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features
august
01
Northern Exposure
Mv Trip to Alaska
Cassidy Brown
A
s the end of the year
was fast approaching,
the anticipation of
summer vacation was almost
too much for me to bear. Al
though I knew I would miss my
friends terribly, I couldn’t wait
for a break from homework,
tests, and term papers. The first
week in June was great. I slept
until noon every day and spent
the rest of my time driving
around town in my beloved car,
which had been sitting in the
driveway for the past ten
months. But my daily routine
got old quickly, and by the sec
ond week of summer, I felt like
a lazy bum. By the third week,
I yearned to go back to school.
I was willing to do anything
(yes, even eat PFM food) to es
cape the boredom of summer. I
had to find something to do.
My church youth
group was planning to go to
Alaska the first week in July, and
I quickly signed up for the trip.
We .planned on joining other
church groups in Alaska to help
build houses for needy citizens
of Anchorage. After three dif
ferent plane rides and a total
time of over thirteen hours, I fi
time. Because Alaska is so far
north, it only gets dark for two
or three hours during the sum
mer months. As we drove to our
hotel, I stared out the window
»li»
ne jour mile long glacier
nally arrived in Alaska. . As I
got off the airplane, the first
thing I noticed was that there
was still daylight, even though
it was almost midnight in local
at the majestic mountains in the
distance. Even though I grew
up in the mountains of western
North Carohna, I had never seen
anything like the Alaskan
mountains. They were twice as
high as any I had ever seen, and
even though it was July, their
peaks were still covered in snow.
The next day, my first
day on the
job-I was
helping to re
roof a house-
I g 1 a n c e d
over to the
highway that
ran in front
of the house,
and saw a gi
ant moose
standing in
the middle of
the road! Al
though we
were all ex-
^ cited and
^ clamored for
our cameras,
the locals
said that seeing a moose in the
middle downtown Anchorage
was common. By the end of the
week, I had seen nine moose and
four babies.
One afternoon, after
we finished the roof, we decided
to take a trip to a nearby gla
cier park. In order to see the
glaciers, we had to ride a boat
through a lake peppered with
neon blue icebergs. The gla
cier, nesded between two moun
tains, was over four miles long
and had formed both the lake
and the icebergs. It was one of
the most spectacular sights I
have ever seen.
We spent Thursday
and Friday painting the house
that we had roofed and finished
the day that we left. We caught
a red-eye flight out of Anchor
age, and when we landed in
Seatde at 4:00 a.m., it was the
first time in a week that I had
seen darkness. When I got
home, I was exhausted and jet-
lagged, but extremely glad that
I went. Alaska is beautiful and
majestic, and I cannot wait to
go back. After all, there’s noth
ing like a trip to Alaska to get
rid of the summer doldrums!
Stem Cells
From the Front Page
end the debate.
Adult stem cells are
certainly valuable in research
today. For the past 25 years,
researchers have been using
adult stem cells found in bone
marrow to regenerate blood
cells after chemotherapy via
transplants. Dr. Jos Domen,
assistant Research Professor of
Medicine and Immunology at
Duke University, explained that
“both adult and embryonic
stem cells have their pros and
cons in therapeutic use; an im
portant question is whether
embryonic stem cells hold the
promise that adult stem cells
may not. And that question has
not been answered.” Still, sci
entists are skeptical about us
ing only adult stem cells,
because, as Stanford scientist
Irving Weissman puts it, “No
paper shows definitively any
adult stem cells in humans turn
ing into anything else.” Geron’s
CEO, Dr. Thomas B. Okarma,
puts it bluntly: “It’s baloney
that adult stem cells are all we
need to make regenerative
medicine real.”
His company claims
to have three “validated and
complementary technology
platforms,” one of which is the
use of human embryonic stem
cells. Another is nuclear trans
fer.
Nuclear transfer, com
monly known as cloning, is the
process by which an embryo is
stripped of its genetic material
by removing the nucleus and
replacing it with a different
nucleus extracted from an adult
cell. In the case of human clon
ing, all 46 chromosomes come
Drug
deveic^ent
and ^
taaidty
tests
from one individual, not 23
from a mother and 23 from a
father, as with normal sexual
reproduction. Cloning has the
potential to complement stem
cell research in that it could sig
nificantly lower the risk of new
tissue being rejected by the
patient’s immune system.
Therapeutic cloning
is the use of nuclear
transfer for re
search. The theory
is this: a patient
who has suffered
what is now consid
ered permanent
damage to, for ex
ample, heart tissue
after a heart attack
could donate a
sample of his or her
DNA (which can be
obtained from any
cell in her body).
Using the DNA, an
embryo is cloned.
The clonexl embryo
would not be permitted to de
velop into a fetus. Instead, the
cloned DNA could be allowed
to replicate within the embry
onic stem cells, which could in
turn be extracted for tissue re
generation. Because the DNA
would be an exact match to the
donor, the patient’s body theo
retically would not reject the
tissue grown in stem cell cul
tures, and the damaged tissue
would be regenerated. Only
one U.S. company. Advanced
Cell Research, has publicly an
nounced that it plans to use
nuclear transfer to create human
embryos from egg cells for re
search purposes. Geron, which
merged with Roslin Bio Med
Ltd. (the company that was re
sponsible for cloning Dolly the
sheep back in 1997), hopes to
use somatic (non-sex) human
cells to perform nuclear trans
fer, thereby avoiding the con
troversy associated with using
human egg cells for cloning.
On July 31, the House
of Representatives voted to ban
the cloning of human embryos,
even for research purposes. Of
the research. House member
The l^vmlse of Stem Cei IkNMHireh
Cultured pluripoteat
stemceRs
Eq>erjm«tts
to study
, devek^ent
and gene
control
'J'
Tissues/ceils for therapy
Bone marrow
Nerve cells
Neart musde cells
PartcreatK islet cells
J.C. Watts stated “We should not
be giving the green light to mad
scientists to tinker with the gift
of life. Cloning is an insult to
humanity. It is science gone
crazy.” Naturally, the Senate
will have to adopt the measure
for it to become law. Senate
Majority leader Tom Daschle
(D-S. Dakota), who supports
stem cell research, noted that he
was “opposed to the effort to
clone under virtually any cir
cumstances.” He has also be
lieves that “virtually every one
of my Senate colleagues is op
posed to human cloning.” Sen.
Daschle plans to move with
legislation to fund stem cell re
search this fall if President
Bush refuses to release federal
money for that purpose. Sen.
Daschle prefers to allow more
time to pass, however, before
cloning is considered for a vote.
Sen. Brownback (R-Kansas) has
in turn vowed that he would
force a debate on cloning when
a stem cell research bill arrives
on the Senate floor. Brownback
opposes stem cell research, clon
ing, and abortion. However, not
all pro-life politicians have
gravitated to his posi
tion on stem cell re
search. Sen. Orrin
Hatch (R-Utah), who is
rigidly anti-abortion
said “A frozen embryo
in a refrigerator in a
clinic” isn’t the same
as “a fetus developing
in a mother’s womb.”
Trent Lott (R-Missis-
sippi), the Senate’s top
republican, also came
out in favor of the re
search.
During the
Clinton administra
tion, a law was passed
that banned federal contribu
tions to research that involved
the destruction of embryos.
This measure was circumvented
when NIH guidelines, supported
by the Clinton White House,
ruled that it was legal for the
government to fund embryonic
stem cell research, as long as
biotech companies collected the
embryos from the fertility clin
ics without using federal funds.
Bush has the potential to over
turn these guidelines, and there
are many encouraging him to do
so. President Bush has yet to de
cide on his position regarding
embryonic stem cell research.
He has recently decided to take
a month’s working vacation at
his Texas ranch in order to
I
weigh the moral and ethical im
plications of the issue.
Amy Laura Hall is the
assistant professor of theologi
cal ethics at Duke University.
She worries that after the sup
ply embryos that are currently
available as a result of IVF tech
niques are exhausted, the temp
tation will exist to create new
ones solely for research pur
poses. In fact, researchers cited
by Newsweek have already
claimed that some biotech com
panies are seeking out anony
mous “gamete donors” to
provide sperm and eggs for the
creation of embryos, because
the IVF embryos are inferior.
While the ethical chal
lenges presented by cloning
and embryonic stem cell re
search are being carefully con
sidered by the President and
Congress, their decision can
decide the fate of the new tech
nology, only in the United
States. Roger Peterson, a lead
ing stem cell researcher at the
University of Califorma at San
Francisco, has not waited for
their decision. Instead, he’s
accepted a position at Cam
bridge University in the U.K.
There, Parliament has legalized
cloning for research purposes.
Advanced Cell has announced
that if cloning is banned in the
U.S., it will simply move its
technology elsewhere, “prob
ably. .. to England,” says CEO
Tom Tureen. Many biotech
companies and leading US re
searchers may follow suit.
Interested in learning more
about stem cell research? Visit
http://www.nih. anv/news/
stemcell/