| On Jan. 13, the eyes
of the biological world focused on, of all places, Hillsboro.
Gerald Schatten, a 50-year-old biologist at the Oregon Regional
Primate Research Center, had created a rhesus monkey after
splitting an embryo into four parts.
Tetra had actually been born back in September. But it
was the publication that January day of Schatten's article
in Science describing Tetra's creation that launched
a global feeding frenzy.
Schatten hopped into his car that morning, drove off the
primate center's campus through pines and Douglas firs,
turned left into the suburbscape separating Hillsboro from
Beaverton and headed for the destiny that awaits all rock-star
scientists--a day in the media's glare.
When he arrived at Oregon Health Sciences University (which
administers the primate center), high in the Southwest Portland
hills, The New York Times and the Associated
Press were on the phone. CNN was there with a satellite
truck and camera; the network would devote hours of coverage
to Tetra. That evening, Tetra would be on CBS, NBC and ABC,
as well as The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. She was
in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York
Post. "Scientists have created the first monkey clone,
a breakthrough that is likely to stir the debate over the
ethical implications of genetic duplication," proclaimed
Rupert Murdoch's tabloid.
Tetra was on BBC Radio and NPR. In the days to come, she
made her way into the pages of Der Spiegel and Paris
Match, as well as Le Monde, L'Observatore
della Romana, the Daily Mirror and Brazil's GLOBO-TV.
Of all the ink devoted to the young simian, none would
be more lavish than that of The Oregonian. The next
morning, a looming front-page photo of Tetra under the headline
"OHSU Researchers Clone Monkey" sprang from newsstands and
front porches across the region.
Like most media, Oregon's paper of record hyped the event
far beyond its context.
What was painted as cloning was something quite different.
It was simply embryo splitting, something nature itself
does to create identical twins. It's a process wholly different
from clone-making and much less of a scientific achievement.
Still, the fawning over Tetra highlights the public's awe
of scientists, its collective fascination and ignorance
when it comes to biology and the intense footrace among
biologists to map out new territory, any new territory,
first.
Gregory Stock, director of UCLA's Program on Medicine,
Society and Technology and a leading expert on the changes
science enforces upon mankind, says this about the birth
of Tetra: "It's not such a big deal."
Gary Anderson, chairman of UC-Davis' Animal Sciences Department,
put it this way: "It's old news."
Barry Bavister, a University of Wisconsin professor of
biomedical science and a leading conservation biologist,
is even more acute: "The experiment was not successful."
To understand why these scientists, and others contacted
by WW, have such a different view of Schatten's work
than what the media portrayed, consider Dolly.
Born in Scotland in 1997, Dolly is a clone, the first mammal
that was a perfect replicant of another. When her birth
was announced, the world practically went into fits: If
you could clone a sheep, you could clone a human. Politicians
promised that they would defend the holy union of sperm
and egg that has, so far, brought each human into existence.
Standing in the Rose Garden that day, President Clinton
said, "Any discovery that touches upon human creation is
not simply a matter of scientific inquiry. It is a matter
of morality and spirituality as well. Each human life is
unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory
science."
To make a cloned miracle in a laboratory, you need a donor
cell--one from a 6-year-old sheep, say. Then take an unfertilized
sheep egg. Strip it of its DNA. Place the cell in the egg.
Give them a jolt of electricity. The donor cell and the
egg are as one, a created cell. DNA-packed nucleus, cytoplasm,
mitochondria: the works. Then you implant the cell into
a female sheep's uterus. Let cell division run its course.
Wait six months and a fully formed creature is born, one
with the same DNA as its donor.
The opportunity and the threat of cloning is that, in theory,
you can create an infinite number of clones. The advantage
is that the more genetically identical animals you have
to experiment upon, the more accurate the experiment. The
downside is the fear that cloning would allow you to create
entire colonies of humans who were somehow darkly other.
Schatten did not peer into the dark realm of cloning, despite
articles suggesting that he did.
Last May, in a laboratory kept as hot as a womb, Schatten
took a monkey egg and monkey sperm and mated them in a petri
dish--the same way it's done with human eggs and sperm at
in-vitro fertilization clinics the world over.
For three days the embryo grew cell by cell. Each morning
Schatten put the petri dish under a 100x microscope and
screwed it into focus. He counted the cells. Each cell is
an exact genetic duplicate of the others; each cell is rhesus
life and rhesus being. When the embryo reached the eight-cell
stage, he dribbled an enzyme into the petri dish. The enzyme
loosened the chemical bond holding the cells together and
they floated apart, as though he'd scattered eight drops
of olive oil on a puddle. Each cell was suctioned up a hollow
pipette, a scientific straw. Then, two-by-two, Schatten
squirted them into four DNA-less monkey egg shells.
He had tweaked one embryo into four embryos, each the genetic
equal of the others. Each was implanted in a female rhesus.
Never before had any scientist created identical monkeys.
Schatten wanted to show the world it could be done. His
intent was quadruplets, but twins would be scientific proof
aplenty.
Two of the pregnancies did not take; a third did, but the
embryo died in placenta. The fourth pregnancy, however,
was the charm. On Sept. 7, Tetra was born--moon-faced, chestnut-eyed
and sticky.
But her birth was no revolution. Embryo splitting is old
hat. Steen Willadsen, a Florida biologist, perfected it
in sheep in 1978. Since then, it's been applied to cattle
and mice, and George Washington University researchers briefly
experimented with the technique using human embryos in 1993.
Schatten's accomplishment: He did it with a rhesus monkey.
One-sixth an average human's size, a rhesus monkey contains
as much as 98 percent of a human being's DNA. Because biologically
it shares so much with humans, rhesus monkeys are far more
valuable to researchers investigating complex human diseases--AIDS
and Alzheimer's, for example--than are biologically simpler
mice.
To many scientists, the difference between splitting embryos
and cloning is like the difference between shagging fly
balls at Civic Stadium and making a shoestring catch at
Yankee Stadium.
Embryo splitting, which still involves the first step of
uniting sperm and egg, has its limits: You can only create
a few animals at a crack. For moral traditionalists, the
technique has the appeal that you continue to work with
the genetic givens of the parents while retaining the seemingly
magical unknown of which parent's genes will predominate
in the offspring.
But cloning is the complete bypassing of natural reproductive
methods. In theory, you could scrape a cell from Slobodan
Milosevic and create his genetic identical, or thousands
of them (whether the offspring would commit genocide 50
years later is another question).
There are technical problems with cloning: A newborn's
cells are as old as its donor, which would skew experiments;
and having DNA from one parent--instead of the usual male-female
mixture--has led to problems with cell division.
Still, most scientists believe that these problems will
be ironed out and that cloning is the significant
advance. So the scientific community's reaction was predictable
when Schatten's Science paper--which used the term
"clonal" in its title--hit the streets Jan. 13.
"Using 'clone' in the title of the paper was stretching
the word 'clone,'" says Ralph D. Schramm, a staff scientist
at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center.
"This would not have been published in Science if
it didn't involve primates," says Anderson of UC-Davis.
"It doesn't surprise me that it works in primates. We've
seen similar types of procedures in livestock for 15 years.
It's commercially available."
Other scientists say that Schatten's work is less than
ground-breaking not merely because it involves embryo splitting
but because he failed to create genetically identical twins,
much less quadruplets.
"Schatten set out to produce identical offspring," says
Bavister of the University of Wisconsin. "Only one was born;
it's as simple as that."
"Tetra wasn't related to anything except a dead placenta,"
says Schramm.
The New York Times' Gina Kolata was perhaps the
only journalist not seduced by the hype surrounding Tetra.
While other newspapers gave Schatten's work front-page play,
Kolata wrote a remarkably brief account of Tetra's birth
that landed on page 13 of the Times' front section.
Contacted by WW, Kolata declined to criticize other
reporters but made it clear she felt that Schatten's "breakthrough"
had been treated like a revolution when it was little more
than pamphleteering.
If Schatten's work didn't rate with scientists, why did
Science--one of the world's preeminent scientific
journals--publish his paper?
"We felt it represented a sufficient first step forward
in an area with a lot of potential," says Barbara Jasny,
a senior editor with the journal. She says embryo splitting
in primates is a novel enough concept that it was important
for the magazine to get the news to the scientific community
and that the paper's peer reviewers--whom she declined to
name--did not think the experiment unsuccessful.
"We don't publish papers to see them mentioned in The
New York Times," she says. Jasny says it's more important
that, when researchers put up slides of work at scientific
conferences, other researchers see that the work was first
published in Science, thereby further seeding the
journal's prestige in the minds of one and all.
Schatten himself isn't responding to his critics. He agreed
to two short interviews with WW; in both instances,
he would only speak of his work in the vaguest of scientific
terms, then depart before critical issues could be raised.
After that, Schatten would only consent to e-mail interviews
while on a two-week Hawaiian vacation.
But Lesley Hallick, OHSU's provost and vice-president of
academic affairs, says Schatten's critics have a limited
point.
Based on "pure molecular mechanics," she says, Schatten's
experiment "doesn't look like a dramatic breakthrough. But
if you look at it as a contribution to species modeling,
it is amazing." By species modeling, Hallick means rhesus
monkeys' ability to act as biological proxies for humankind.
Many scientists are scratching their heads, trying to square
Tetra with her creator's claims. Schatten, they say, has
not proven that genetically identical rhesus monkeys can
be created, just that it's highly probable. A single live
birth only proves that Schatten can create a single monkey.
"Quadruplets are a long time coming," says Schramm, who
is splitting rhesus embryos at Wisconsin's primate center
but is holding back from implanting them in females. "We're
trying to get the technique right."
Public criticism in the big-ego world of research science
is nothing new. But the barbs thrown at Schatten are especially
pointed.
The reason may be that Schatten has a reputation as one
of the less collegial members of his profession.
Typically, scientists share research data, seek advice
from others who have similar expertise when they hit roadblocks
and ask them to review their papers before they submit them
for publication. It's all part of pure science's informal
quality-control system.
Out at the primate center, Don Wolf--an OHSU embryologist
of world renown--would be the natural person for Schatten
to share his paper with.
Did Schatten show Wolf his Tetra paper?
"No," says Wolf, "I didn't review the paper." Wolf won't
go into the complexities of his relationship with Schatten,
but he admits that they are "competitors." He says he's
not happy with the reality of fellow researchers competing
with one another.
"I just kind of rebel against this," Wolf says.
Schramm, the Wisconsin primatologist, says "Schatten's
lab doors are locked" to other researchers. He says he had
no idea that Schatten was splitting monkey embryos until
the Science paper was published, despite the fact
that he's a well-regarded researcher in the small universe
of primate embryologists.
"His attitude is very sad to see," says another scientist
familiar with Schatten. "He's doing commendable work, but
it's not revolutionary. So what is this paranoia about?"
OHSU's stake in all of this is more than mere prestige;
it's dollars and cents. The $18.8 billion National Institutes
of Health funds research at 2,400 institutions around the
country. The dollars aren't doled out willy-nilly, either;
they are based upon peer review, a jury of scientific peers.
In major-league baseball, peer review would exist if the
all-star team were chosen by players instead of fans.
The more peer-reviewed articles a researcher like Schatten
publishes in journals like Science and Nature,
the easier it is for him to nail down peer-reviewed grants.
Publication breeds dollars.
For OHSU, the more its 550 principal investigators, as
laboratory leaders such as Schatten are known, get their
work in high-quality journals, the easier it is for the
institution to compete for research money and swipe researchers
from other universities. Everyone in science looks to the
grand pecking order of where people publish their work and
where they stand on the NIH's list.
How high an institution is on that list says how well it
rates with its scientific peers: New York Yankees or Minnesota
Twins?
In the last 10 years, the Pill Hill complex has leapt from
No. 70 to No. 34 on the NIH list; it currently takes in
$106 million a year.
OHSU's Hallick isn't shy about saying that the institution
wants to be No. 20, and having its researchers broadly covered
in the popular media works into its plans.
"We want our researchers to publish in quality journals
because it speaks to the quality of the research," says
Hallick. And Schatten's paper? "It's another mark for OHSU."
It's not that outlandish, on one level, that Schatten's
work was blown out of proportion: The social implications
of biological research have forced the general public to
pay attention in ways they wouldn't have only a generation
ago.
It was in 1974 that recombinant DNA was discovered, after
all. Ever since, biologists have displaced physicists as
the rock stars of the scientific world. Sometime early this
century those old dormitory posters of Albert Einstein will
come down. In their place will go those of a molecular biologist--as
soon as the discipline finds its philosopher-king--for,
sometime in the next 25 years, biology will make good on
its promise to crush the diseases that have afflicted mankind
for aeons.
But there's something creepy in this dynamic as well: These
days, even small advances like Schatten's are read as harbingers
of a brave new world. People are so attuned to cloning as
a fait accompli that they seize upon each
whisper of cloning with the intensity that the music press
seizes upon even a semi-passable British pop band as greater
than the Beatles.
Biologists seem to have a pipeline to the Infinite, if
even for an ephemeral moment.
Each day, spectacular claims for disease cures swamp the
public's imagination. With the tacit collusion of scientists
and scientific journals that know better, the media, like
circus monkeys, oblige with breakthrough hype.
And so when Gerald Schatten and Science trumpeted
the birth of a monkey that January day, the world media
assumed that something deeply profound had to be afoot in
Hillsboro and that it had the deepest implications for humankind.
Then the world moved on.
"Justices look at Scouts, abortion," was the headline on
the next day's Oregonian.
The first three sites are good for general background information;
after that, itıs science geek territory.
UCLAıs Gregory Stockıs excellent site with information
on cloning and germline engineering:
http://research.mednet.ucla.edu/pmts/Stock.htm
The University of Pennsylvaniaıs useful bioethics web site:
http://www.med.upenn.edu/~bioethic/index.shtml
A debate on whether cloning should be banned: http://hotwired.lycos.com/synapse/braintennis/97/37/index0a.html
A site full of cloning news, thatıs either thoroughly scary
or encouraging depending on who you are:
http://www.globalchange.com/clone_index.htm
Links to the USıs regional primate research centers: http://www.crprc.ucdavis.edu/rprcp/CenterLinks.html
The Human Genome Project:
http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/
A nice primer on model organisms and species modeling,
with good links. The site includes no information on using
monkeys as model organisms, a measure of how infrequently
they are used. http://genome.cbs.dtu.dk/gorm/modelorganisms.html
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Willamette Week | originally
published February 16,
2000
|
