Ethics Panel for Gene Research Rejected
WASHINGTON — A federal scientific advisory panel, which earlier this month approved the first experiments involving the transfer of genetically altered cells into humans, Monday rejected a proposal to establish an outside review committee to consider the social and ethical implications of such research.
Members of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the National Institutes of Health dismissed a recommendation from activist Jeremy Rifkin and a coalition of disability rights groups, saying that such a panel is “unnecessary” because “existing mechanisms at NIH can meet these concerns.”
But Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends--a public interest group that has challenged other genetic engineering research in the past--announced that he filed a lawsuit in federal district court here Monday seeking to halt all human gene therapy experimentation until such a committee is formed.
The proposed Advisory Committee on Human Eugenics, Rifkin said, would be composed of individuals in the fields of civil liberties, disability rights and occupational health and safety, among others, to advise the director of NIH on the potentially adverse impact of human genes therapy on “those persons who might be genetically manipulated.”
Rifkin, speaking to the NIH panel, warned: “This group cannot play God. . . . We will be back next time and the next time. . . . We’ll be back here every single time. You know we don’t go away.”
He added: “If we are not careful, we will find ourselves in a world where the disabled, minorities, and workers will be genetically engineered. . . . It is a real and frightening threat.”
But Dr. James B. Wyngaarden, the director of NIH, said in an interview that the agency “has no interest whatsoever of going into eugenics, of manipulating genes to improve the human race,” adding: “But to have a broader ethical review is fine. We are moving in that direction already.”
The experiment in question, to be conducted by Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg and his colleagues at the National Cancer Institute, involves putting a so-called “marker” gene in cells now being used without markers in an experimental cancer treatment.
The therapy, which already has been shown to have some value in treating melanoma, an often fatal skin cancer, uses white blood cells within the tumor. The cells are surgically removed from the patient and grown in the laboratory until there are trillions of them--then they are reinserted into the patient to attack the cancer.
Researchers want to tag the cells with a marker cell so that they can be monitored after they are returned to the patient.
The experimental therapy is to be conducted on patients who are expected to live 90 days or less.
Rifkin emphasized that he is not opposed to the experiments. “It’s the process that troubles us,” he said. “We just want to ensure that the appropriate social and ethical questions are raised before the experiments are performed.”
