Month: June 2004

Biotech Company Creates Cattle that Express Human Proteins

Biotechnology firm Hematech this month reported that it has succeeded in creating genetically modified calves that carry human genes.

The company inserts the gene for human heavy and light chain antibody genes into bovine fetal fibroblast cells. This is accomplished by knocking out both copies of the bovine immunoglobulin gene to reduce the level of bovine antibodies circulating in the blood of the animals so that detectable levels of human antibodies remain.

Another problem the company will have to face is genetically engineering the animals to prevent the possibility of transmitting prion diseases such as Mad Cow’s. The company plans on creating genetically modified cattle that lack the genes necessary to produce prion proteins. Hematech CEO James Barton told InPharma.Com,

If live animals are produced form these embryos [lacking the genes necessary to produce prion proteins] they will be prion free and thus unable to contract mad cow disease. These animals will be ideal for the production of the company’s fully human polyclonal antibodies.

Details of Hematech’s research in knocking out the bovine immunoglobulin gene is scheduled to be published in Nature Genetics.

Source:

Cattle antibody production moves a step closer. InPharma.Com, June 3, 2004.

L.A. Mayor's Neighbors Take on Activists

In mid-June a couple dozen animal rights activists assembled outside of the home of Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn. The activists, affiliated with the Animal Defense League, were there to protest policies at Los Angeles city animal shelters.

Neighbors of individuals targeted by home protests are increasingly taking the offensive against such activists and the Hahn’s neighbors were no exception. About 20 minutes into the protest several of Hahn’s neighbors emerged from their homes to douse the activist with Super Soakers.

Animal Defense League activist Jerry Vlasak told the L.A. Daily News,

All we wanted to do was talk to him about the city’s policies and who he is going to appoint as general manager. We were demonstrating peacefully for about 20 minutes when some of his neighbors came out and got raucous.

They seemed intoxicated and three of them had Super Soakers and started pelting us with water. I thought we were fairly restrained.

Given Vlasak’s rhetoric, it was likely the neighbors with the water guns who were restrained. This is the same Vlasak, after all, who has openly suggested the value of emulating the anti-abortion wackos who assassinate abortion providers,

I donÂ’t think youÂ’d have to kill — assassinate — too many [researchers] Â… I think for 5 lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives.

Vlasak made that statement, by the way, at Animal Rights 2003 where he was representing PETA front-group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

And, of course, as in previous home demonstrations, a number of the activists showed up wearing their ever-popular masks.

The Super Soaking quickly degenerated into a mini-brawl according to the L.A. Daily News,

Vlasak said the demonstration came to an end with shouting between his group and residents and included an alteration where someone grabbed his video camera and threw it to the ground. However, he said, the incident would not deter the demonstrators, who will continue their protests.

Source:

Protest in front of Hahn’s house turns into a wet mess. Rick Orlov, L.A. Daily News, June 15, 2004.

University of Texas at Austin Disclaims Beagle Patent

Earlier this year, animal rights activists applauded the decision of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to reconsider a patent that the University of Texas at Austin obtained on a beagle disease model. In late May, the University of Texas at Austin formally gave up all of its rights to the beagle patent.

The University of Texas at Austin was awarded Patent # 6,444,872 for a fungal lung disease model applying to beagles and a number of other animals. The American Anti-Vivisection Society and a number of intellectual property groups asked the USPTO to overturn the patent on the grounds that the method of infecting the animals with the fungal lung disease were not novel or original.

On May 21, the USPTO agreed to reexamine the patent, and shortly thereafter UTA announced it would voluntarily give up its patent rather than defend the patent.

The motivations of the group concerned with patents makes sense, but the animal rights motivation seems a bit odd. AAVS president Sue Leary was quoted in a press release as saying,

It is fundamentally illegitimate and flawed to consider any animal to be patentable subject matter, and defined as a machine, an article of manufacture, or an inventor’s composition of matter. The horrible treatment of these patented dogs is a disgraceful illustration of the convergence of bad science and bad policy.

But, of course, the patent office wasn’t going to consider whether or not animals are patentable — that they are is already well established in the United States and the USPTO has issued more than 450 patents involving animals. All that was at issue here was whether or not the particular method used to infect the beagles with the fungal infection was novel or original.

Leary’s concern about the horrible treatment is even odder. If the method were patented, UTA and the private company it had licensed the patent to would have charged for the method and split the profits (at least for the term of the patent). With the patent rights disclaimed, anyone can use this method royalty free immediately.

So, in effect, Leary and her group fought to make it easier and cheaper for researchers to use this particular method.

Way to go, Sue!

Source:

Beagles win first round in fight for reprieve from patenting. Press Release, American Anti-Vivisection Society, May 21, 2004.

Groups object to UT’s beagle project. Associated Press, February 26, 2004.

Patent on beagle dogs cancelled. Press Release, American Anti-Vivisection Society, May 27, 2004.

CITES Rejects Japan's Whale Appeal

The Convention on International Trade in Endanger Species (CITES) this month rejected a request by Japan to remove minke whales from the CITES Appendix I list of threatened species in which international trade is prohibited.

Japan had filed an appeal with CITES seeking to have minke whales moved to the CITES Appending II, in which highly regulated trade of an endangered species is permitted.

In a news conference, CITES secretary general Willem Wijnstekers said that the proper place to take up whale-related issues was the International Whaling Commission and that as long as the IWC’s ban on commercial whaling remains in place, so will the Appendix I listing of whales.

Wijnstekers said,

As long as the International Whaling Commission maintains a zero-catch quota for commercial reasons in its management of minke whales, then the best way to coordinate that level of protection within CITES is by maintaining the species in appendix I.

Source:

CITES rejects Japanese call for partial end to ban on whale trade. Agence-France Presse, June 14, 2004.

Mice Research Offers Possible Approach to Stopping Huntington's Disease

Researchers at the University of Iowa in Iowa City this month made public the results of their research into stopping dominant progressives brain disorders in mice.

A dominant progressive brain disorder is a disease caused when an infant inherits one copy of a mutant gene which results in the production of mutant proteins that cause loss of cognitive abilities. The most widely occurring form of this sort of disease in the United States is Huntington’s disease, with as many as 250,000 sufferers in this country alone. Huntington’s disease usually manifests itself in a victim’s mid-to-late 30s and sufferers typically live only 15-20 years after diagnosis while suffering progressively worsening brain degeneration.

The University of Iowa researchers used gene therapy to treat mice afflicted spioncerebellar ataxia type 1. The disease produces a mutated protein in the brain that eventually leads the mice to have difficulty in walking. Like Huntington’s it is not a result of a missing gene — which gene therapy has traditionally been used to treat in animal models and in a small number of humans — but rather a mutant gene inherited from a parent.

Nonetheless, researchers used a virus to carry modified genetic material to the mice. The genetic material was designed to bind with and block the expression the defective gene. After the mice were injected with the virus, the production of the proteins causing the disease stopped and the mice appeared to improve their ability to walk.

The researchers then took the process one step further and used the same method to see if genetic material could be effective when added in vitro to human Huntington’s cell cultures. After exposing the cell cultures to a different virus containing the genetic materials, the cells stopped producing the proteins that cause Huntington’s disease.

Lead researcher Beverley Davidson said the she hopes this discovery moves quickly into clinical trials to see if it can be effective in treating Huntington’s in human beings,

The data are very promising; we hope we will be able to use RNA interference as a therapy for dominant neurodegenerative diseases.

Source:

Cure hoped for Huntington’s sufferers. Erika Chek, Nature, June 9, 2004.

SCOTUS: Enemy Combatants Have Right to Challenge Their Detention

Today the Supreme Court of the United States did the right thing in three decisions finding that the government cannot indefinitely people designated as enemy combatants indefinitely without giving them an opportunity to challenge their detention. That includes enemy combatants held outside of the United States, such at Guantanamo Bay.

Source:

Supreme Court Affirms Detainees’ Right to Use Courts. David Stout, New York Times, June 28, 2004.