An excerpt (read in full here):

Stem-cell cloner acknowledges errors in groundbreaking paper

A blockbuster paper that reported the creation of human stem-cell lines through cloning has come under fire. An anonymous online commenter found four problems in the paper, which was published online on 15 May in the journal Cell.

Shoukhrat Mitalipov, who led the stem-cell team, told Nature that three were innocent mistakes made while assembling the data. The fourth, he says, was not a problem at all. To many in the field there was an unfathomably rapid rush to publication: just three days from submission to acceptance and another 12 days to publication.

“The results are real, the cell lines are real, everything is real,” says Mitalipov, a reproductive-biology specialist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Beaverton.

Mitalipov says he returned from Europe on Wednesday and found himself swamped with e-mails and calls from editors at Cell, as well as from journalists. “I just got home a couple hours ago. The editors, everyone was going crazy,” he says.

Keep reading…

An excerpt (read in full here):

Editorial: Crown’s aims for science give focus for research

Science has been a black hole for taxpayers’ money. Governments of all stripes agree that science is something they should fund without knowing very much about it. They maintain Crown research institutes for the needs of primary industries and for studying the country’s weather, geology, minerals and the like. They also fund research in universities and hospitals with few questions asked. The money is scattered around like water on dry soil in the hope that it finds some seeds of inquiry that will turn out to have social and economic benefits.

The present Government is trying something different. It has chosen the benefits it most wants for New Zealand and set aside a good portion of its science budget for research that points in a desired direction. This might not be the way that “pure” science prefers to work but the exercise has been led by a panel of scientists chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, an adviser to the Prime Minister, and appears to be accepted.

The panel nominated 12 objectives for the “national science challenge” and the Government this month selected 10. Some of them are interesting. One is to tackle the illnesses of an ageing population, especially mental deterioration.

That subject suggests the public has contributed more to the exercise than seemed likely when views were invited six months ago. The incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia is devastatingly apparent to families but has not ranked high on public health priorities.

Keep reading…

You can read more from the SMC about the National Science Challenges here.

An article on the website of the US magazine The Atlantic, speculates on how a ‘breakthrough’ in cloning stem cells may revive the public debate over the use of stem cells.

An excerpt ( read in full here):

Researchers in Oregon claim to have solved the tricky problem of cloning human stem cells, but you’re more likely to see a duplicate of a years-old ethics debate than you are a duplicate human. 

The breakthrough is one that’s been long sought after by biologists: creating perfectly matched human tissues through the process of cell cloning. In the past, researchers have had success with cloning animals through a technique known as somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), where the nucleus of an unfertilized egg is replaced with the DNA of a donor cell. (That’s how Dolly the sheep was born.) The egg can then be turned into an embryo, with DNA that matches the original donor exactly. Later, stem cells from that developing embryo could be harvested and, in theory, be cultured to become almost any type of human cell there is. That would open a huge array of new medical treatments, from curing diabetes to fixing spinal cord injuries to providing rejection-proof organ transplants.

In the last decade or so, doctors had mostly turned away from SCNT as a means of producing “patient-specific” embryonic stem cells. They did so for a variety of reasons, but the biggest was that it didn’t really work on humans. Researchers in South Korea claimed to have done just that in 2004, but their finding turned out to be a fake. Other attempts created imperfect results or were too expensive or inefficient. As a result, scientists have focused on other methods of attempting to create patient-specific stem cells. The focus now is on “reprogramming” adult cells so they become stem cells again, which has had limited success. (The new cells are called pluripotent cells, or iPS cells.) As one surprised researcher put it, “the most surprising thing [about this paper] is that somebody is still doing human [SCNT] in the era of iPS cells.”

This new study will certainly revive interest in the procedure, but it will also revive the concerns that many people have with the entire messy business.

Keep reading…

Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand, is undergoing restructuring both in terms of staff and the housing of its collections. However, as current affairs program Campbell Live discovers, many scientists — both here and overseas — are far from happy about the changes.

You can watch the segment online here.

Click below to listen to the audio from the event.

On the panel:

Dr Keith Bedford, Head of Forensic Science at ESR

Kim Workman, Founder of Re-Thinking Crime & Punishment

Charlotte Shipman, Reporter, 3 News

Inspector John Walker, Manager at National Forensic Services | New Zealand Police

An excerpt from the post on his blog, Excursionset.com (read in full here):

Wellington, we have a problem…

Last year, North and South magazine ran a feature on alt-med that came down robustly on the side of science and evidence-based medicine. So far, so good.

Incensed by the phrase “homeopathic remedies have failed every randomised, evidence-based scientific study seeking to verify their claims of healing powers” a Tauranga-based homeopathist took a complaint to the Press Council, New Zealand’s media watchdog — as is his right. So far, again, so good.  The Press Council is an industry body, and its rules allow for at most two rounds of argument and counter-argument. But in this case they decided to allow a third — unusual, but perhaps not a terrible sin.

The third round of argument took the form of a letter from one Dr David St George.  His submission begins with a recitation of his qualifications, which are not insignificant — he has a medical degree from the University of Auckland, and further qualifications in medical statistics — so far, so good. 

However, it is hard to see Dr David St George as an “independent” expert, although he appears to have been treated as such by the Press Council, as he is deeply involved with “complementary medicine”.  The list of credentials that open his letter cite his role as “Chief Advisor-Integrative Care” with New Zealand’s Ministry of Health, and a previous role with the NHS in the United Kingdom.  But nowhere does it mention he was on the British Acupuncture Accreditation Board, or that he was — as Siouxsie Wiles discovered – ”Director of Research” at the The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, an alt-med group which closed in somewhat unsavory circumstances.  If he had disclosed these interests, it would have presumably been clear to the Press Council that Dr St George was someone who both advocated for, promoted and practiced complementary medicine.

Keep reading…

An excerpt (read in full here):

Imagine if a test tube of spittle and $205 could mine your past to foretell your future. Would you want to know if your genetic compass pointed toward cancer, or if you carried a silent coding quirk that put your children at risk of cystic fibrosis?

And what if the horoscope foretold a devastating and incurable disease such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s?

“Are you ready to take that on?” asks 26-year-old Danielle Lambermon, who found out in 2007 that she was one of 43 Auckland Hospital patients with a tiny risk of contracting brain disease Creuzfeldt-Jacobs Disease through contaminated instruments.

“I truly believe people don’t see what the consequences could be. They think, ‘It will be really good because then I’ll know’. But will that make you live your life in a box? Would you do what you normally do? If you’re not a strong personality it will mess up your life.”

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomic testing, which uses genetic markers gleaned from a saliva sample to predict disease risk, has been widely available for five years. Once the sample is analysed – typically in a United States lab – test subjects access an online personalised risk profile for over 100 diseases, from brain aneurysm to restless legs syndrome, and find out if they are carriers for genetic conditions such as cystic fibrosis and breast cancer.

Keep reading…

Last year the SMC held a media briefing about the technology behind genetic testing and the ethical and legal issues raised by DTC testing. You view a recording of it here.

In a time of rapid change, how can scientists adapt to and even benefit from changing priorities? What risks getting lost when policymakers shift their focus to commercial applications for science? How do we measure non-economic benefits?

Scientists and decision-makers met this week to grapple with tough questions about the value of science in New Zealand at the annual NZAS conference.

The forum provides an opportunity for leaders and high-profile scientists at different stages of their career to engage on significant issues, and provide a gauge of opinion from the wider scientific community.

LISTEN BACK:

Click on the player below to hear audio from a selection of the day’s sessions.

SMC’s highlights from live tweets from the event now available on Storify

]]> http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2013/04/05/what-is-the-value-of-science-nzas-2013/feed/ 0 http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2013/03/21/bioethics-informs-debate-gareth-jones/ http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2013/03/21/bioethics-informs-debate-gareth-jones/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 01:39:09 +0000 John Kerr http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/?p=19601 Bioethicists challenge boundaries society takes for granted – but must “tread carefully”, writes a leading bioethics expert.

The University of Otago’s  Prof Gareth Jones found himself in embroiled in debate earlier this month when he published the New Zealand Medical Journal article, ‘Testing times: do new prenatal tests signal the end of Down syndrome?’ The interest group Saving Downs took exception to the content of the article, calling for Prof Jones’ resignation.

Now, in an op-ed in the Otago Daily Times, Prof Jones responds to the criticism.

An excerpt (read in full here):

Bioethics confronting but informs debates

Gareth Jones wonders how society can debate issues when strongly held views pull in mutually exclusive directions. It’s especially challenging on topics like abortion, reproductive technologies, eugenics and euthanasia, he says.

Recently, I have been publicly criticised because of a paper that appeared in the New Zealand Medical Journal of which I was a co-author.

Under the title ”Testing times: do new prenatal tests signal the end of Down syndrome?” it sought to assess the impact of the new blood tests for detecting Down syndrome in early pregnancy on the Down syndrome community and their families. In writing this piece, my co-author and I were very aware of the tentative ground we were treading, but writing from a bioethics perspective we concluded that public discussion of this very sensitive area was an important contribution to public debate within New Zealand. Neither of us saw it as our role to advocate for any particular position.

We consider society should discuss these issues widely and in an informed manner, at as many levels as possible. And we certainly think families who may be involved directly should be part of these discussions and should have a voice in whatever decisions are made by the appropriate decision-making bodies within society.

It is in this spirit that I have sympathy with organisations that have a stake in these decisions, since they and their families are directly affected by one or other genetic or chromosomal conditions. The one proviso is that any discussions must be held in as open a way as possible, allowing for a variety of perspectives, because that is the reality of a diverse society.

The world of bioethics can sometimes be challenging, especially for those who write on contentious issues where entrenched views are frequently encountered. This is not to criticise the entrenched views because they are usually held for very good reasons and their causes are worthy ones.

The difficulty for bioethicists or anyone in applied ethics is they write as academics, who are engaged in analysing and critiquing positions within society. A distinction always has to be made between the writer’s personal perspective and the contribution he or she is making to public debate. The writers’ own views generally do not feature.

Keep reading…

interviewees include Sue Suckling, chair of the board of the Callaghan Innovation and Prof Michael Kelly from Cambridge University.

You can listen to audio below.