Blog Comments

Kinetica Online is pleased to provide direct links to commentaries from our senior editor Dr. Steven Pelech has posted on other blogs sites. Most of these comments appear on the GenomeWeb Daily Scan website, which in turn highlight interesting blogs that have been posted at numerous sites in the blogosphere since the beginning of 2010. A wide variety of topical subjects are covered ranging from the latest scientific breakthroughs, research trends, politics and career advice. The original blogs and Dr. Pelech’s comments are summarized here under the title of the original blog. Should viewers wish to add to these discussions, they should add their comments at the original blog sites.

The views expressed by Dr. Pelech do not necessarily reflect those of the other management and staff at Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation. However, we wish to encourage healthy debate that might spur improvements in how biomedical research is supported and conducted.

Ethics

But What Does That Really Mean?

Adam Rutherford at Nature suggested that "the present gains and future benefits of synthetic biology are too great for it to be written off with fear-mongering maxims about "playing God." Gerhard Adam in his Blog questioned what it really means to "play God", and that if we now have the power to improve our ability to cure diseases, then we have a moral responsibility to do so. S. Pelech agrees and takes issue with the very concept of "Playing God" and wonders why if people believe in divine intervention they don't also believe that scientists are guided in their actions directly by "God." Read More...

'That Doesn't Sound So Terrible'

Blogger Roxanne Palmer at Slate's Brow Beat blog wrote that the late actress Elizabeth Taylor's most famed physical feature — her eyes, "arresting: large, liquid, and framed by a thick fringe of eyelashes" — may have resulted from a mutation at FOXC2 that resulted in two sets of eyelashes. One potential complication is that damage to the cornea can result if the extra eyelashes grow inward, and FOXC2 mutations are also associated with lymphedema-distichiasis syndrome, a hereditary disease that can cause disorders of the lymphatic system. S. Pelech raises the ethical question that if Elizabeth Taylor's parents had amniocentesis and genome-wide sequencing performed when she was just a tiny fetus and they learned that she had a genetic mutation that could cause immune and vision problems, would they have elected to have the pregnancy terminated? Read More...