Big Brother wants your DNA

The Law Commission is currently reviewing the law around the use of DNA in criminal investigations, and one of the issues they are looking at is whether to create a universal DNA databank holding the DNA of every kiwi:

A review of the law which governs how DNA is used in criminal investigations has raised the possibility of a databank which would hold every New Zealander's DNA.

[...]

The possibility of a universal databank which would contain the DNA profiles of everyone in New Zealand has been raised by the commission because it is being discussed around the world, although no country has one.

However, Ms Buckingham said that this was not an attractive option, but the commission felt it could not ignore the possibility of it.

She said it would not be a proportionate response and it would have enormous implications, potentially breaching individual and collective privacy rights as well as being difficult to establish.

"We felt we needed to talk about it rather than simply say we think it's not perhaps the best way to approach the issues of privacy."

What is there to fucking talk about? Its grossly intrusive, capable of handing the government vitally personal information not just about people's identities, but also their medical conditions - information they would find it very hard to get a warrant for even with individualised suspicion. We haven't let them create a universal fingerprint database, despite the obvious convenience for law enforcement, and this is so much worse. Throw in the potential for any databank to be corruptly privatised by a future National government, and its an idea that we shouldn't touch with a barge pole.

(If you're at all worried about this, the most likely target for a DNA datagrab is people's Guthrie Cards, which contain blood samples taken at birth from pretty much everyone, which are retained for no medical purpose in violation of basic privacy principles, and which police already use. But the samples are your property, and you can get them back: simply fill out section D of this form and post it away with a copy of photo ID. It doesn't even cost anything, because its your data, not theirs)

The problem isn't that we hold too little DNA data - but that we hold too much. The police can take it from anyone they arrest, regardless of the crime or whether a conviction eventually results, and they retain it indefinitely, in violation of basic standards around proportionality and unreasonable searches (they can also take DNA by consent, but given those data storage standards, you should never consent to it). According to the stats in the latest police annual report (p 147), they currently hold samples on 186,000 New Zealanders, and added about 15,000 samples this year. Statistics on whether these samples help gain convictions are "not captured nationally", in violation of statute. But regardless, they're retained for people who are never charged or convicted, and for far longer than they need to be on those convicted of minor offences. The DNA databank needs a purge, not an expansion.

National's creepy eugenics plan fails

Back in 2012, the National government decided that right-wing extremists fantasies of the poor "breeding for business" were a sound basis for policy, and decided to use WINZ to do something about it, by making free long-term contraception available to beneficiaries. At the time I called this "creepy eugenics", as it was about enabling state control of fertility than enabling people to control their own. The good news is that it the policy is a complete failure:

When introducing the fund, the Government estimated that up to 16,000 women would access the grant, and $500,000 was budgeted for the first four years of the fund.

But in briefing documents released under the Official Information Act, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) show only 795 grants were made from the fund in its first four years.

In total, just $143,325 was spent over that time, at an annual cost of $35,000.

The report cites a number of barriers to adoption, including WINZ's controlling bureaucracy and a reluctance of doctors to impose long-term contraception on teenagers, but its hard to escape the conclusion that people just didn't want their fertility controlled by WINZ (or indeed, for WINZ to know anything about it. Because really, who the fuck wants to talk about that with them?)

As noted in my earlier post, contraception is a great thing, and it lets people control their own lives. And it should be freely available to all via the public health system, rather than pushed by WINZ to stop some people (but not others) from having kids.

More evidence that Bennett made it up

Also from FYI this morning: Paula Bennett refuses to reveal advice she has received on her child-snatching policy. Apparently doing so

will prevent the White Paper development process and necessary consultations from proceeding in an effective and informed manner

Which is interesting, given that a previous request to MSD told us that

I am able to advise that the Reference Group has not considered any policy that relates to preventing abusive parents having children.

Someone is lying here. And odds are that it is the Minister. The Ministries who are supposed to be developing this policy know nothing about it. The Reference Group hasn't considered it. The Minister doesn't want to talk. I think its fair to conclude that she simply made it up as talkback-bait to distract from the government's other troubles. The question now is whether we're going to see them push on with this policy. If they do, it will be a horrifying insight into how policy is actually developed under National.

A rancid style of politics

Over on A Bee of a Certain Age, Deborah takes me (and others) to task for my immediate reaction to Paula Bennett suddenly popping up with a blurt about preventing child abusers from having more children: that it was a deliberate distraction, designed to agitate the talkback morons and get them ranting about something other than the government's hypocritical plans to increase class sizes while sending their own kids to private schools. Ouch. For the record, I don't think this is "a minor matter", or that "women’s rights are always tradeable". Its a revolting suggestion, incredibly intrusive into people's lives, and laden with some fairly unpleasant assumptions about class and race. You don't have to be a civil libertarian to see that allowing the courts to issue orders deeming people to be "unfit parents" and banning them from having children gets us into some very unpleasant territory, and raises the spectre of our very own "stolen generation".

(It is also utterly redundant. As pointed out in the Herald article, CYFS already has the power to intervene when they believe a child to be in genuine danger. So what does Bennett's proposal add? Nothing, other than stigmatisation and injustice. The only kids it "saves" are those who weren't in danger. So what exactly are they being "saved" from...?)

At the same time, I can't help but notice the convenient timing of this outburst, and suspect the government's motives in raising it. Andrew Geddis makes the case here, and it is a strong one: this is a government which is not only willing to consider creepy eugenics, but is also willing to raise them purely for PR purposes, to distract from other issues. No matter which way you look at it, that's a fairly rancid style of politics.

Herbert Spencer would be proud

So, the government is pushing ahead with the Welfare Working Group's recommendation for creepy eugenics, in the form of providing free contaception to women on benefits. Contraception is a great thing - it lets people control their own fertility, and enables them to make choices about their own lives, rather than being slaves to biology. Making it freely available to all, in whatever form works best for them, would be a significant advance for human freedom. But that's not what the government is planning. Instead, they're making it freely available to some, in a form which will limit their fertility for prolonged periods, in the very specific hope that they will use it. This isn't about enabling choice - its about constraining it.

John Key thinks this is "common sense". Well, I guess it looks that way to the 50 million dollar man, concerned about the poor doing such terrible things as starting or continuing families, or worse, presuming that they are entitled to live a normal and dignified existence despite not sharing his exalted net worth. But from this end, it looks grossly intrusive, the state sticking its nose into people's bedrooms, deciding who should have children and who should not, on the basis of occupation and rich people's myths about "breeding for business". Herbert Spencer would be proud.

Creepy

Buried in the Welfare Working Group's report [PDF]: a call for eugenics:

The Welfare Working Group recommends that ready access to free long-acting reversible contraception be provided for parents who are receiving welfare.

Free contraception for all would be a good thing; it would enable human choice and give everyone control over their fertility. But that is not what we're talking about here. Instead, we're talking about free contraception for some, given in the hope they will use it. Instead of individuals controlling their own fertility, this is an attempt to impose state control, on the basis of socioeconomic status, along the lines of the creepiest of C19th eugenic theories. But then, did we really expect anything different from a group advised by Peter Saunders?

Synthetic life

This is big: A scientist has created a cell with an entirely synthetic genome, effectively creating synthetic life:

The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell.

The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA.

What this means is that we can now design genomes in the lab, run them off on a synthesiser, insert them into a host cell, and culture a bacteria which does whatever we want. Though at the moment, we're still in the copy-and-paste stage, rather than designing genes from scratch, so we are limited to enzymes that already exist. Still, the industrial potential is massive. For example, we could make bacteria that were hyperefficient at eating oil to clean up spills like Deepwater Horizon (though there are obvious dangers with using such bacteria in the wild). Or just use bacterial cultures to crank out fuel and pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, it also means that biological warfare is no longer a matter of physical security of weaponised cultures; if the genome of a potential biowarefare agent has been sequenced and published (and many have, as part of ordinary medical research into those bugs), then it can be run up in the lab, inserted into a host, cultured, and hey presto! Instant bioWMD! But that's a threat we are going to have to learn to live with. The knowledge now exists. The genie is now out of the bottle. And with a free market in legal jurisdiction, it cannot be put back in.

An end to male infertility?

UK scientists have successfully differentiated human sperm from stem cells in a petri-dish. The article itself talks worriedly about "the end of men", but its not about that. Instead, it means an end to male infertility - either directly, because infertile men will just be able to submit some skin cells and have sperm for IVF grown to order, or indirectly, due to the massive research avenues it opens up. As the article points out,

"Sperm production takes 15 years in a human and there are thousands of factors that could affect it," said Professor Nayernia. "We can investigate these factors in the laboratory in a matter of months with this technique."

Unfortunately, they didn't have success in producing sperm from female stem-cells (allowing women to be fathers in a genetic sense), and they think that this is impossible - but its still a stunning breakthrough and thrilling stuff.

Stem-cell breakthrough

For the past decade, stem-cells have been a hot-button political issue in religiously conservative countries like the USA. While they have enormous medical potential to end suffering and cure intractable diseases, the usual method of sourcing them was from human embryos - either aborted fetuses, or from blastocysts created by artificial insemination and grown in vitro specifically for the purpose. Neither was acceptable to US religious fanatics, and so research was restricted there for many years.

Now, scientists have found a better way:

In a breakthrough that could have huge implications, British and Canadian scientists have found a way of reprogramming skin cells taken from adults, effectively winding the clock back on the cells until they were in an embryonic form.

[...]

Because the cells can be made from a patient's own skin, they carry the same DNA and so could be used without a risk of being rejected by the immune system.

And with that, any hint of an ethical dilemma disappears. Oh, we still have to worry about what we do with them, just as we do with everything else - but where they come from is now a dead issue.

A Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare

Over the past 60 years, the United Nations has agreed numerous international instruments covering human rights. Now, the World Society for the Protection of Animals is pressing them to expand the circle, and draft a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare. The UDAW would recognise that animals are sentient, establish minimum standards for animal welfare, and outlaw cruelty. If agreed to, it would help shape policy towards a better, less cruel world.

The New Zealand government is supporting this proposal, and rightly so. We like to think of ourselves as a progressive country and a defender of human rights. But underlying that progressive vision are humanist values which oppose pain and suffering, regardless of species. Support for decent animal welfare standards is thus a natural outgrowth of our concern for human rights.

The road to a UN declaration will be a long one, and probably take at least five years. But if it is successful, and governments act on it, then the world will be a better place.

Sex selection

So, the Bioethics Council has recommended that parents using IVF be allowed to use pre-implantation genetic testing to choose the sex of their children. And thinking about it, its hard to see why they shouldn't be. The biggest objection is the effect such sex-selection could have on the overall gender ratio. But when only 450 IVF babies are born in New Zealand every year, its hard to see this being a real problem.

What about the more general issue? Should we even try and select the sex of a child? Again, I don't see why not. Sure, it's "unnatural", but big deal. So is surviving past 25, living in houses and not being eaten by leopards, and very few of us have a problem with that (those that do should stand by their beliefs and form an orderly queue outside the leopard cage at the nearest zoo). More philosophically, any claim to an inviolable "natural order" runs smack into Hume's is-ought distinction, which basically says "you can't derive moral values solely from facts about the world" - you need some sort of linking premise. The classic ones are a simpleminded identification of "natural = good" (which falls over the moment anyone actually bothers to look at nature), or "god said so" (which might convince a rather stupid four year old, but is unlikely to convince anyone else, particularly if they do not share your imaginary friend).

So much for "nature". What about practical reasons? That brings us back to gender ratios. The ex-expat expresses concern about this, based on what has happened in China and Korea where sex determination and selective abortion have produced severe distortions. But as someone who doesn't think the "need" to perpetuate the human species justifies any intervention in people's reproductive choices whatsoever, I certainly don't think a mere gender ratio is sufficient (or the need to preserve blonde hair, green eyes, or any other part of the human gene pool). People's reproductive choices are solely their own, and no business of the state, no matter what. Yes, an imbalanced gender ratio would constitute genocide if it was the deliberate result of government policy. But if it’s the result of millions of individuals choosing to favour one gender over another, then it’s just Other People's Choices, and we just have to live with it.

Retraction: Jim Flynn and Eugenics

The Alliance blog has a long piece by Jim Flynn explaining his position on eugenics. It seems that he has been seriously misrepresented by the Sunday Star Times, which somehow managed to turn his opposition to eugenics into support for eugenic policies. Instead, Flynn argues that:

• The correlation between university education and IQ is mild;
• The downwards trend in IQ is both insignificant and counteracted by a much stronger upward trend;
• The upwards trend is not likely to disappear, and that there are many ways (such as social democratic social policies) to continue it;
• That better access to family planning will reduce the differential the eugenicists care so much about anyway.

So, it would seem I owe Professor Flynn an apology for this post. And it would seem that the Sunday Star Times owes him rather more than that.

On the plus side, I now know how to respond to those who do believe that IQ decline is a problem: grant them every one of their assumptions, and then point out that their "problem" is so miniscule that it doesn't justify any policy whatsoever.

The Marching Morons

Bad ideas never die, and so over the weekend we saw an excursion into eugenics from Univerity of Otago emritus professor (and former Alliance candidate) Jim Flynn. Drawing on statistics from the 2006 census showing that university educated women have fewer children on average than those without tertiary education, he warns that this could lead to a long-term decline in IQ. He therefore advocates putting contraceptives in the water supply to stop the poor from breeding.

There are all sorts of responses you can make to this. You can ask why Flynn focuses on women - it takes two to tango, after all - or why he seems to believe that every woman's womb is public property, to be directed by the state according to its whims. You can ask where a self-proclaimed liberal and social democrat gets off on implicitly assuming (among other things) a strong correlation between intelligence and socio-economic status - something I'd have thought to be disproven by the sheer unfitness and stupidity of those who have occupied the top of the socio-economic pyramid for much of human history, not to mention by everything the left knows about social class. Or you could ask why, if he feels so strongly about preserving the gene pool, Flynn doesn't just do something about it himself - sure, he's 73, but there are solutions for that, and I'm sure there'll be no shortage of nubile young women lining up to bear children to such a superb genetic specimen as himself. But instead, I'll just cut to the chase, and ask why the fuck anybody even cares.

Flynn puts his case in a nutshell as follows:

in a socially mobile society such as New Zealand's, those who remained uneducated had poorer genetic material in terms of IQ. Over time poorer genes would take their toll, leading to a "decay" in genetic quality.

"If you imagine this as a long-term thing, extending over three or four generations, it would be a cause for some alarm," he said.

Hardly. The best estimates of this effect are around -0.9 IQ points per generation. Meanwhile, the Flynn effect has seen IQs rise by 3 points per decade during the 20th century. So, assuming that the latter stops and that the decline is real, in a hundred years - Flynn's three or four generations - we'll be as stupid as we were in the late 1990's. And in 800 years - which ought to be well beyond anyone's planning horizon - we'll be as stupid as we were in 1905, when IQ testing began. Quelle horreur!

The "threat" of a long-term decline in IQ simply shouldn't be a concern to any rational person, any more than the "danger" of being outbred by the Teeming Foreign Hordes should be. And it certainly doesn't justify the sort of mass, involuntary medication (and consequent side-effects) or eugenic program that Flynn is advocating. But then, it's difficult to see what would. How many children you have and who with is one of the most personal decisions you can make, and I can't actually imagine anything which would justify state interference and coercion in such choices.

Update: yes, I have seen this - but notice that while Flynn resiles from the arguably technologically infeasible solution (though by claiming he was "only joking" - the last defence for the indefensible), he does not resile from the central claim that there is a problem, or from his creepy assumptions about who gets to make these sorts of choices and on what grounds.

Didn't they teach him at kindy to keep his hands off other people's gonads?

Fucking the natural order

A couple of years ago, scientists in the US achieved an enormous breakthrough: they took stem cells from a mouse, artificially differentiated them into sperm, and fertilised an egg with the result. Now, they've begun duplicating the process in humans, successfully differentiating human bone marrow stem cells into spermatagonial cells, the precursors of sperm. It's only the first step, and there's still a long way to go, but if it pans out it will see us able to differentiate both sperm and eggs, vastly increasing the range of infertility problems which can be treated, as well as allowing gay couples to have kids using only their own genetic material (gay males would obviously still need to find a birth mother). And given the centrality of children to many people's lives, and the degree of unhappiness infertility can cause, IMHO that can only be a Good Thing.

Clones and individuality

A study to be published in the journal Social Science and Medicine has concluded that human clones would have a sense of individuality. Which is so stunningly obvious that you wonder why they bothered to write a paper on it at all. Apart from the fact of being genetically identical to their donor, a human clone is an ordinary human being. And ordinary human beings tend to see themselves as individuals. Unless you're the sort of person who radically doubts other people's consciousness, and sees everyone around them as an unconscious zombie, there's really no reason to think that clones would be any different.

Unfortunately, far too many people's ideas about cloning seem to be set by bad 70's Science Fiction than the reality. There are reasons not to clone people at the moment - basically, we haven't figured out how to do it properly yet - but worries over individuality aren't one of them.

The promise of stem-cells

If you were looking for a reason why we should allow stem-cell research, tonight's news about Willie Terpstra ought to provide one. Terpstra suffers from Motor Neurone, and has flown to China to receive an experimental treatment aimed at halting the disease. The treatment consisted of injecting stem-cells directly into her brain; the result was an immediate improvement in her condition. Before the treatment, she could not speak and could barely swallow; after she could do both (though her vocal cords are obviously out of practice).

The treatment is experimental, and the effects may last as little as two weeks. There's also some risk of the stem cells forming tumours within the brain. But this is still nothing short of a medical miracle, and the effects are likely to improve (and become more predictable) as the treatment is perfected.

So why the hell would people object to a technology that shows so much promise? Why did Terpstra have to go to China rather than be treated here in New Zealand? The problem is that stem cells are currently sourced from human embryos, either from aborted fetuses (as in this case), or from blastocysts created by artificial insemination and grown in vitro specifically for the purpose. This has caused widespread opposition from the anti-abortion lobby. But their chief objection - that obtaining stem cells requires killing a human being - is about to become moot, as researchers have discovered that human adult stem cells can be differentiated into neural tissue in chicken eggs. In English, this means no need for abortions or embryonic cloning, as the cells can be sourced from the patient's own bone marrow (eliminating rejection problems into the bargain). I'd hope that even those who currently object to stem cell research on religious grounds would see that as a Good Thing.

Why I will never be allowed to serve on an ethics committee

Because my first reaction on reading about this was not utter horror at Man's Interference With The Natural Order, but "cool".

Basically, scientists have taken stem cells from a mouse, differentiated them into sperm cells (a significant achievement in itself), and then fertilised an egg with the result. The implications are staggering. If perfected and applied to humans, this could

• expand the range of infertility problems currently treatable by artificial means. If there are problems with sperm or egg production, they may be able to be differentiated from stem cells.
• end the reliance on donated eggs; instead we'd be reliant on donated stem cells, but that's a lot less limiting
• allow homosexual couples of either gender to have children using only their own genetic material. Gay males would still have to find a birth mother, but that's really the only limit.

I think all of the above are good things, in that they allow the fulfilment of human desire and vastly diminish the obstacles in the path of what is for many a central goal of their life.

As for the Natural Order? Fuck it.

Review: Perfect Copy

I read this book a few weeks ago, and I've been meaning to blog about it ever since. Perfect Copy: Unravelling the Cloning Debate (Ikon, 2002) is an exploration of the ethics of cloning by Nick Agar, who lectured me in Bioethics and the ethics of genetic technologies when I was at Vic.

The first chapter lays out "the rules of ethical engagement" - principles which are (hopefully) shared by all participants in the debate, and should provide some common ground from which to work. The second of these principles - that we should be consistent - is unproblematic. The first - the intrinsic value of human life (or "people matter") - isn't, because while it's something that everyone will agree to, it means very different things to different people. In particular, it matters a great deal whether you interpret that intrinsic value in terms of "personhood" (as done by people like Peter Singer) or e.g. in terms of biological life (usually as a mask for an immortal soul granted at conception - the religious conservative POV). This unfortunately comes back to bite us later.

After a chapter covering the science of cloning, we get to start applying those ethical rules. Currently cloning is very much an experimental technology with a high failure rate and a propensity to produce sickly, short-lived clones. Does this mean we shouldn't be cloning people? The prospect of using abortion to winnow out the failures gets us straight into the abortion debate, and thus brings those disputes about what "human life" means into sharp focus. Religious conservatives will be appalled at the prospect of having to abort 276 foetuses to get one clone. Personhood theorists will shrug their shoulders and say "they're not people, and so don't matter". So much for our common ground...

Nick adopts the personhood interpretation, but points out that the technological problems mean that a clone which survives to birth may still fail the welfare test (lead a life which is worse than no life at all - another principle that religious conservatives would probably object to), and that if we adopt a precautionary stance, we shouldn't be cloning people. There's an unstated "yet" on the end of that conclusion, as it depends on technological problems which will (hopefully) disappear as the technology matures.

Chapter four is a brief diversion into "therapeutic cloning" - cloning to provide stem cells or even entire body parts. The former is essentially identical to abortion, and thus really only a problem for religious conservatives. The second is more interesting. While it's entirely morally unproblematic to grow an organ in a vat (or at least, no more problematic than harvesting the stem cells in the first place), the easiest and most technologically feasible way to get parts is to grow an entire human being. Provided that human is not a person, then this theoretically poses no problems for personhood theorists. (Un?)fortunately, all but the most hardened of them shy away at the thought of deliberately inducing a persistent vegetative state in an embryo so you can later harvest them for parts. It's too much like the Epsilons of Huxley's Brave New World, or Michael Marshall Smith's Spares. Personhood is a remarkably useful moral theory, and so the challenge is to find a way to have our cake and eat it too (or, I suppose, to find a way to be comfortable with some of the implications of our beliefs).

Chapter five addresses the questions of cloning and identity, and the idea of achieving immortality through cloning. Nothing much to say here, except that those who think that their clones will be them (such as the Raelians) or that they can somehow replace a dead child or pet by cloning it are deeply misguided people, and are likely to be horribly disappointed.

Chapter six covers the use of cloning as a reproductive technology, primarily in the context of allowing infertile couples to have children who are genetically related to them, but also using several other examples (lesbians reproducing without needing men; providing an organ donor for another child). There's a hodge-podge of moral issues here, but the main questions seem to be about the psychology of a potential clone's parents rather than the morality of cloning itself. Given the hassle involved in cloning, the obvious answer would be counselling, just as for IVF.

The final chapter, "Fear itself can be frightening" is the most curious. Nick argues that popular misconceptions about cloning could cause people to stigmatise and discriminate against clones; applying the welfare test, we could conclude that a life of prejudice and stigmatisation is worse than no life at all, and therefore under the precautionary principle we shouldn't clone anyone until more liberal attitudes prevail. To his credit, Nick recognises the danger in this "bigotry is its own justification" argument, and attempts to draw a distinction based on the presence of communities of racial or sexual minorities, which insulate members of those minorities from prejudice. The first clones, on the other hand,

"...will be coming into a world incapable of supplying them with the goods of community that might ward off some of the harmful effects of stigmatisation. They will be truly alone."

To me, this seems akin to saying that discrimination in the pre-Civil Rights American South justified their laws against miscegenation.

Quite apart from pandering to bigotry, the community argument is a perfect example of one of those popular misconceptions which Nick is worried about: the belief that clones will be fundamentally different from other human beings, and incapable of bonding with or receiving emotional support from them. This simply doesn't gel with the no-nonsense approach he's taken in the rest of the book, which would lead us to regard clones as ordinary people with unusual circumstances surrounding their birth. We have ordinary people who are under the media microscope practically every day from birth (children of celebrities or politicians), or who are the only member of a persecuted minority in their local area and thus effectively excluded from the community (e.g. the only gay guy or atheist in a small Alabama town). They get along, so why wouldn't clones? As for the argument that people shouldn't be enlisted in the fight against bigotry without their consent, it happens all the time - bigots ensure it.

Overall, Perfect Copy is an interesting book, and provides a good introduction to the topic. It's biggest flaw (apart from the shockingly illiberal chapter seven) is that the "common ground" it adopts as a starting point for ethical argument isn't. The reason for adopting "the intrinsic value of human life" as a guiding principle is to avoid disputes such as that between atheists and theists over whether there are such things as immortal souls; unfortunately it is simply papering over these differences. What you define as "human life" is crucially important to the debate, and leads to very different conclusions - and that "what" is in turn informed by people's beliefs about why human life is important in the first place. Unless we have agreement on these questions, we have no common ground at all.