Moral issues in the
‘biological century’

By Helen Altonn
Star-Bulletin

Students must be trained to deal with ethical issues arising daily in biology, agriculture and resource management, says Douglas L. Vincent, University of Hawaii Animal Sciences Department chairman.

The next millennium is expected to be the "biological century," he said, stressing it's no longer enough for scientists to focus on whether they can do something.

"Society demands that we address the issue of whether we 'should' do something or not," he told the Hawaiian Humane Society at its annual meeting yesterday.

Vincent traced the history of changes from traditional methods of procreation since the birth of Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, 21 years ago to recent animal clonings.

The sheep Dolly was cloned in 1997 in Scotland and more than 50 mice were cloned this year by Ryuzo Yanagimachi and his team at University of Hawaii.

Vincent pointed to "the realities of doing 'cutting edge' science these days," noting the cloning results were kept secret until they were published and "entrepreneurial arrangements could be made with venture capital companies to protect the intellectual property rights of the discoveries.

"The two companies, PPL Therapeutics and ProBio Hawaii had arrangements in place before the discoveries were announced to the public."

By the year 2003, Vincent said, every gene that codes what humans are will be mapped in the 15-year, $3 billion-plusHuman Genome Project -- dubbed the "Manhattan Project of Biology."

From 1988 through August 1997, he said 69 U.S. patents were issued for animals, including "a guinea pig model for asthma, a rat with behaviors similar to human schizophrenia and a nude mouse for human neoplastic disease." More than 300 animal patents are under review, he said.

The ability and speed of scientists to be able to do something is rapidly outpacing society's ability to understand what they're doing and why, he said. It's important for scientists to learn how to deal with ethical and moral dilemmas, he said.

Besides big issues of reproductive technology and human cloning, Vincent said, "we've got our hands full already with lots of local issues."

Among them, he said, are use of wire snares to control feral pigs and goats, recent use of poisons to eliminate pigeons in the International Market Place and the fruit irradiator on the Big Island.