| FootnoteTV® : Century City
| Season 1
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- A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Lose (aired 3/30). Lee May represents a woman who is seeking guardianship over her husband in order to remove an implant that makes him more intelligent but could cause his death. Lukas represents a woman facing a civil lawsuit for not informing a lover that she had a penis prosthetic.
- To Know Her (aired 3/23). Lukas represents a woman who is suing a man who recorded the experiences of the woman's boyfriend as the couple was having sex. Darwin represents a boy who wants to be emancipated so that he can keep from getting physically older.
- Love and Games (aired 3/20). The firm gets involved in a case between a family and the doctor who did not inform them that the family's child would be born with a so-called "gay gene" (1). The firm argues that a man with a bionic eye should be considered disabled (2) and not enhanced.
- Pilot (aired 3/16). Lukas Gold and Tom Montero represent a man who violated U.S. laws about cloning (1) by trying to create a clone of a boy who turns out to be not the client's son but the client's own clone. Darwin McNeil and Lee May Bristol represent a boy band that wants to sue a former member for aging normally.
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Cloning and Stem Cells (last updated March 20, 2004) (back to top)
There currently are no laws in the United States prohibiting cloning. President George W. Bush did propose a ban on cloning for any purpose in 2001 and the House of Representatives has passed bills that would ban cloning of any kind and subject violators to criminal penalties such as prison and fines, but none of these bills have become law yet.
The debate over cloning has moved from science-fiction stories to the front pages, first with the creation of a cloned sheep in 1996 (publicly announced in 1997), and again in November 2001 with the announcement that a Massachusetts company had cloned human embryos for therapeutic purposes, though such embryos did not survive long. These efforts represent very different kinds of cloning -- the first done with reproductive intent, the second with therapeutic intent -- and science still appears to be far away from actually producing a living human being cloned from another.
In late December 2002, Clonaid, a company founded in 1997 by the leader of a religious organization that believes humans were cloned by an alien race, announced in December 2002 that the first human clone baby had been born. Clonaid's announcement, which was not independently verified, sparked another round of calls for a ban on human reproductive cloning within the United States.
Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have recommended such bans since the late 1990s, although President George W. Bush has called for a ban on cloning for any purpose, which would include non-reproductive cloning efforts. In any event, even a broad ban might have limited effect; Clonaid itself says that it moved out of the United States in order to avoid governmental interference.
Cloning Techniques
All known successful cloning attempts have started the same way, with a technique called nuclear transplantation, or somatic cell nuclear transfer. This involves taking an egg and replacing its nucleus with one taken from an adult subject. This reconstructed cell is then stimulated to begin dividing and will produce a pre-implantation embryo, what is called a blastocyst.
What happens next depends on the ultimate purpose behind the cloning. In reproductive cloning, the blastocyst is then implanted into a uterus so that it can form a fetus, which then can develop into a genetically identical match to the adult subject that provided the implanted nucleus; this is how Dolly was created. In therapeutic cloning, however, cells from the blastocyst are isolated and then used to make a stem cell line for further research and clinical applications; the blastocyst is not implanted into a uterus and does not ever become a fetus.
Scientists have managed to use nuclear transplantation successfully with some species -- such as sheep, mice, pigs, goats and cattle -- but not with others, such as monkeys, dogs, and horses. Even when successful, however, nuclear transplantation is an inefficient process; many eggs are required to yield a few successes, many clones die during gestation or have abnormalities, and the mother carrying the implanted embryo bears many risks.
Possible Ban?
Due to these risks -- as well as the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome in any human women who donate eggs for this or any other process -- scientists and politicians generally have supported a ban on human reproductive cloning at the present time. President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission recommended a temporary ban in June 1997 after Dolly's creation was revealed to the world, and a panel by the National Academies made a similar recommendation in January 2002. President George W. Bush has called for a permanent ban on cloning for any purpose, and appointed a commission to study the issue as well; that commission had its first meeting in January 2002.
However, the reach of such a ban is controversial. While scientists and politicians agree on a ban on human reproductive cloning, many disagree on whether there should be such a ban on therapeutic cloning.
Stem Cells
This is where embryonic stem cells come into the debate.
Embryonic stem cells have been controversial in recent years, in recent years especially because of their connection with therapeutic cloning. Stem cells are unspecialized cells that can self-renew indefinitely and that can develop into more mature cells with specialized functions, and embryonic stem (ES) cells, which are derived from an early-stage embryo, are especially promising because they potentially could be developed into a wide variety of tissues for transplantation into patients with diseases such as Alzheimer's.
What first made ES cell lines so controversial is that they have generally been derived from sources such as aborted fetuses and embryos resulting from in-vitro fertilization, thus raising questions as to whether such embryos are alive and should be used for such research. Whether the federal government should fund the development of such cells grew into a major policy question in recent years, culminating with President George W. Bush's decision on August 9, 2001 to allow federal funding for research on then-existing stem cell lines as long as the lines were derived from embryos that were already destroyed and that had not been created specifically for research.
"We should allow federal funds to be used for research on these existing stem cell lines, where the life and death decision has already been made," Bush said in his first major non-augural public speech as president. "Leading scientists tell me research on these 60 lines has great promise that could lead to breakthrough therapies and cures. This allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line, by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential for life."
As of February 2002, the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry, which is run by the National Institutes of Health, counted 72 stem cell lines at 11 laboratories (five in the United States, including a Wisconsin-based group that had patented several lines, two in Sweden and India each, and one in Australia and Israel each) as meeting the criteria that Bush established. Still, some scientists have criticized Bush's order for limiting the development of more and better-quality stem cell lines. In any case, Bush's order did not go so far as to ban private research that did not meet his criteria; such research simply has to go on without federal funding.
Cloning
The debates over stem cells and cloning became intertwined in November 2001, when a Massachusetts-based company, Advanced Cell Technology, announced that it had attempted to create ES cells through nuclear transplantation. The hope here was that scientists could use cloned human embryos to create embryonic stem cells that could develop into tissues that would perfectly match the person who was cloned, thus ensuring that the person's body would accept such tissue transplants and not reject them as foreign. Advanced Cell Technology reported that it had successfully transplanted a human nucleus into a human egg, but that the most successful resulting embryo still did not grow enough to produce a blastocyst that could yield stem cells, stopping growth after dividing into only six cells.
Advanced Cell Technology also tried creating cloned embryos through another method called parthenogenesis, by which eggs are stimulated to divide into early embryos. Of the 22 eggs chemically induced via parthogenesis, all died, and none developed the inner cell mass that yields stem cells.
Possible Ban?
Nevertheless, even these limited results set off a new wave of controversy over cloning. "The use of embryos to clone is wrong. We should not as a society grow life to destroy it," Bush said in a ceremony soon after the announcement, and he quickly established a bioethics commission headed by University of Chicago professor Leo Kass to make recommendations on the subject. That commission met for the first time in January 2002.
Bush has called for a ban on all cloning. The House of Representatives first passed such a bill in July 2001, which would ban cloning of any kind and subject violators to criminal penalties such as prison and fines. In February 2003, the House passed another such bill that would set a criminal penalty of up to 10 years and civil fines when cloning is done for pecuniary gain.
However, many scientists have opposed such a total ban, urging legislators to distinguish between reproductive and therapeutic cloning. The National Academies' National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, for example, recommended public funding of stem cell production in September 2001 and then recommended in January 2002 a ban on human reproductive cloning for at least five years.
Sources: President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission did a report on cloning in September 1997, available on-line here, and a report on stem cells in September 1999, available here. The National Academies did a report on reproductive cloning in January 2002 and a report on stem cells in September 2001; both are available via the Academies' website, on-line here. President Bush's August 9, 2001 speech announcing his decision on stem cells is on-line here. The National Institutes of Health maintains information on stem cells and on the stem cell registry here. Advanced Cell Technology is on-line here, and a January 2002 Scientific American article describing their research is on-line here. Gina Kolata with Andrew Pollack, A Breakthrough on Cloning? Perhaps, or Perhaps not Yet, New York Times, November 27, 2001. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Bush denounces cloning and calls for ban, New York Times, November 27, 2001. Clonaid is on-line here.
The "Gay Gene" Debate (last updated March 20, 2004) (back to top)
Is there a "gay gene"? Scientists, doctors and psychologists once saw homosexuality as a disease, but now some scientists are trying to prove that sexual orientation has biological explanations such as genetics, brain differences, or neurochemistry. Such efforts have so far not proven conclusive and may be misguided, as many scientists do not believe that complex human behavior such as sexuality can be reduced to simple biological explanations.
Biological explanations for homosexuality could impact society's acceptance of homosexuality by showing that discrimination against homosexuals is based on factors beyond such persons' control. But some also wonder if biological advances would then allow the possibility of eradicating homosexuality in the future.
Some studies that have suggested evidence of biological explanations are listed below:
- In 1991, Simon LeVay published an article that a part of the human brain, the interstitial nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus, was smaller in homosexual men than in heterosexual men. This study was based on autopsies of 19 gay men who died from AIDS and has not been replicated.
- In 1993, Dean Hamer at the National Institutes of Health found that sexual orientation may be influenced by specific genes, a small part of the X chromosome known as the Xq28 region. This study did not find a gay gene, but did find that pairs of gay male siblings were more likely to have received the same Xq28 region from their mother. The study did not find that all gay men had the same Xq28 sequence and did not compare male siblings where one was homosexual and one was heterosexual.
- In November 2003, Howard Moltz of the University of Chicago released a study indicating links between neurochemistry and sexual orientation in exclusively homosexual and heterosexual men. Moltz took eight exclusively heterosexual men and eight exclusively homosexual men (as determined through interviews) and gave each a generic for of Prozac to raise serotonin levels which are associated with arousal. According to Moltz's study, exclusively heterosexual men responded more to the drug than exclusively homosexual men, indicating some difference in neurochemistry.
Sources: Simon LeVay, Queer Science: The use and abuse of research into homosexuality (MIT Press, 1996). PBS's Frontline program has a look at the "gay gene" debate on-line here. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, an organization that seeks to change clients' sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual, has an article on the "gay gene" debate on-line here.
Bionic Eye and the Americans with Disabilities Act (last updated March 21, 2004) (back to top)
Is a person considered legally "disabled" if he or she has a prosthesis that basically eliminates the disability that otherwise would exist?
The Americans with Disabilities Act prevents discrimination against qualified people with legally recognized disabilities. However, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that whether a person has a "disability" recognized by the ADA must take into account whether the person is "substantially limited in a major life activity" if he or she is using a mitigating measure at the time of the alleged discrimination. If a person experiences no substantial limitation, then that person is not considered to have a recognized disability.
Accordingly, a person with a bionic eye probably would not be considered "disabled" under the Americans with Disabilities Act and thus could not invoke its protections. A baseball team could refuse to hire him and not violate federal law.
Sources: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, on-line here, has published a guideline on how disabilities are evaluated, on-line here.
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