6.2.1 - Bioethics

Question 1

Bioethics and social implications of biotechnology usage

Answer 1

1. Social implications

• Referes to the results on society, or part of society or an event or action
• Biotechnological concerns: bioterrorism, laboratory production safety (safety of volunteers in studies), ethical issues, harm to the environment.

Issues cover:

• Organ trafficking
• End of life
• Human clothing
• Access to medicines and health care devices
• Protecting the integrity of volunteers in therapeutic trials.

Ethics

• Study of why certain decisions are understood to be morally wrong, and the reasons viewed behind making these judgements.
• Bioethics involved using an ethical approach to make decisions about biological issues.
  1. Ecological concerns
  2. Welfare
  3. Equity in access

Question 2

Ethical framework

might just be nice to reference key phrases (?)

Answer 2

Used to make ethical judgements:

• Rights and responsibilities: right of one to imply the responsibility/duty of another to ensure those rights.
• Consequentialism: weighing the benefits and harms resulting from our actions.
• Autonomy: should individuals have the right to choose for themselves, or does one decision count for everyone?
• Virtue ethics: emphasising decision that are in line with accepted good characteristics: honesty, kindness, patience.

Question 2

CRISPR-Cas 9 Ethical implications

Answer 2

Safety: off target effects (edits in wrong place) and mosaicism (not all cells carry edits) → germline genome editing is not deemed safe yet. Additionally, may not be necessary due to IVF and PGT

• However if both parents are homozygous for a disease causing variant, polygenic disorders, PGT is limited and CRISPR is more effective.

Enhancement:

• Danger of using gene editing for non-therapeutic/enhancement purposes. And if germline editing is not confirmed safe yet, this desire could be dangerous.
• However, there is a moral imperative to cure genetic diseases. Concerns about enhancement could be managed through policy and regulation.
• Concerns of differing regulations between countries when the human genome is universal. May promote medical tourism to countries with more lax regulations.

Informed Consent: editing of embryos and future generations - however parents already make many decisions that affect their future children.

Justice and equity: increasing existing disparities in access to health care and other interventions - danger of creating classes of individuals by the quality of their engineered genome.

Ethical implications for research involving embryos: germline editing research and regulations need embryos for trials - however, many have moral and religious objections to the use of human embryos for research. However, important to address questions about human biology and its reception of gene editing.

• Some countries use non/viable embryos leftover from IVF.
• Embryos created expressly for research.
• Raises the question of start of life, experimentation on potential for life (rather than living, it is experimented on)

Question 3

Potential benefits of gene editing to society

Answer 3

• To the patient (cure), the family (low cost), government/tax payer (providing technology), broader community (cure is helping the people).

Question 4

Summary of potential benefits to society

Answer 4

While biotechnology may raise social, ethical and environmental concerns, the field continues to bring about new scientific advances worldwide, and improve lifestyles and living standards.

• Improve food quality
• Disease detection
• Cures
• Gene therapy to treat human disease
• GMOs to alleviate hunger
• Plant banks and cyropreservation to mainain biodiversity and for wildlife conservation
• Plant and algae-based resources to develop next-generation biofuels.
• Potential to eliminate certain genetic disorders through gene editing tools.

Question 5

Ethics and social implications

Answer 5

Selective breeding: benefits society by making agricultural practices more productive, but when the principles of selective breeding are applied to humans there is the potential for breaches of ethics - attmepts to create a race of humans with “superior” genetic qualities

• E.g. Lebensborn in Nazi Germany was an extreme example of the Aryan program

Drug trials: principles of research ethics were breached by testing on vulnerable or terminally ill, subjecting them to harm.

• E.g. the development of chemotherapy as cancer treatment caused fatalities in early trials, and severe side effects

Cloning: Allows for the precise introduction of genes into cells, making it easier to alter the human genone and create transgenic species. Concerns of “tampering with nature” extremely, and altering the path of evolution.

Question 6

GMOs

Answer 6

Consequences to altering the natural state of an organism through foreign gene expression - changes to metabolism, growth rate, response to external environmental factors. Therefore, this also impacts the natural environment in which the organism proliferates.

• Exposure to new allergens

Horizontal gene transfer of pesticide, herbicide, antibiotic resistance
E.g. Transfer of antibiotic resistant genes to gut flora (bacterial vectors are ingested and transfer).

• E: Public health concern: scientists endanger public health
• S: infections harder to treat (social: strain on healthcare systems, equity issue: increased dependency on stronger drugs).
  E.g. allow previously innocuous plants to grow uncontrolled.
  HOWEVER natural horizontal gene transfer occurs at a very low rate, and often cannot be simulated without active modification of genome is increase usceptibility.

Vertical gene transfer
Enhanced mating advantages of GMO individuals.
E.g. Transgenic Atlantic salmon (grow faster, larger) outcompetes wild mates when released.

• However, reduction in the viability of their offspring (less agile → reduced predator avoidance, higher metabolic demands → vulnerable to starvation. In general less viable as NOT ADAPTED due to genetic modifications).
• New transgene introduced into a wild fish population may eventually threaten the viability of both the wild-type and the GMOs.

Unintended impacts on other species
E.g. Bt Corn Controversy
The seeds containing genes for recombinant proteins (toxic bacterial) exposed non target organisms to a new toxic compounds in the environment.

• Monarch larvae mortality was higher exposed to this pollen.
• HOWEVER this study was disputed (the importance of peer-reviewed scientific research!!!), citing unrealisticaly high concentration of pollen, migratory patterns of monarch would largely avoid corn shedding pollen.
• Bt remains approved.

Unintended economic consequences
Ownership/patenting: classified as a “discovery” or an “invention”? Is it even ethical to patent biotechnologies?
E.g. Bt cotton loses its efficacy after one generation.

• Smaller farmers would be outcompeted by recombinant mono-cultures/monopolies accrued by companies e.g Monsaot
  Legal concerns when cross-pollination occurs between patented crops. This is a natural process, but this “contamination” the company has legal grounds to sue the farmer for breaching commercial agreements.

Religious + philosophical concerns
Not all consumers realise that GMOs have reached the market - this is unethical as consumer choice and assumed risk is as important as safeguards to prevent GMO mixing.

• Due to debates surrounding right to “play God,”
• Introduction of foreign material into foods that are abstained from for religious reasons.
• Some believe that tampering with nature is intrinsically wrong, and others maintain that inserting plant genes in animals, or vice versa, is immoral.

Question 7

Genetic engineering of animals

Answer 7

Genetic engineering technology in:

• Companion: GloFish an ornamental pet fish which expresses fluroescent proteins, hypoallergenic cats created from knockout gene techniques, cloning deceased pets.
• wild: cloning to conserve extinct/endangered species by maintaining genetic diversity in small populations.. Plans for thylacine and wooly mammoth
• farm: increase productivity, quality (goats have been genetically engineered to express human lysozyme in their milk), reducing agricultural pollution (Enviropig).
• Medical/industrial: ATryn goats, spider goats
• Models (research): transgenic/knockout mice can define roles of specific genes. Scientists can develop models of Alzheimer’s, cancer to test treatment. Xenotransplantation: currently at basic research stage due to risk of cross-species disease transfer.

Animal welfare: many embryos that undergo genetic engineering procedures do not survive.

• There is a significant rise in animal use as research projects increase in quantity, required for the creation and maintenance of new genetically engineered strains
• Many early transgenic livestock had unexpected side effects: lameness, susceptibility to stress, reduced fertility ← due to testing, animals undergo undue distress/short lifespan.
• Abnormalities in cloned animals e.g. extended gestation, large birth weights

An ethical process must include:

• Close monitoring of newly established transgenic species due to variety of phenotypes than regular animals.
• Animal staff alerted to particular welfare needs of the animal; its parents recorded for appropriate husbandry.
• Monitoring can reduce after genetically engineered animal line is established and the welfare concerns are known

Genetic engineering can be viewed as a logical continutation of selective breeding

• However, not every worldview deems human life more important than animal life.
• Ultimate cost: violation of species integrity / disregard for the inhernent value of animals. Increasing “assymetry” in human-animal relationhips.

Due to potential moral obligation to create new/more efficient human medicine through transgenic animals, acceptance of genetic engineering varies in application - not always principled. More accepting of biomedical applications than food production.