
mortem procedures’ which keep
him busy,. Dr Devdas is used to
facing day-to-day medico legal
dilemmas and solving them by
accurate decision making, as in
the case of an FIR filed by the
parents against their daughter
who had eloped and married her
lover against her parents’ wish“The girl claimed that she
was four months pregnant. The
police officer brought her to us to
ascertain her age. I could not
advise her to undergo an X-ray
examination for determining the
bone maturity (and thus her
age), because a pregnant woman
should not be exposed to X-rays
especially in the initial months.
Hence I referred her to a lady
obstetrician at Vanivilas hospi
tal to know her medical condi
tion and then decide the further
steps of evaluation,” says Dr
Devdas.
The girl in question seemed
well above 18 years of age,
though her parents had claimed
that she wass not yet a major and
thus had registered a case of kid
nap against their son-in-law.
Forensic medicine and foren
sic-science experts, clinicalcriminal psychologists are truly
the
“behind
the
scene
heroes/heroines” who have been
working day and night to con
duct and give autopsy reports, to
aid the law in reconstruction of
crime scenario, in substantiat
ing the investigating officers'
findings and in preventing the
innocent victims or suspects
from getting convicted.
From a simple lie detector test to
h
analysis and brain mapping,forensic
science has gone ahead.
VEENA BHARATHI highlights some of
the behind-the-scene action
in crime detection
When a deceptive examinee is
subjected to this test, his or her
intrinsic pattern of reacting to
stressful situation will elicit cer
tain body responses. These
responses are recorded by the
three components or the sensors
of a polygraph machine, which
are attached to the subject (or the
suspect). The pneumograph
records respiratory variations
such as a subject’s rhythm, depth
and rate of breathing, a
Galvanometer records the skin
responses to electrical stimula
tion and a cardio-spygmograph
records a subject’s blood volume,
pulse rate and blood pressure.
“Polygraph test is conducted
in three phases. A pretest inter
view, chart recording and diag-
ject. Due to lack of inhibition
produced by the drug, the
accused talks freely and
responds truthfully to verbal
questions. We make sure that all
the emergency medical meas
ures are available to the person
while, undergoing the test,
including the presence of an
anaesthetist to monitor the vital
body functions,” says Dr Malini,
stressing that a neuro-psycholo
gy background of the examiner
is very essential.
"Narcoanalysis is a very sci
entific and a humane approach
in dealing with an accused’s psy
chological expressions, definite
ly better than third degree treat
ment to extract truth from an
accused,” affirms Dr Malini.
Origins
ers, traces of the drug could get
The word‘Forensic’is derived deposited at the hair roots. In
from the Latin word ‘Forensis’ this case no deposits of any
wmch means‘of the Forum’. In drugs was found. It was an obviRome, Forum’ was
meeting ous conclusion
...............................
that the lady was
place whefe civlc and legal mat
administered an overdose of
ters were discussed by those sedatives and was buried alive in
vested with public responsibility. a state of semi-coma. Our find
Forensic medicine was earlier ings corroborated the details
known as ‘Medical jurispru
dence
In 1858 Sir William
Herschel of the Indian Civil
Service first used ‘Modern dacty
lography’ or application of fin
HE Andhra Pradosh Forensic Science recording. Authenticity analysis Is used to deter
ger prints for personal identifi
Laboratory at Hyderabad is equipped with mine if a recording has simultaneous origins as
cation. In fact, it was the
state-of-art technology to find answers to the acoustic events it represents or if it has been
Government of India which first
questions that beat detectives of the highest order altered or edited.
adopted ‘identification of per
So when CBI wanted an answer to the question if
To help the forensic expert in the detection
sons by finger print comparison ■ Dilip Singh Judeo claimed correctly that the video process the instrumental tools used a cross-ptdse
methods’. Thus, a finger print
in which
accepting
- —-- he
-- is
—.seen
----- ------r—o cash to help an monitor frequency generators, video signal genbureau was established in 1897----- jAustralian mining company comer a lease in"-erators, oscilloscopes, waveform monitors/vecin Bengal. Only later o.i was this
India 7?,®
was a ploy, it sent
video cassette to torscopes.alignmenttapes.andmagneticdevelopsent, the .video
method introduced in Scotland
APFSL. The lab is the only one'in the country that ing solutions.
Yard in'1901.
has sophisticated state of the art digital enhance------ magnetic development of the original
Lastly,
Now, for the last two decades
ment systems equipment to carry out such tests. videotape can often yield important audio and
with the changing crime.sce
And the Judeo tape was the first one it tested. Two control track timing and misalignment informa
nario and the high professional
years ago :the Tehelka cassettes had to be sent tion. For example if an 8 mm original tape was
ism and integrity shown by
abroad for similar tests.
subsequently subjected to the full-width erase
forensic scientists, there have
After putting it through various tests con head action of a VCR, the resultant erase head sig- •
been more interactive and pro
cerned with video forensics, the APSFL declared nature could be visualized on the video micro
the Judeo cassette as genuine.
__
I and documented to establish the authenticductive analytical sessions tak
scope
Explaining the intricacies of the authenticity ' ity
ing place between police offi
analysis, APFSL director K P C Gandhi said it is a
1Technology is today’s Sherlock Holmes.
cials, forensic science experts,
very time intensive task requiring a millisecond- -—
investigating agencies and foren
K Akbileshwan
by-millisecond detailed examination of the
sic medicine specialists.
The presemt day Sherlock Holmes
Says Dr B M Mohan, Director
of Forensic Sciences Laboratory
of Karnataka Government,
Department of Police, Bangalore
“hen deputy conservator of
forests Srinivas was brutally
murdered by Veerappan and his
gang, the CoD asked us to recon
struct the sequence of events.
The victim had suffered gunshot
wounds and his beheaded body
had been burnt. The bullet
injuries indicated two entry
wounds; though only one exit
wound was seen at the victim’s
back. We found out that one bul
let was lodged in the left ventri
cle of the heart, which happened
to be the first bullet shot at
Srinivas and the other bullet had
gone ‘through and through’ the
chest thus indicating an exit
wound also.
“We also came to a conclusion
that petrol had been used to burn
the body to make it unrecognisable. The sequence of injuries
were recorded as two gun shot
wounds from a distance of 20-25
feet and from a height of 10-15
feet followed by decapitation or
beheading’ and burning of the
victim’s body by using petrol.
The victim’s blood level estimanr? °a “^oxyhaemoglobin also
Provided us with clues about
provided by the victim’s daugh.
ter and other eye witness5
accounts.”
According to Dr Mohan inj
cases of sexual assault, the.
assailant usually inflicts multi’
ple injuries on the victim.
During the tussle the assailantt
may also suffer bite marks and1
other injuries inflicted upon him!
by the victim. “Trace evidence>
materials on the victim of the\
assault, on the weapon, on the,
person of the suspect and at the
scene of crime are analysed by
sophisticated laboratory meth.
ods. We examine the blood stain[
patterns, edges of the dried-up,
stain both at the place of the,
offence and at the place of dis.
posal of the body From the scene■
where crime may have takenj
place, if the victim’s body has,
been shifted, we inspect the,
clothing for stains of semen andi
blood. The clothing may also,
have carried soil, hair samples off
both the victims and the offend
ers and other residues. All these,
trace evidence materials will bej
scientifically examined.”
Criminal psychology
Forensic scientists are fur
ther helped in their marathonj
task of interpretation of the,
crime by clinical or criminal[
psychologists. Dr Malini, who,
. works at the State Forensic.
anot?'Sl)rBMMohannarrating ■ Sciences Laboratory as the.
ladvhlr°n’80ing case in W?1C^ a Clinical-Criminal Psychologist
as drugged and buried has a rich experience as a psy
BX^
ttleB»ndRoad« chologist . at NIMHANS,
ago ?T°re ®°re than five ye^ Bangalore.
Says Dr Malini, “In order to,
interpret the behaviour of the,
criminal (or thesuspect) and cor
roborate the investigating offi,
cers' observation and the saying,
®”n and stage °f eXP°SUre
ON?
analysis and hair root
ruled* > carried out. We
addicts ut the lady’s habitual
of the suspect, we carry out psy
cho analytical tests such as a
nolvgraph test. Narco analysis
and Brain-mapping.”
A lie-detector or a polygraph
on the
me asauxupixvii
test depends■ on
assumption
is an
an interaction
interaction
that there is
nosis. During the pretest interview, we clarify the purpose of
the test with the suspect. The
examiner (a clinical or a criminal psychologist) would have
prepared a set of test questions
depending upon the relevant
information about the'case provided by the investigating officer, such as the criminal charges
against the. person and statements made by the suspect”
Lying by a suspect is accompanied by specific, perceptible
physiological and behavioural
changes and the “guilt epnsciousness” in a suspect is
exposed by the ‘sensors’ which
record various parameters such
as the blood pressure level, respiratory rate, pulse rate and a wave
pattern in the graph. The findings of a polygraph test are open
for a judicial scrutiny
“The Karnataka high court
has accepted polygraph test findings as evidence in a murder
case. In fact, a Calcutta Court
convicted a few police officers
(who were also the suspects
along,with the accused based on
the circumstantial evidence)
when they refused to take the
polygraph test, treating their
refusal to take the test as yet
another ground for their culpability and involvement in the
offence,” says Dr Malini, citing a
documented pews report
Narco-analysis
Another ‘Criminal - assess
ment’ scientific test is the ‘Narco
analysis’.
“This procedure is conducted
in government hospitals after a
court order is passed instructing
us to conduct the test. The
accused person’s detailed med
ical examination is carried out.
Only
is medically
---. if
- the
-accused
-------- ----------------,
“ undergo the procedure,
small doses of intravenous infn.
infu
srnaU
sion of sodium pentothal is
administered. This is an effecfive and non-hazardous method
Recent research has shown
that electrical brain responses
can be a reliable-indicator of
information processing activi
ties in the brain. This method
called the ‘Brain-wave finger
printing” was researched and
patented by neuroscientist Dr
Lawrence Farwell (Director and
Chief Scientist “Brain wave
Science” IOWA).
Dr Farwell has published that
a MERMER (Memory and
Encoding Related Multifaceted
Electro Encephalographic Res
ponse) is initiated in the accused
when his brain recognises note
worthy information pertaining
to the crime. These stimuli are
called the ‘target stimuli’. In a
nutshell, Brain finger printing
test matches information stored
in the brain with information
from the crime scene.
Brain mapping
The
Forensic
science
Laboratory in Bangalore is the
first and the only centre in India,
which is conducting the Brain
mapping or Brain-finger print
ing test “We use an equipment
called the ‘neuroscan’ and obtain
an
EEG
(Electro
Encephalogram) and ERP (Event
Related Potential) both of which
are studied to analyse the case.
There is an in-built programme,
which automatically removes
responses, obtained due to ‘ten
sions’ unrelated to the crime.
The accuracy rate is 99.99 per
cent and in USA, the FBI have
been making use of ‘Brain-map
ping technique’ to convict crimi
nals,” says Dr Malini.
Studies have shown that an
innocent suspect’s brain would
not have stored or recorded cer
tain information, which an actu
al perpetrator’s brain would
have stored.
Indee, from fingerprinting
____________
v____________
r
and DNA analysis
to brain mapping, forensic science has made
rapid strides.
Blat
Mai
Cya
MessageThis gives links to a number of reports and commentaries on the announcement
i>y JvOfCail SCiciltiStS that they li&Vc CxOilCu a liUiilciil CillDiyO.
STlIliV3S2Il
Genetic Crossroads #37
The Newsletter of the Center for Genetics and Society
Special issue on the Korean Cloning Announcement
February 17.2004
/lulling rximvunucuiciii.:
1.
2.
3.
Critical comments in news coverage
CGS CuiluIieiluuY
Other critical commentary
TIT. Newsletter Subscription and Formats
I. IN inn WAKn OF inn, KOREAN CLONING ANNOUNCEMENT: AN
ANALYSTS
CGS has prepared an analysis oi the state of the science, policy and politics
concerning research cloning in the wake of the Korean cloning announcement. Key
excerpts:
" 1 he announccmcat that Korean scientists have created clonal human embryos
puts new urgency behind the need for effective public oversight and control of new
tinmen genetic and reproductive technologies White cloning techniques may someday
have legitimate therapeutic applications, in the short term they make it far easier for
rogue scientists to attempt to clone a child, and set the stage for other abuses. Given the
absence of effective controls and regulations over these technologies in the great majority
of countries, the Korean experiments are ill-considered and irresponsible.
"If real progress is to be made towards breaking the current stalemate on cloning
tr> re-examine their continued opposition to legislation that bans reproductive cloning but
uOcS ilOt 3150 Oaii icSCcilCil CiOililig. iilc jduSjl! AdiUilllStfdtiOil ilCCoS to fcCOilSiddl its
strictures on funding for embryo research. Liberals and progressives need to realize that
cloning and ether new genetic technologies open the door to potentially horrific new
forms of eugenics and social exclusion, and should be viewed with the utmost concern.
Scientists need to realize that society as a whole has the right and responsibility to set
guidelines for profoundly consequential technologies. Scientists also need to hold each
other accountable for raising false hopes among vulnerable constituencies and lay
publics."
The foil text is at:
http://www.genet.ics-and-society.Org/newsletter/index.html#I
H. KEY LINKS AND COMMENTARY
1. Critical comments in news coverage
Initial news coverage ol the Korean auuoimcemcul significantly overstated the
near-term prospects for therapeutic applications of cloning technology, and downplayed
Rick Weiss. "S. Korean Scientists Describe Cloning," Washington Post
(February 13)
" The South Korean team also provided previously undisclosed details about their
experiments revealim* that th^r technique had not worked when they tried to clone male
ceiis-a fact that caiis into question its therapeutic potential for men..Tn the ethics arena.
some experts raised questions about the way female volunteers were recruited for the
study, which carnet* mouest medical risks and oll'ered them no benefits."
http://www.genetics-and-society.org/resources/items/20040213 washpost weiss.html
Rosie Mestei, "Clone Is One Step in Extended Process,” Los Angeles Times
(February 13)
"The report of a successfully cloned human embryo was a milestone in the field
of stem cell research, but the medical promise of such endeavors still lies years in the
future, scientists said Thursday."
http://www.genetics-and-societv.org/resources/items/20040213 1atimes_mestel.html
"dofiiiig surprise sparks raging controversy," Singapore Straits limes (February*
14)
"Even among those pursuing cell replacement treatments, many say that
therapeutic cioniug would be too inefficient and expensive, and that using stem cells horn
adults was more practical."
http:/Avww.gcnctics-aad- socicty.org/rcsourccs/itcms/20040214 straitstimcs.html
Gina Kofela, "Despite Advance in Cloning, Scientists Are Tempering Hope With
Reality," New York Times (February 15)
Wc arc mindfiil that, this field has been overhyped,' said Dr. Irving Weissman,
who directs the stem cell institute at Stanford University."
http://www.genetic5-and-society.Ofg/fesources/items/20040215_nytimes_kolata.html
Two recent articles featuring Center for Genetics and. Societv staff also addressed
CxOiliUg issues:
CvrS i director Richard Hayes. "Selective Science." TomPaine.com (February 12)
"The. birth of the first genetically modified child would be a watershed moment in
xxuxuoix hiSlviy'. xt Wvuld set oil a vlxoixx Ox CvCHlS uxUt Wutiltx xCCix mUCK upOJx llxCiUSClveS ill
wavs impossible to control."
f*Q?v\ /fiaptyiro'? o~Frn /TT^/'QG^'7
J^rTrv /Aynnv
Pedro F. Frisneda. "T,a clonacion. mas alia de una novella (Cloning beyond
Allans Rosario Isasi
"According to.Dr. Isasi. [Hjumanity is facing a policy deficit, both national and
international, concerning control of the new technologies of human genetic
modification."
i. M
vy
;
i > 1
i
in
light B/u nun
Judy Norsigian. "Road to Cloning: Caution Ahead." New York Times (February
"To the Editor: Therapeutic applications of embryo cloning - still a distant
promise - cannot be developed without firct overcoming significant research hurdles with
embryo stem ceils derived from non-clonai embryos. Sadly, abortion politics have
impeded much of this stem cell research. Moreover, many scientific companies involved
in commercializing embryonic stem cell research have acknowledged repeatedly how
impractical it would be to develop therapies from stem cells derived from clonal
embryos The news from South Korea underscores once again the critical need for both
an effective global ban on human reproductive cloning and better information about
fertility drugs used during egg extraction. It is a myth that those drugs have been
adequately studied and that reasonable informed consent is possible. Finally, because
embryo cloning is the gateway to genetic modifications that go far beyond medical
treatment into the realm of designbabies, we need a much broader discussion of this
contentious issue."
http://www.gcnctics-and-socicty.org/rcsourccs/itcms/20040217_nytimcs_norsigian.html
"Human Genetics Alert UK criticises cloning researchers' irresponsibility"
(February 12)
"Responding io today’s news of the cloning of human embryos, HGA's Director,
Dr David King said: ’ So-called therapeutic cloning will never be possible in medical
practice, because it requires hundreds of eggs per patient, which are not available. Serious
scientists, and the companies involved in commercialising embryonic stem cell research,
have repeatedly acknowledged this.' But by publishing this technique, what the Korean
researchers have done is to give a big boost to those who want to make cloned babies.
Before there is a global ban on reproductive cloning, people, like Professor Zavos and rhe
Raelians will be able to copy the technique, to clone babies. The Koreans have been
irresponsible in the extreme. The international community must now act immediately to
ban reproductive cloning. There should be an international moratorium on any further
embryo cloning research until this is in place."'
Tor further information, email info@hgaiert.org
doners," The Guardian (February
"What is clear is that the rush to experiment with human embrvos is, to say the
Issst, prematurs,
by
lust for scientific plcry Th.*??? ? clsur scn.sc of the
medicai imperatives. As the procedures involved in therapeutic cloning are almost
identical to those needed for reproductive cloning, the Korean achievement brings that
of the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Authority', calls cowboy cloners1. It is this
cloning th?t throws the moral issues
into such sharp relief."
hffr>7/www. genetic.s-and-society.org/resoiirces/items/20040216 guardian rose.html
4.
Earlier critical assessments
Critical assessments of research cloning have been made for some time, but are
rarely featured in major press outlets. Exceptions include:
Peter Aldhous, "Can They Rebuild Us?" Nature (April 5,2001)
"The idea of th erapenftn cloning, which offers the potential of growing
replacement tissues perfectly matched to their recipients, is falling from favour.[M]any
experts do not now expect therapeutic cloning to have a large clinical impact."
http://v.~»w.gcaetics-and-socictv .org/resources/items/20010405 nature aldhous.html
TVmgp Czcllcne, '’OIohc Profit? TTnlikely- The Technology's
Arpin 1
Viability Faces iviany Hurdles," Los Angeles Times (May 10, 2002)
"As chief executive of Gcron Corporation, [Thomas Okarma] has no interest in
using cloned embryos to produce customized treatments tor disease. flic odds favoring
success are vanishingly small,' he said, and the costs are daunting. Okarma said it would
take thousands of [human] eggs on an accemhly line' to produce a custom therapy for a
single person. ’ The piocess is a nonstarter, commercially ,' he said.
" Wlicrc do y*ou source that many eggs' Sourcing human eggs is a contentious
issue m itself,' said Alan Kobins, chief scientific officer of BresaGen Ltd., a ceil therapy
comnany in Australia and Athens, Ga. I! is no! something we wan! to ge! involved in.'
'According to Lutz Gicbcl, CEO of CyThera, a cell therapy company in San
Diego. ' (Therapeutic cloning] is not commercially viable. Quality control is difficult; the
FDA can’t regulate it, [and] no one can afford the treatment.' He sard that a complete ban
on human cloning would have onlv a limited impact on corporate product
hrrp://www. geneTics-and-societv.org/resource-s/iTems/zQ0z05 10 latimes geliene.html
Andrew Pollack, "Use of Cloning to Tailor Treatment Has Big Hurdles,
Including Cost" New York limes (December 18,2001)
"'It's too laborious and costly to employ as a routine therapeutic procedure,' says
Dr. Alan Colman, the research director atPPT, Therapeutics, the Scottish company which
helped to clone Dolly the. sheep .'They're never going to have enough women's eggs
available to do it,' said Dr. Alan Trounson, director ol the Nxonash Institute ol
Reproduction and Development in Australia and an adviser to ES Cell International, a
http://www.genetics-and-society.org/resources/iterns/z001121 S nytimes poliack.html
m. NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIPTION AND FORMATS
ror information on subscribing and unsubscribing to the CGS email newsletter
Genetic Crossroads, and on changing between enhanced HTML and plain text formats,
gv U> illtpJ/ WWvv.&CilvuCa-dilU~oOCiCiy.OrsyilCvvSiCuCr.
Per ift forty* qt* shout the 0enter for Genetics and Society go to
h tip: /7www. gened cs-and-socieiy.org/ahout.
NEWSLETTER I RESOURCES I SITE MAP | ABOUT US
OVEP.VIEW 1 TECHNOLOGIES 1 POLICIES 1 ANALYSIS 1 PERSPECTIVES
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