Genetic Modification

This topic seemed to be a recurring theme in this month's New Scientists, and it got my attention. My first main interest was in a study being conducted by Oxitec, who were using GM mosquitos to fight the spread of dengue fever. The mosquitos were modified to die before reaching adulthood. A group of male GM mosquitos would be released into an affected area and then mate with normal (infected) females. Their offspring would die being reaching adulthood and the spread of the disease would be cut. Primary test in the Jacobina region of Brazil show that the number of eggs fell by up to 92% but there was no fall in the incidence of dengue fever. This, however, could be due to an extremely small sample size. The article states that a full epidemiological study must be conducted before results can be seriously considered. This concept is really topical in the world of medicine, with diseases like malaria causing so many deaths every year. If this study proves successful, could we be looking at seriously fighting malaria?
The second incidence of modification was in worms. Scientists had conducted a study involving the neurons of nematodes. They started by using electrical synapses to bridge a gap junction involved in recognition of salt concentration. They did this by injecting DNA onto the gonads of Caenorhabditis elegans which codes for a protein involved in establishing extra neural connections. They used mouse genes to avoid interaction with other neurons and found that the response to salt in the next generation of worms was massively depleted. The second investigation they conducted was in the smell of these worms. They added electrical synapses to neurons previously connected by a chemical link. This retraced the signals and eliminated the worms ability to recognise smells. This circuit for smell in the worms is comparable to circuits for eyesight in other organisms, which poses questions as to how else this technique could be used. One suggestion from the article was that it could be used to treat stroke victims. They could be given a pill to reconnect the damaged areas of their brain by creating neural bypasses to avoid damaged areas. Another important idea raised was that, by editing synaptic pathways, one could genetically modify an organism to possess a specifically grown brain circuit with a certain skill set. This could include organisms such as worms able to protect crops by identifying dangerous bacteria, which is definitely appropriate given the food crisis we are heading into. However, this made me wonder whether the genetic modification of organisms is ethical. Admittedly, in nematodes, it is less of a concern, particularly given their small CNS, but in larger organisms, it raises an issue for me. If we are able to insert skills be rewiring a brain in a certain way, why do we need to learn? What need to we have for education? When we are simply able to have an operation to allow us to have a certain skill set, why would anyone want to spent 4 years and a crazy amount of money to train in that skill? When society is levelled out in this way, it reduces the need for skilled individuals. I think this is a dangerous concept.
And I believe lots of the rest of the population agree with me that GM can be a little scary, perhaps just for different reasons. Another article was discussing GM crops, and it was heavily focused on the public opinion of this idea, which is generally fairly negative. They seem to be concerned about the ideas of 'tomatoes with scorpion genes in them,' and this concern seems to make them reluctant to consider the less shaky, more high tech ways of modification. They also appear to be unaware of how regularly genes are naturally swapped between species in the wild. This got me thinking why people have this view. Is it the fault of the scientific community? Or is it simply that they haven't bothered to do enough research into it themselves to see that there are alternatives that don't involve putting a salmon genes into strawberries? Either way, the scientific community is forced to concern itself with this public opinion, and I can't decide if this is right. I'm not sure that it seems right that professionals are forced to halt all progressions in their research if someone unqualified doesn't really like it much, particularly if the research is looking into solving a world issue, such as the food crisis. Granted, if the public are unhappy about GM crops, the research may be slightly useless because they won't buy the product, but can this concept be transferred to other areas? For example, stem cell research. To be answered.

Work Experience

Having already done some work experience in France and finding out how exciting it can be, it's fair to say when I was able to organise some more in England with an NHS doctor I was absolutely chuffed. I'd really struggled to find any work experience in the NHS because of my seriously busy schedule, particularly around exam season, but I finally managed to organise some with a doctor, called Sam, who had a clinic for looked after children. I spent a day with her in her clinic and was able to watch the complex interactions in a highly sensitive situation. This was unlike any other exposure I had had to medicine before and I enjoyed discussing the way these situations were handled with Sam, including how she handled the emotionally challenging cases she saw daily. Something that I found particularly difficult was the often detached and impersonal way the fosterers could talk about the children they were caring for. I found it difficult to see carers discussing 'problems' they were having with the children they were looking after while they were in the room. Often the carer would talk about the child in a very negative way, despite the fact that they were present at the time. I brought this up with Sam after one particularly difficult consultation, telling her how I found it sad that the young boy had to sit and listen to the carer basically complain about him. She explained to me that often the view of an outsider on these types of situations can be that they are harsh and upsetting but that through training and exposure, she reassured me that these things become easier and that finding it difficult was simply a sign of remaining compassionate, as opposed to be unsuited to a medical career.
Another part of this experience I found interesting was discussing ADHD, as it is diagnosed more often in looked after children than average. I learnt that this is because looked after children are often victims of trauma, which can cause similar symptoms meaning that they are misdiagnosed as having ADHD, when in fact they are simply responding to their hyper vigilance, as opposed to hyperactivity. When I got home, I looked into this more, and found an article which described that children who experienced trauma, such as violence, are much more sensitive to subtle changes in tone of voice, facial expression or body language due to a fight or flight mentality they have been forced to adopt. This explains why often at school, they can seem easily distracted by irrelevant concepts, such as sounds around them or the behaviour of other children. This can cause concentration on normal subjects to be hugely difficult for the children, and can be easily misdiagnosed as ADHD. The article (http://healthyliving.msn.com/diseases/adhd/diagnosis-adhd—or-is-it-trauma-1?pageart=2) states that often the drugs prescribed for ADHD can act as a stimulant, which of course would make the symptoms worse. This, to me, highlights how important it is to ensure the correct diagnosis is made, especially given that fostering, adoption and placement are all considered to be potentially traumatising.
Sam also allowed me to attend a genetics lecture organised by the department. Despite struggling to keep up with some of the more complex ideas, (especially those involving lots of acronyms that I had never heard of!) one thing I took out of the talk was an interest in Huntington's disease. This was brought up because it causes an ethical difficulty when screening looked after children whose grandparents have showed symptoms. If the parents do not wished to be screened or would rather not know if they have the mutation related with HD, it becomes difficult to screen the children, because of course if they are positive, it's obvious that one of the parents is also positive (because it is autosomal dominant mutation and does not skip generations). This is a problem because if a grandparent has symptoms or has been confirmed as having HD, there is a chance the child will also have it, and one could argue that the child deserves the right to be screened, particularly in cases where the gene is suspected to be from the father. This is due to greater instability in the paternal genes than maternal genes, meaning the mutation could be greater and therefore could lead to early onset Huntington's.

Impulse by Dr David Lewis

I recently read Impulse and thoroughly enjoyed it. Upon primary examination, while trying to choose a book to hand in for my school’s speech day as a prize, I was interested by the concept of the book; looking at why we do things without knowing why we do them. At first, it seemed as though it was mostly based on general psychology and so I did not expect to read much hardcore medicine related science, but was still interested nevertheless. I was pleasantly surprised to find that in fact the book was heavily science based and had plenty for me to get my teeth stuck into!

I read it while away on a trekking and volunteering expedition in the Atlas mountains in Morocco with a group, and managed to get them all interested in certain aspects of the book, such as how the length of index finger in comparison to ring finger can be used to find a ratio which is then used to determine the likelihood of the individual partaking in risky behaviour.

Another aspect of the book that I found particularly interesting was the section that discussed how animals can use a subconscious sense of smell to avoid inbreeding within their species. This caused me to do some further reading and I found that this occurs largely in birds, such as penguins. This also helps them to find their mates after a long period of foraging, and allows them to find their habitats after days at sea. The same principle applies with mice. They use the their sense of smell to detect which other mice are closely related to them, due to the genes relating to smell being on the same part of the genome as the genes related to the way the immune system identifies its cells. This produces the concept that if you smell similar, you are likely to be closely related. An experiment was done claiming that mice avoid inbreeding in this way, where a mouse was placed into a cage with its brother. When forced and with no other option, the mice would breed. However, if another, non-related male was introduced, the female would mate with the other male over the brother. Interestingly, if the second male was introduced after the female had fallen pregnant, the female would abort her current pregnancy to mate with the new male; a good mechanism to avoid inbreeding. Dr David Lewis claimed that this concept could be transferred and was proven to be in use among humans, in that we subconsciously find people with similar smells to our own less attractive, which is nature’s of way of preventing incest, using MHC (major histocompatibility complex) genes.

The overall message of the book is that a lot of what we do, or at least think we do, consciously, is in fact down to our genes or factors that we cannot control. This introduces the idea that ‘free will in an illusion.’ This is a dangerous concept, as highlighted in the final chapter of the book, due to the fact that it removes all personal responsibility and makes punishment of criminals significantly more difficult, particularly if it were to be widely recognised that free will is in fact a grand illusion. We would no longer be able to send murderers or psychopaths to prison because they could quite easily blame their subconscious (system I) brain and claim they were not in control of themselves; a dangerous and scary concept in my opinion.