Biotech’s New Ethical Dilemmas
Corrections or additions?
This article by Kathleen McGinn Spring was prepared for the April 16, 2003 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
A Vindicated Bear’s Brave New Theories
At the end of the last decade, Yale economist Robert
Schiller was way out of favor. As the stock market was on a tear,
rocketing to a record high of 11,722.98, his bearish comments could
not have been more out of vogue. An article in the Yale Herald commented:
“As the stock market reached unprecedented heights in 1998, many
Americans reveled in the success of their investments. One Yale professor,
however, could only watch in amazement as his predictions were repeatedly
proven wrong.” Fortune proclaimed Schiller “the smartest guy
who’d been most wrong about the stock market.”
In an interview with the Yale Herald in 1999, Schiller said the best
thing Americans could do with their money was to put it into indexed
government bonds. How many holders of flat-as-a-pancake equities-stuffed
retirement funds would give anything for the opportunity to turn back
the clock and take Schiller’s advice?
Schiller, testifying before the board of governors of the Federal
Reserve in 1998, discussed the irrationality of investors. Just a
few days later, Alan Greenspan issued his warning about “irrational
exuberance.”
Princeton University Press published Irrational Exuberance, Schiller’s
best selling book, on the Ides of March in 2000, close to the exact
moment the bubble burst.
Now Schiller has a new book, The New Financial Order, which he discusses
on Friday, April 18, at Barnes & Noble in MarketFair. Call 609-716-1570
for more information. Here is an excerpt from a Publishers Weekly
review of the book:
Schiller is best known for arguing that stock market movementsdo not reflect underlying economic reality and that the volatilityof the market makes the financial system unstable. It is thereforea surprise to find him advocating vast expansion of financial derivativemarkets to reduce the economic risk faced by individuals and countries.According to Schiller, governments should swap 10 percent or moreof their gross domestic product with other countries and administerincome swaps among entire generations.Individuals should manage risk by trading in new financial instrumentsbased on the lifetime income of their profession, the value of homesin their area, or economic statistics like the unemployment rate orinflation rate.Money, he says, will be replaced by “indexed units of account”tied to things like wage rates and commodity prices. People will carrytransponders to report on their every activity, with the results storedin “global risk information databases,” containing all personalinformation, including genetic data, but protected against unauthorizedaccess. In this way, the government can eliminate the undergroundeconomy and tax evasion and individuals will enjoy more economic security.Revolutionary stuff. But while many are sure to dismiss Schiller’snew theories as, well, crazy, anyone doing so might do well to lookback at the heady days when every grandmother, grocer, and gamekeeperwas loathe to stray too far from a stock ticker for fear of missingall the details on the stock surge that was making them all rich.Top Of PageBiotech’s New Ethical Dilemmasd>Kenneth Moch, now CEO of biotech Alteon in Ramsay,cut his entrepreneurial teeth at Liposome on Route 1 in the 1980s,and spent the first half of the 1990s as CEO of Biocyte, a Stamford,Connecticut-based company that pioneered the collection, storage,and use of cord blood cells.There are no embryos involved in the process. Cells are harvestedfrom an umbilical cord after birth, and are most often used to helpsave the life of a family member, typically the sibling of the just-bornbaby. The brother or sister often is suffering from leukemia. Perhapssurprisingly, the life-saving procedure Biocyte, and companies likeit, make possible, is the subject of intense ethical debate.Life sciences technology is galloping ahead, so much so that LarryEllison, CEO of Oracle and a major figure in the computer revolution,stated last week that biotech is poised to shove computer technologyaside in the coming decades.With the advances come myriad ethical questions. Examining some ofthe biggest issues is “The Grand Bargain: The Pharmaceutical Industryand Society in the 21st Century,” a conference taking place onMonday and Tuesday, April 21 and 22, at the New Jersey PerformingArts Center in Newark.In addition to Moch, speakers include Representative Rush Holt;Norman Daniels of the Harvard School of Public Health; DelonHuman of the World Medical Association; Elora Weringer, BioethicsAdvisor, U.S. Science Policy; Martin Delaney of Project Inform;and Harlan F. Weisman, president, Johnson & Johnson PharmaceuticalResearch and Development.The conference on the morning of April 21 is “The Ethics of ClinicalTrials.” Topics to be considered include who gets priority accessto experimental drugs; under what circumstances is it appropriateto administer a placebo to a control group; can meaningful consentbe obtained in diverse cultural contexts; and what rights do participantshave to post-trial access to successful research products?The afternoon conference looks at “Intellectual Property and EqualAccess.” Topics to be considered include patent protection inless developed countries with weak legal infrastructures; desperatehealth needs as a valid justification for generic manufacturing; whetherindigenous peoples have intellectual property rights to traditionalmedicines they have practiced for centuries; and whether AIDS hasbecome an international crisis that requires suspension of patentrights guaranteed to multinational companies under the legal provisionsof the World Treaty Organization.On Tuesday morning, the conference is “Bioethical Issues in the21st Century. Topics to be considered include the ethics of cloninghuman children; the use of Ritalin by those who do not suffer fromAttention Deficit Disorder to enhance mental acuity on an exam; theuse of human growth hormone; and the use of germ line genetic engineeringto improve the genetic characteristics of future generations.This array of subjects hints at the complexity of the debates growingup around new life sciences technology. So new — and controversial— are some technologies that Moch, during his tenure at Biocyte,the cord cell pioneer, relied on an ethics advisory panel.One issue was equal access. “The demand was tremendous,” saysMoch, who studied biochemistry at Princeton (Class of 1976), receivedan MBA from Stanford, and was in on the founding of the Liposome Company.A problem is that collecting and storing the cells for a procedurethat could mean the difference between life and death for a leukemiapatient is expensive. “Some can afford it, some can’t,” saysMoch.He points out that many ethics debates concerning life sciences technologyhave a religious component, but that the issue of affordability doesnot. This does not necessarily make it any easier to untangle. Newmedical procedures often are not covered by insurance. Where theyare expensive, as is often the case, the wealthy will be able to extendtheir lives by taking advantage of the advances, but the poor —and many in the middle class — will not.As health care becomes more expensive and as demand rises, the questionof affordability moves beyond new procedures like the one Biocytedeveloped. Presently, the lion’s share of health care dollars go toindividuals — many of them very elderly — during the lastmonths of their lives. A question, says Moch, is whether society shouldcontinue to spend finite health care dollars this way, or whetherit should put them to use to enhance the health of the very young.”Do we say we’d rather save one person who is 90, or 100 youngpeople?” he posits.Another question the cord cell technology raises is that of whetherit is morally right to have a child only — or largely — tosave the life of another child. Biocyte not only developed cord celltechnology, but also worked with OB/GYNs and with parents. In somecases the parents seeking the procedure were having a child becausethey wanted to obtain stem cells that could save one of their otherchildren. “Some argue that to have a child solely to benefit anotherchild is wrong,” says Moch. His panel of ethicists, however, advisedthat such a decision is a permissible personal choice.Another issue surrounding Biocyte’s technology was its attempt topatent it. An article in Genetics Forum magazine, a British publication,states that “critics claim this (the patent) will enable Biocyteto control all future uses of umbilical cord cells and jeopardizethe interests of patients. It will, for example, be able to demandroyalty payments from those using these cells for bone marrow transplants.Such transplants are seen as a promising technique in helping to reducedeaths of patients on bone marrow waiting lists. U.S. estimates indicatethat 9,000 patients die each year whilst waiting for a bone barrowtransplant.”In further stating the argument, the article brings up another interestingethical issue. It says that the International Society of Transplantationstates that no part of the human body should be commercialized, andthat donation of organs or cells should be free and anonymous. Ethicalarguments such as these led to the revocation of Biocyte’s Europeanpatent.In arguing against a patent on technology to remove and freeze cordcells, opponents stated that, until very recently, patents were grantedfor “mechanical inventions — not living things.” As biotechnologymoves ahead, the world is sure to change radically as the cotton ginand even the mainframe begin to look quaint. And there will be plentyof opinions about the direction that change should take. Or as Mochsays of the upcoming bioethics conference: “It’s clear that allthe speakers will have very different things to say.”Top Of PageBalancing the NewsDespite hundreds of embedded reporters and 24/7 cabletelevision coverage, Americans are not getting the full picture ofwhat is going on in Iraq. It seems remarkable that a people with freeaccess to myriad radio, television, print, and Internet outlets couldstill be missing big parts of the picture, but, according to JayMilner, that is the case.Milner, a screenwriter and producer whose resume is full of both bigoil and the Middle East, speaks on “Mass Media and the Marketplaceof Ideas” on Wednesday, April 23, at 6:30 p.m. at a meeting ofthe Princeton Media Communications Association at the Sarnoff Corporation.Other speakers include Brian McKernan, editor of Digital CameraMedia, and Jeffrey Bloom, video and web informatics specialistat Sarnoff and author of Digital Watermarks. Call 609-818-0025.There is little but Iraq in the news now — everything from detailson the furnishings of Saddam Hussein’s palaces to desert weather reportsto interviews with Kurdish clansmen. But, normally, says Milner, thereis little reporting on international news of any sort.”One concern,” he says, “is that over the last few years,the amount of international news has dwindled greatly. We were gettinga 50/50 split, but now I’d be surprised if it is 25 percent.”While that figure has plumped up considerably over the past two weeks,the reporting is still quite U.S.-centric. “You don’t get fullexposure to reactions in other countries and to why they feel as theydo,” he says. “We’re getting one side of the story — andwe’re getting it constantly.”A native of Tennessee who retains the diction of his home state, Milnerstudied English and drama at East Tennessee State (Class of 1978).By the time he obtained his degree he had already served for fouryears in the Marines, two of them in Vietnam.Upon graduation he went to work for a Houston company as an administrativemanager. The company did consulting work with an oil refinery thatwas setting up an office in Dubai. He went to set up the office, andthen got involved in a Saudi joint venture. During the course of hiscareer in the oil industry he was also posted in Oman and in Qatar,as well as in Europe.Perhaps improbably, he ended his oil career in Princeton, a town notknown for its connection with petroleum products. He was presidentof Refinery Systems International, a company involved in software,manufacturing, and equipment for modernizing oil refineries. Whenthe company consolidated with a company in Houston, Milner decidedto stay put.”I had always wanted to write,” he says. “I took the stockoptions and ran with them.” Infatuated with the movies since theage of two, when his mother, a fan of all movie genres, began takinghim along to the cinema, he wanted to write screenplays.”I gave myself a five-year window,” he says. He began by purchasingScriptware, a software package that formats screenplays, and gettingto work on a political thriller set in the Middle East. Working withoutan agent, he was able to get the screenplay optioned. At that point,he felt he was moving in the right direction. A “boot camp”course at Media Bistro in New York City convinced him that he wason track, and over the next five years he settled in to write 10 morescreenplays, six of which have been optioned. Last year he startedworking with a partner, a veteran writer, in Los Angeles. The pairare close, says Milner, to inking a deal for their latest screenplay,about which he is reluctant to reveal too much.In addition to his writing, Milner teaches screen writing at MercerCounty Community College. His wife, Karyn, owns The Beat Goes On,a website that sells designer clothes (www.thebeatgoeson.com).Milner gets a good amount of his war news on the Internet. “Old”media is moving toward a consolidation that gives rise to homogenization,in his view. He speaks with alarm about Clear Channel, the Texas-basedmedia conglomerate that owns 1,225 radio stations and 39 televisionstations in the United States, and has an equity interest in 240 overseasradio stations.While radio is consolidating, Milner says that television, which hasalso consolidated to a degree, is mired in political correctness.It’s attitude on the Iraq conflict, he says, is “you’re for it.”There are not a lot of commentators striking a balance. “Thereare not a lot of `but’s’ in the news,” he says.So Milner turns to the Internet. If he wants to know what is goingon in Malaysia, he says, he simply logs on and finds a site with anEnglish version of a Malaysian newspaper. It is now fairly easy, hesays, to find English-language versions of newspapers from all aroundthe world. He acknowledges that these publications may not be totallyobjective, either, but at least they offer an alternate view.As for news in this country, Milner fears that the reverence is vanishingfor the belief that “I don’t agree with what you say, but I willdefend to the death your right to say it.”Until big media rights the balance, Milner suggests a spin on theInternet. “If somebody takes the time and effort,” he says,”they will get a better picture than anywhere else. It has thepotential to give the most balanced view.”Top Of PageCorporate AngelsOn Saturday, April 12, Martin House, a Trenton-basednon-profit, hosted a ground breaking ceremony for the constructionof six homes for low-income families. The construction is part ofthe 100 Homes for 100 Families Campaign, which aims to raise $2.1million to build 100 homes over the next five years. Nearly half ofthat amount has already been raised.Among the sponsors who have donated the $21,000 are the MaryOwen Borden Foundation, the James Kerney Foundation, New Jersey ManufacturersInsurance Company, St. John’s Church of Allentown, St. Vincent dePaul Church of Yardville, Joyce and George Albers-Schonberg, MichaelJohnson, Joanne Livingston, Regina Bee Goaneh, Sharon Love, Jackieand Rayfield Meyers, and Melinda Holiday.The $21,000 provided by donors is matched with government funds, throughwhich it grows to the $63,000 necessary to allow Martin House to createa home with an 11-year, interest-free mortgage.To date, 113 mortgages have been created and 43 have been retired.Families who receive the new homes must attend community meetings,complete 50 hours of home repair courses, and invest a minimum of150 hours of sweat equity in the construction of their homes and thoseof their neighbors.Creative Marketing Alliance , a marketing communicationscompany with offices at 191 Clarksville Road, was honored by theAmerican Cancer Society at the 16th Annual Celebration of Life Galaon Saturday, March 29, at the Westin hotel.CMA was recognized marketing communications services it provided tothe organization over the past three years, including design and layoutof the Annual Celebration of Life Gala advertising journal.Pepper Hamilton , a law firm with offices at 300 AlexanderPark, has begun holding fundraisers in anticipation of the 33rd annualWalkAmerica, an event that benefits the March of Dimes. WalkAmericatakes place this year on Sunday, April 27.The employees of the Alexander Park Pepper Hamilton office have participatedin WalkAmerica for over 15 years. This year the office aims to raise$5,000 for the charity.To generate enthusiasm for its team of walkers, consisting of 28 employees,friends, and family members, Pepper Hamilton has conducted a numberof fundraising events. Starting with a Kick Off on February 10, theseevents have included 10 weeks of raffles, auctions, sales, and contests.Top Of PageDonate PleaseThe Notre Dame High School PTA is sponsoring aPost Prom Party for the Class of 2003 at the high school on Friday,May 23, and is soliciting for prizes such as gift certificates, movietickets, theater tickets, sporting event tickets, merchandise, orcash. To donate a prize, contact Lynn Root at 609-587-7668 or DeeDee Nemeth-Juno at 609-584-7510.The Kidney and Urology Foundation of America is sponsoringits fourth annual New Jersey Walk the Walk for Tissue and Organ Donationon Sunday, May 4 at Jenkinson’s Boardwalk in Point Pleasant.Walk the Walk is an event that helps raise awareness of the criticalneed for organ and tissue donation. In New Jersey alone there are2,400 people on the national transplant wait-list in need of a kidney,lung, liver, heart, or pancreas to survive.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
