In an Italian court, a murderer has just had his sentence reduced because the judge agreed that the man’s genes predisposed him to violent behavior.
Abdelmalek Bayout, an Algerian immigrant to Italy, admitted to stabbing and killing Walter Felipe Novoa Perez, a Colombian, when the two men got in a fight over the kohl eye make-up that Bayout was wearing. At trial, the defense team argued that Bayout was mentally ill at the time of the murder; the judge agreed that his psychiatric condition was a mitigating factor, and gave him a reduced sentence of 9 years. But at an appeal hearing, Bayout’s lawyers argued that his sentence should be shortened further based not just on psychiatric evaluations, but also brain scans and genetic testing.
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The South Korean stem cell scientist who falsified cloning data was convicted today of embezzlement and illegally buying human eggs. The Seoul Central District Court sentenced Hwang Woo-suk to two years in prison for embezzling research funds and illegally buying human eggs. However, it suspended the penalty, allowing him to stay free if he breaks no laws for three years [Washington Post]. The judge stated Hwang has shown remorse and said that despite his fraudulent research the scientist has made other genuine advancements in cloning.
In May 2005, Hwang published a paper in the journal Science, saying his team had extracted material from cloned human embryos that identically matched the DNA of 11 patients. It was claimed such a technique could be the key to providing personalized cures for diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s [BBC News]. The paper garnered worldwide attention, along with heightened suspicion, because cloning embryonic stem cells was thought to be impossible due to the complexities of human cells. Proving the critics right, an investigation later concluded that the data were intentionally fabricated. Hwang later confessed to obtaining eggs for the research from his female colleagues, a clear violation of research ethics guidelines. However, he maintained that he did not fake his research, and is still working on animal cloning at a local institute.
Related Content:
80beats: Obama’s Guidelines for Stem Cell Research Dodge Controversial Bullets
80beats: Is It Ethical to Pay Women to Donate Eggs for Medical Research?
80beats: Disgraced South Korean Cloning Scientist May Face Jail Time
Image: iStockphoto
For many rape cases, the only leads investigators have to follow are the clues spelled out by a DNA sample. If after years the DNA isn’t matched to a suspect the case goes cold and the victim never has closure. A few years ago, when there was still a statute of limitations for rape in New York City, prosecutors devised a clever way to side-step the ticking clock—they decided to simply indict the DNA profile. Since then, New York City prosecutors have secured 117 indictments of DNA samples in rape cases, linked 18 of those profiles to specific people, and obtained 13 convictions, either through trials or negotiated pleas. Five cases are pending [The New York Times].
Called John Doe DNA indictments, the strategy is also used in a handful of other states to help solve sex crimes, and its success has prompted officials to expand DNA indictments to other types of crimes. In New York, authorities are now collecting more DNA evidence from the scenes of everyday crimes. They hope to use DNA to help solve unsolved crimes from the past that are subject to a statute of limitations, like burglary, robbery or serial car theft [The New York Times]. Opponents of John Doe DNA indictments say the passage of time, along with fading memories and disappearing witnesses, hinders the defendant’s ability to mount a defense, and that old DNA samples are subject to depredation and mishandling. However New York officials counter by saying it’s irresponsible to ignore genetic evidence, especially with modern molecular biology tools.
Related Content:
80beats: DNA Sampling of Innocent-Until-Proven-Guilty People Is on the Rise
80beats: Verdict on Forensic Science: It’s Quite Bad
DISCOVER: Q & A with Eric Juengst—discusses the FBI’s genetic database
DISCOVER: Reasonable Doubt—questions about the forensic infallibility of DNA emerge
Image: flickr / [puamelia]
Scientists in the United Kingdom are outraged over a new program that seeks to determine asylum seekers’ nationalities through DNA and the isotopes present in their hair and fingernails. “Horrifying,” “naïve,” and “flawed” are among the adjectives geneticists and isotope specialists have used to describe the “Human Provenance pilot project,” launched quietly in mid-September by the U.K. Border Agency [Science Insider]. The experts say the tests simply aren’t accurate enough to pinpoint a person’s country of origin.
The program will be tried out on asylum seekers from the Horn of Africa, and will seek to establish whether applicants from Kenya or Ethiopia are masquerading as refugees from war-torn Somalia. Yet scientists say the Border Agency’s goals confuse ancestry or ethnicity with nationality. David Balding, a population geneticist at Imperial College London, notes that “genes don’t respect national borders, as many legitimate citizens are migrants or direct descendants of migrants, and many national borders split ethnic groups” [Science Insider].
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In an attempt to steer organ donation away from organs purchased on the black market or harvested from executed prisoners, China has announced a system to coordinate voluntary organ donation. The details of the new system are still under development, according to Chinese officials.
Although China is far from the only country facing a shortage of donor organs, the number of people who plan to donate is astoundingly low–since 2003, only 130 people have pledged to give up their organs after they pass away. Chinese officials estimate that 1.5 million Chinese need transplants annually but only 10,000 are performed due to donor shortages [The Wall Street Journal]. Of the transplants performed, officials estimate that at least 65 percent use organs from executed prisoners.
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These cute little macaque monkeys may have gotten their fluffy brown fur from their father, their big eyes from their mother, and their good health from… their other mother.
The scientific advance heralded in a new paper in Nature is essentially procedural: Researchers have figured out how to make an embryo that does not carry the mitochondrial DNA of its mother but that of another female instead, which could prevent diseases that are caused by inherited defects in this genetic material. But the study’s immediate impact comes from the ethical questions it raises. “With this you have potentially three genetic parents,” said [bioethics expert] David Magnus…. “This will create the potential for legal and social conflicts.” [Washington Post].
While more than 99 percent of an embryo’s DNA comes from the union of a sperm cell with the nucleus inside a female egg, the other 1 percent is found in other structures outside the egg’s nucleus–the mitochondria, the cellular power plants that produce chemical energy. This mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother, but in the new study on rhesus macaques researchers monkeyed with that biological truism.
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The disgraced South Korean researcher whose breakthrough cloning research was exposed as a fraud in 2005 now faces up to four years in prison. Prosecutors asked for the four-year sentence in court today, where the researcher, Hwang Woo-suk, is standing trial for fraud, misusing $2.25 million in state funds, and violating bioethics laws by illegally buying human eggs for his research. “The people’s disappointment was very serious because their expectation for his stem cell research had been high,” an unidentified prosecutor told the courtroom. He said Hwang tarnished South Korea’s image abroad…. Hwang pleaded for leniency, saying if the court forgives him he is ready to “pour the last of my passion” into research [AP].
Hwang became a national hero to South Korea in 2004, when he claimed to have cloned human embryonic stem cells, a feat that was thought to be impossible because of the complexities of human cells. Embryonic stem cells are of great interest to medical researchers because they can develop into any kind of adult cell, and could theoretically be used to replace malfunctioning cells that cause disease. A year later, Hwang said the team created human embryonic stem cells genetically matched to specific patients — a purported breakthrough that promised a way to withstand rejection by a patient’s immune system [AP].
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Young baseball players in Latin America with big dreams of coming to the United States to play in the big leagues have to do more than work on their batting and fielding these days–they may also have to prove that they are who they say they are. Baseball has been beset by a series of assumed identity scandals; for example, the young baseball phenom, Esmailyn Gonzalez, received a $1.4-million bonus when he signed with the Washington Nationals in 2006. This February, the player who was misrepresenting himself as only 19 years old turned out to be a 23-year-old by the name of Carlos David Alvarez Lugo [Scientific American].
To combat the problem, Major League Baseball investigators have begun giving DNA tests to some prospects to determine whether they are actually related to the people they identify as their parents, and aren’t just borrowing them along with the birth certificate of a younger man. A statement from Major League Baseball said that it used DNA testing in the Dominican Republic “in very rare instances and only on a consensual basis to deal with the identity fraud problem that the league faces in that country.” The statement added that the results of the tests were not used for any other purpose [The New York Times]. But the testing raises ethical questions, and could even be declared illegal when a new law takes effect later this year.
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One of Britain’s best-known orchestra conductors and his wife have ended their lives at an assisted suicide facility, reigniting the debate over assisted suicide. Helping someone die is a criminal offense in Britain, so Sir Edward Downes, 85, traveled to a “right-to-die” facility near Zurich with his 74-year-old wife, Joan, who had terminal cancer.
Under Britain’s Assisted Suicide Act, helping someone kill him- or herself can bring a penalty of up to 14 years in prison. In Switzerland, however, assisted suicide is legal; the Downeses were not the first Britons who traveled there to legally commit assisted suicide. Since the Zurich clinic run by [the non-profit group] Dignitas was established in 1998 under Swiss laws that allow clinics to provide lethal drugs, British authorities have effectively turned a blind eye to Britons who go there to die…. None of the family members and friends who have accompanied the 117 people living in Britain who have traveled to the Zurich clinic for help in ending their lives have been charged with an offense [The New York Times]. Experts say it’s unlikely that this will change in the case of the Downses’ children, who potentially assisted in their parents’ suicide by traveling with them to the Zurich facility. Still, the fact remains that the couple’s children could potentially be charged with a crime for their involvement in the suicide.
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To obtain a steady supply of unfertilized human eggs for medical research, New York’s Empire State Stem Cell Board recently authorized paying women to donate their eggs. The decision has set off a new round of discussion about whether paying for eggs is ethical. The board agreed that women can receive up to $10,000 for donating eggs, a painful and sometimes risky process…. Proponents say compensating women for their eggs is necessary for research, and point out that women who give their eggs for fertility purposes are already paid. Others worry that the practice will commodify the human body and lead to the exploitation of women in financial need [The New York Times].
At the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research this week, British researcher Alison Murdoch described a less controversial “egg sharing” program that has met with success. Women struggling to conceive can obtain IVF at a discounted rate, in exchange for donating some of their eggs for research…. In 2008, Murdoch’s team had 191 enquiries from interested women and ended up obtaining 199 eggs from 32 couples. “We are getting donors and we are getting eggs,” says Murdoch. The team is using the eggs in experiments into “therapeutic cloning”, which could ultimately produce stem cells matched to individual patients [New Scientist].
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Although ethical debates about the use of embryonic stem cells continue to rage, stem cell technology is beginning to make its way into the medical marketplace. Yesterday, General Electric division GE Healthcare announced that it’s teaming up with the biotechnology company Geron in a venture that will use embryonic stem cells to develop products that could give drug developers an early warning of whether new medicines are toxic [Reuters].
The agreement marks the first time that a company of GE’s stature and size has announced a business venture involving the controversial field of embryonic stem cells. That could reflect a more tolerant climate for the technology in the wake of the Obama administration’s recent relaxation of restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research [The Wall Street Journal]. Supporters of embryonic stem cell research say the work will lead to a host of treatments for cancer and other diseases, while opponents believe that the destruction of any human embryo is unacceptable.
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Few people enjoy being poked and prodded at the doctor’s office, but we usually assume that those unpleasantries are worth detecting a disease or disorder early on. Unfortunately, though, we might never hear about worrisome test results, according to a new study published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers found that about 7 percent of clinically significant test results are never reported to the patient or that the notification of patients is not documented, largely a result of medical information slipping through the cracks.
The researchers examined the records of 5,434 patients between the ages of 50 and 69 at 19 community-based primary care practices and an additional four academic medical care facilities. The patients were old enough to likely be developing conditions that warranted testing (such as for high cholesterol, impaired blood-sugar control, prostate cancer or waning liver function), but not so old as to be ill enough to make certain of these findings relatively unimportant. Patients’ records were reviewed for any of 10 types of blood tests and for three types of screening exams — mammography, Pap smears and occult blood assays of possible colon cancer. During a yearlong period, the participating practices had prescribed several thousand such tests [Science News]. The researchers found that physicians did not inform patients about abnormal test results about one out of 14 times, or around 7 percent of the time.
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Apple chief executive and all-around tech visionary Steve Jobs reportedly received a liver transplant two months ago in Tennessee, and is on track to return to work by the end of the month. Jobs presumably underwent the procedure to treat a reappearance of the cancer he was diagnosed with several years ago. In 2004 Jobs had surgery to remove a rare, slow-growing type of pancreatic cancer, called a islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, but he was thought to be in remission until last year, when a period of drastic weight loss last year led to frenzied speculation that the cancer had returned [The Guardian].
Jobs’s health has been a matter of intense interest to Apple investors, who feel that his leadership is key to the company’s continuing success, and questions have been raised about the company’s handling of the matter. In January, the notoriously secretive Jobs made a rare public statement attributing his weight loss to a “hormone imbalance”. Just a few days later, however, he was forced to admit that the situation was “more complex” than first thought, before announcing his intention to step down from day to day activities at Apple for six months [The Guardian].
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A major new lawsuit is challenging the notion that human genes can be patented just like the latest mousetrap built by a basement inventor. The case focuses on two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, that are linked to a higher risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and which were patented by the company Myriad Genetics more than 10 years ago. Now, the ACLU has organized a lawsuit backed by organizations representing more than 100,000 doctors and geneticists, and will argue that the information contained in each person’s DNA should not be private property.
The plantiffs also include individual cancer patients like Genae Girard, who was diagnosed with breast cancer, and took Myriad’s genetic test to see if her genes also put her at increased risk for ovarian cancer, which might require the removal of her ovaries. The test came back positive, so she wanted a second opinion from another test. But there can be no second opinion [The New York Times]. Since Myriad owns the patent to both the two genes and the test that looks for them, no other company can develop a competing test.
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If you’re arrested for a felony in the state of California, expect to give up a DNA sample. As of January 1, California police departments began taking and storing genetic samples from all adults arrested for felonies, regardless of whether they go on to charge those people with crimes, or whether the suspects are ultimately convicted. Meanwhile, the FBI and 15 states now collect DNA samples from immigrants who are detained, and 16 states store genetic samples from people found guilty of misdemeanors.
The intent is to create a large genetic database that will allow police to solve more crimes, but critics say the cumulative effect may be unconstitutional. Criminal justice experts cite Fourth Amendment privacy concerns and worry that the nation is becoming a genetic surveillance society…. “What we object to — and what the Constitution prohibits — is the indiscriminate taking of DNA for things like writing an insufficient funds check, shoplifting, drug convictions,” said Michael Risher, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union [The New York Times].
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