blogpuku

forgive my anticipated blogging hiatus; thanks to qualifying exams, i won't be at it again till september 8 or so. but by then, i'll be due for some lengthy entries. in the meantime, please meditate on and accept my ritual seppuku-styled (though, fortunately, transient) shaming as a small token of my self-induced retribution and sincere apologies (that's me, with the ponytail).

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hearty HAR HAR: brain genes in humans

a new study from ucsc shows that a gene active during cortical development in humans is a lot different from its counterparts in other mammals. HAR1F, active in Cajal-Retzius cells during development and possibly interacting with the protein reelin (involved with cortical layering), was recently identified in a non-coding region of human DNA: it had changed forms 18 times compared with its analogue in chimps. meanwhile, it (and a second, related HAR gene) are virtually identical in non-human mammals. the hunt for what makes our brains so special is taken up with equal fervor in computational biology and theology, and, as always, the findings in one don't by necessity negate the claims of the other...

see the original article, or nature's reader-friendly intro, or the BBC coverage.

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chick eggs the next cash cow?

nature ran an article this week on the ethics and economics of human egg donation. the gist is that scientists and ethicists are concerned about whether to pay women for eggs obtained for research on therapeutic human cloning. paying women for their ova has gone on for a while... in our daily princetonian, we had the first national ad for egg donorship back in '97 ("looking for 5'8"-5'11", blonde, SAT >1400, female of Swedish descent to donate some eggs for $40,000"). america has continued to have occasional cases in which a couple will pay exhorbitantly for some cute eggs, though i think remuneration is outlawed in britain. but IVF and research are two different issues, and only a few known madcap opportunists--such as woo suk hwang, of south korean shame--have paid for (or coerced women into donating) human eggs.

on june 30th, a task force set up by the International Society for Stem Cell Research released a draft of guidelines, which simply demonstrate how little consensus there is on the issue. according to the article, it's open to public debate till september 1, at which point, i suppose, public debate is officially closed.

my current thinking is that the whole question is irrelevant. i go against the establishment on this one, but i'm actually against IVF in principle, since it necessarily generates unused embryos. if it hadn't been for these storehouses at hospitals and fertility clinics, there never would have been such contention about "what we should do with all these embryos from 30 years of IVF!" and we could have addressed the social policy regarding ES cells with a little more clarity. sadly, the 'byproducts' of IVF are still oft ignored (or forgotten) even by more conservative politicians... perhaps because its benefits have already been realized by the conservative community. at any rate, there are lots of issues here (not the least of which is the potential to solve more than one problem by adopting "at-risk kids") that require some ethical and scientific maturity. unfortunately, as jon stewart helps us recognize, we're not there yet. but, more to the point, because of the deep moral issues associated with the status of the human embryo, i'm not convinced it should be used for research using federal funding. private funding? not so sure... but with regard to whether the cash would put too much pressure on underprivileged women to undergo a dangerous, invasive procedure, we have a precedent. in america, private organizations pay habitually-pregnant crack addicts to have their tubes tied. sure, it funds their next couple of hits. but no matter how strong a libertarian you are, you've got to admit that it's a pretty good idea.

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