Much more than with other kinds of technology, with biological and medical technology we directly face questions about what is natural

• is cloning animals that much more unnatural than artificial insemination (widely used in breeding large animals) or even what selective breeding has done to produce extreme species of animals like dogs?
• what about cloning humans?
• is genetic engineering to prevent a birth defect that much more unnatural than a heart transplant or kidney dialysis or even antibiotics? germ line genetic engineering vs. introducing new genes into an adult
• is using genetic engineering to make plants produce natural pesticides that much more unnatural than using chemical pesticides?

The whole point of technology is to modify our environment, but somehow when we begin to modify living things we ask new questions, often phrased in terms of what is natural or that we mustn't go further because we would be playing God.  Despite how often people say such things it is hard to draw any lines--we modify nature and our own destinies all the time and our views about what is unnatural or playing God change with time.  When heart transplants were first introducted people thought the idea of having someone else's heart was going too far, but they have become acceptable (don't miss the article on Overcoming Yuk).

I want to talk about the history of genetics and genetic engineering as one of the stories where these issues arise.

Genetics:

• Humans had selectively bred animals since prehistory, but the laws of inheritance were not usefully known until 1900 (Mendel actually published them in 1866, but his work was ignored until it was rediscovered in 1900)
• the units of heredity were called genes but no one knew what, physically, a gene was
• By 1910 it became clear that genes were carried in structures called chromosomes that could be seen in the nucleus of cells
• 1910 T. H. Morgan discovered a mutation that segregated by sex, so for the first time it was possible to identify that a particular chromosome carried a particular gene

Selective Breeding:

• the knowledge provided by Mendelian genetics made selective breeding much more effective
• one important example is hybrid corn, discussed by Cowan
• you can't sell seed that will give consistent results unless you first develop pure (inbred) strains
• but then if you cross those twice (one key invention was the double cross) you get consistently better results
• if seed saved from that crop is then planted the results are not nearly as good, so for the first time the farmer has a reason to buy new seed every year instead of saving seed from the previous year to plant
• this came into use in the late 1920s
  
• Cowan points out that the line between science and technology is very hard to draw here.  Think of it as a spectrum, with pure science on one end and technology using existing knowledge on the other
  

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Penicillin:

• doctors didn't understand that many diseases were caused by microorganisms until the late 19th century
  
• sulfa drugs developed in 1932 were the first antibiotics, but effective only against one class of bacteria
• Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1929 but no one could figure out how to produce it
• in 1939 two British scientists, Howard Florey and Ernest Chain, figured out how to produce a stable preparation and showed its value (treating 6 patients)
• the US was asked in the summer of 1941 to develop mass production
• seen as of tremendous military value
• factory production began in Dec. 1943, though it was restricted to military use until March 1945

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Discovery of DNA

• by 1944 scientists had proved that the part of the chromosome that carried the genetic information was a nucleic acid called DNA, but they had no idea how this compound carried information
• Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin set out to solve the problem by systematic study of very confusing x-ray crystallography studies
• Linus Pauling proved that proteins had a helix (three dimensional spiral) structure
• James Watson and Francis Crick were determined to win the race--they took everyone else's work and put it together.  In April 1953 they published a solution, showing that DNA was a double helix.

 James Watson This was one of those scientific discoveries that immediately opened up all sorts of new research possibilities

• how is the information carried by the DNA put to work?
• led to discovery of restriction enzymes, which broke apart the DNA whenever a particular sequence was found
• the broken pieces can be put together differently--by 1973 techniques had been discovered that made it possible to control recombination

Scientists got worried about the dangers of this research early

• Paul Berg was planning to take a gene that caused cancer-like effects and put it into a standard lab strain of E. coli (a bacteria that normally lives in the human digestive tract)
• did this raise the danger of creating a strain of bacteria that caused cancer that then might escape from the lab?
• 1975 Asilomar Conference in California called for safety standards
• the National Institutes of Health set standards in Dec. 1975 for research it funded
• but in some communities there was fear of scientists making new diseases

That initial public concern died away and has only come back recently about genetically modified foods

• some of the earliest uses were exciting and not threatening--eg. putting human genes into bacteria grown in pharmeceutical factories to make better forms of insulin or human growth hormone
• 1980 Supreme Court rules that new life forms could be patented--people saw the biotech industry in terms of economic promise
• using genetically engineered organisms in a factory was fine for making medications, but for agricultural applications you would be releasing them into the environment
• much controversy over experiments in California with strawberries genetically engineered to resist frost
• Monsanto moved some of their key research with a grant in 1986 to Clemson University for an experiment to be done at the Edisto research station in Barnwell County, treating crops with a bacteria that lives in the roots of major crops that might later be modified to release pesticides (in the early experiments it was only modified to turn bright turquoise if fed lactose)
• the biggest commercial success so far has been soybeans and other crops modified to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup, but insect resistant crops are also in use
• in the last year the level of public concern about this has gone way up (it was already much higher in Europe than in the U.S.)

 Illustration from Monsanto Ad for Roundup Ready Soybeans

debate over genetically engineered foods:

• in favor:
  • higher yield (but overproduction is a problem)
  • more nutrients, benefit the third world
  • we've been genetically changing plants for a long time
  • conserve the soil--design crops for no-till planting
  • pest control--cotton that produces its own pesticide
  • not as labor intensive
  • roundup-ready soybeans--engineered to resist herbicides (previously farmers were using several different less-effective herbicides)
  • profits--lower production costs for farmers, seed companies can sell better seeds for more
  • you can patent a living breeding creature
  • genetically engineering so that the seeds cannot be collected and used the next year
• against
  • does not need to be tested like a new medicine unless you make a medical claim--little systematic saftey testing done
  • new allergies
  • lack of genetic diversity--uniform crops reduces natural diversity that can help when a problem arises
  • once genetic engineering techniques are used in agriculture they will be developed for humans too
  • genes from spiders into goats, genes from fish into tomatoes--seems too unnatural
  • why not label foods and give consumers a choice?
  • people fear this without understanding it, exagerate the risks
  • we don't know the long-term effects yet

What about using genetic engineering in human beings?

• we have a complete map of the human genome, due both to a major government project and to parallel industry projects to discover and patent as many genes as possible
• if you know what genetic diseases a fetus is a risk for you can test
• you can test an adult, but do you want to know (and will your insurance company dump you if they know you carry a gene for a genetic disease)?
• can you supply a gene a person is missing?  experiments have not yet gone well
• future potential to fix the genetic defect around the time of fertilization of the egg
• the line isn't easy to draw: would you be willing to use such technology to:
  • avert a deadly genetic disease, such as cystic fibrosis?
  • avert a treatable genetic disease such as diabetes?
  • prevent nearsightedness?
  • prevent a child from being very short?
  • choose hair or eye color?
  • produce a taller child in order to get a basketball scholarship?

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Test Review:

• adapting European technology to fit American conditions--how geography affects technology
  
• technological systems--for most new technologies you need many interdependent technologies--a whole system (eg. Edison)
  
• you can't have the spread of automobiles until you have gas stations and roads
  
• people, organizations. and laws can also be part of the system
• Cowan uses "automobility" to talk about the broader socio-technological system
  
• technology and war--how war prompts new technology
• war leads to new organizations and funding that encourage technology
• war can slow some technologies that are ignored because all the effort is going into the war
  
• the military-industrial-academic complex
  
• how technology affected the workforce
• technology changes the experience of work
  
• new ways of making things can make new things possible--Amercian System of Manufacture allows metal machines to be made more cheaply
  
• how has technology made the experience of factory work better or worse (and other kinds of work)
• what do we want technology to do for us?  do we want machines to replace human work?
  
• how technology differently affect different people--social social classes, immigrants, gender (the roles of men and women), age
  
• how technology interacts with values and ideas--eg. automobile fits American emphasis on independence
• people in different groups or countries may use the same technology differently
  
• the changing relationship between technology and science--now we have a system where new discoveries in science lead to new technologies
• development of engineering and science education and of engineering as a profession
  
• technoscience--science and technology are pursued together (though in theory they are different things)
• technology development has become much more interdisciplinary
  
• who developed new technology? (ordinary people. inventors, scientists in industrial research labs) and where were they  trained? (apprenticeship, engineering school) and how much science had they learned?
• the development of a government role in the development and regulation of technology
  
• the risks of technology--how do we deal with potential negative effects of new technologies