BIOLOGY

ABIGAIL TRAFFORD, Washington Post Columnist and LOU HAWTHORNE, Genetic Savings and Clone, Inc. Chief Executive Officer, February 26, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Several months ago, I asked a cloning expert whether a clone from a middle age animal would tend to have the health difficulties of a middle age animal. The response was that the research at that time indicated that was not true. Since then, the newspapers have reported there are some indications of premature aging in cloned animals. What does the collective research to date state on this matter?
TRAFFORD: You’re right. Dolly, the first cloned sheep, apparently has a bad case of arthritis.
HAWTHORNE: However, Dolly is a middle-aged sheep, and sheep do get arthritis at her age.
Clones of some species do exhibit a higher than normal incidence of health problems, but premature aging is not one of them. These problems are also species specific---for instance we’ve seen such problems in cattle and sheep clones, but not goat clones. We don’t know if we’ll see such problems at all in cats or dogs.
Regardless, we’re not waiting to find out. We’ll be investing $4 million over the coming year in the development of embryo assessment technology so we’ll be able to tell on a genetic level whether each embryo we produce is normal or not. We’ll transfer the normal ones into surrogates, and the others we’ll toss.

JAMES T. CARLTON, Williams College Marine Sciences Professor, March 7, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: In Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, we have problems with zebra mussels, which were introduced into local waters from ship ballasts. The running joke here is there will soon be people seeking to “Save the Zebra Mussels”. I would appreciate learning more about proper ways to control populations of newly introduced species who then destroy existing species. It seems that any attempt to do anything only creates further disruptions in the ecosystem.
CARLTON: The many difficulties in controlling established and widespread populations of introduced species are a major driving force in the attempt to prevent invasions in the first place. A current focus is to determine if small, newly established populations in a confined area can be eradicated, before the spread (a common practice on land, but only rarely, and recently, attempted in the ocean). After a species is widespread, attempts at control usually focus on specific regions or uses of concern---such as keeping zebra mussels out of pipes, etc. And, as you point out, a concern is that management attempts may lead to further disruptions, which is one of the concerns for using non-species-specific bio-control agents to control exotic species.

PAUL KLINE, American Oceans Campaign Fisheries Program Director, April 23, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: I remember the devastation several years ago of the fishing industry off the New England coast with boats returning with few catches. How are estimates of fish population conducted, and do we know how accurate these estimates are? How exact a science is this?
KLINE: New England fishery science has one of the longest time series stock assessment processes in the world. The stock assessments are not finite, but are expressed in a range that accounts for the uncertainty of the science. The stock assessments have proven to be fairly accurate although we can’t say for certainly exactly how many fish are in the ocean. We can measure relative trends and get good estimates.

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Johns Hopkins University International Political Economy Professor, April 30, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: I understand that environmental changes affect the surrounding environment with ripple effects that may produce unintended consequences. If we tinker with DNA, we may create many unplanned reactions. Yet, what if we may change DNA to avoid or reduce genetic diseases? How is this different from taking medicine? Might this be something that is positive?
FUKUYAMA: Genetic causation is extremely complex. Some individual genes have multiple effects, other effects are the result of the interaction of many genes working together at different points. What makes germ-line engineering different from conventional medicine is the complexity of the causation, and the fact that if you make a mistake when you genetically engineer a child, you can’t correct it. I don’t know how you could possibly run conventional clinical trials with this kind of technology.

SHEILA SIDDLE. Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage, May 7, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Hunting chimpanzees has seriously depleted their population. Are official authorizes doing anything about the situation, is the problem out of their control, or is there more officials could and should do? Is there anything the American government should be encouraging other governments to do?
SIDDLE: That’s a difficult one. The hunting of chimpanzees is going on for many reasons---one if them being logging. The need for timber and the sale of timber to different countries from Africa is depleting the forests and the jungle in Africa and due to the loggers opening up roads and enabling the hunters to enter the forests easily and giving them free lifts out with meat, which enables them to get it fresh to the market is the root of most of the problems in Africa. It just doesn’t apply to chimpanzees, but all the jungle animals. It is destroying the habitat of these animals.
Poverty and hunger in African countries is the reason for a lot of this hunting as well.

OLIVIAN JUDSON, evolutionary biologist, June 11, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: When the water rhinoceros goes to the water hole, do the wives of the other animals smirk at their husbands and whisper, “now, why can’t you be more like that?”
JUDSON: Rhinoceroses are well-endowed. Indeed, the Sumatran rhinoceros has a phallus that is shaped like a cross. As far as I’ve been able to discover, the largest known penis is possessed by the sperm whale and is more than six feet long. While we’re talking about water, onlookers might wince if they knew about the going ons inside the rectum of the hippopotamus where a species of leech takes its sexual pleasure.
CZIKOWSKY: It is interesting you found an animal that does not require sex to reproduce. Isn’t this true elsewhere amongst living things? Don’t the single cell organisms that split into two do so without sex? Thus, you are right, sex is not mandatory for all living species to continue.
JUDSON: Asexual reproduction evolves often. For many organisms it is easy. You could bud off a piece of yourself. You could split down the middle or lay an asexual egg. The problem is that giving up sex entirely seems to lead to a swift extinction. Whenever you look around the world, there are many organisms practicing asexuality. However, their continued presence on the planet is likely to be brief.
What I’m discussing here is eukaryotic sex—the kind of sex practiced by all organisms like humans that keep their genes in a cell nucleus. Bacteria do not keep their genes in a cell nucleus and engage in all sorts of different kinds of sex. They may also be more often asexual than the rest of us.

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, author, July 14, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: It is fascinating the new opportunities that have been presented to couples facing infertility. In the last few decades, new methods have given hope and reality to many couples. It is interesting that there may be six parents with some type of legal claim to a child: the egg donor, the sperm donor, a surrogate mother and her spouse, if she has one, and the adopting parents. What I am wondering is: what is the current thinking in the psychological research field on how this affects the children of such births? Do they adapt well, or are particular issues tending to emerge as children realize their birth was different from most of their friends? Do they want to know about their donor and surrogate parents, and how is that handled in most cases?
HENIG: An interesting question—and one that’s been asked before. Concern about the psychological burden to the child conceived through IVF was one of the arguments used against it in the 1970s. But as Elizabeth Carr, the first American test tube baby (born in Norfolk, Va. in December 1981) used to say when she was a little girl, the way SHE was conceived is a lot less gross than the way her friends were.
But the issues have gotten more complicated in the last 25 years. As you say, it’s now possible for one child to have as many as six “parents”—and that’s not even including some of the stranger kinds of “parents”, meaning the two people whose DNA was combined to create him, are his grandparents). I’m sure it will get stranger and stranger as reproductive technology advances. But my personal opinion is that these are much-loved, much-wanted children, and any questions they have about their biological originals will be explained against the background of how hard their parents worked to bring them into the world. I think the situation won’t be that different, from a psychological perspective, from the situation that has existed for years in adoptive families.

MIKE RAUPP, University of Maryland Entomology Professor, May 17, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: In another discussion, it was mentioned that cicadas do not eat. Is this because they are near the end of their lives and are no longer hungry, or are they physically incapable of eating, or why? Do they drink?
RAUPP: This comes from an old myth about Zeus creating the cicadas to commemorate the Muse Euterpe who sang so sweetly that people forgot to eat or drink and died. It has been said that cicadas do not eat or drink during their lives but only sing. While this is very poetic it is, sadly, untrue. The adults use sucking mouthparts to feed on plant fluid called xylem from leaves and twigs. They also get to sing. How sweet is that?

ROB HALL, Cango Wildlife Ranch Director, and ALEXANDRA BENNETT, “Growing Up” Series Executive Producer, July 13, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What is the estimated population of cheetahs in the wild? How fragile is this population?
HALL and BENNETT: Worldwide the estimated population is up to 12,000. Estimated figures vary tremendously from publication to publication due to the basic unknown status of the population in the wild. There is a desperate need to try and determine through accurate census technique the current world population and the positive news is that researchers recently convened in Tanzania sharing their knowledge with people in the field in an effort trying to determine more appropriate and accurate census techniques to get a firmer grip on the true status of the wild cheetah population.
They are using techniques similar to those currently being used by researchers trying to determine the wild tiger population of India.
Some examples of this are: Infrared camera trapping which identified animals. Secondly, track marks as individual fingerprints for the animals and radio tracking collars on trapped and released wild animals.
The positive one for South Africa is that a group of keen researchers have returned and are already implementing these techniques.
CZIKOWSKY: I visited the zoo once, and people noticed whenever I walked by, one particular tiger went into a crouching position. Is there any particular reason why a particular person would be singled out as a potential meal, if only the bars were missing? Are wild cars attracted to particular smells?
HALL: There are a number of reasons why an animal will hone in on an individual. Size plays a factor. Anything small is seen as vulnerable. Bright, flowing clothing or garments are an attraction to the animals and even long and brightly-colored hair.
Injured or disable people or young children in prams (baby carriages) are again seen as vulnerable and a predator will always pick up on that.
They are indeed attracted to particular smells. Smells and fragrances used commonly in captive situations to provide enrichment for the animals. Cheetahs, in particular, have enlarged nasal passages which only enhance the smelling ability.

AUTUMN FIESTER, University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics Senior Fellow, August 4, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: When an animal is cloned, does it have a lower average life span than a similar animal born naturally? Is it true that some aging elements of the original animal are passed along to the cloned animal?
FIESTER: That is the essential question! And right now, there is no way to answer it because none of these clones have been around long enough to know. But this is absolutely the data we need. We need long term studies on the health and lifespan of clones to know what type of suffering is involved.

LESLIE D. FARRELL, PBS Series Producer, February 10, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: How accurate is DNA testing (for African descendants)? Can it tell ancestry to specific tribes or areas of Africa, or are most of the results only indicating which large portions of Africa are from which people are descended?
FARRELL: That‘s a good question. The science is somewhat new and being refined all the time. A lot of that depends upon the number of people that the scientists have in their data base. So some people can be traced directly to a group and some is less clear. As the scientists gather more and more samples from Africa to put in their data bases, it will make closer matches all the more possible.

ROB STEIN, Washington Post Staff Writer, February 12, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What happens to this bacteria (that lives on human skin) when a person dies?
STEIN: The bacteria, like the rest of us, goes into the soil.
CZIKOWSKY: When we die and are buried, does the bacteria continue living on the decaying body and does it die at a certain point of decomposition, or does the bacteria find another home separate from the body within the soil?
STEIN: It probably goes into the ground and finds another place to live.

CESAR MILLAN, “Dog Whisperer” TV show host, October 5, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Haven’t we made recent strides in learning how dogs communicate with each other? Don’t dogs really have a fairly large vocabulary of barks and expressions that lets others dogs know what they are communicating?
MILLAN: Yeah, but e still don’t know it. The population of humans don’t know it. Do dogs know it? Yes. Do goes lose the ability to recognize what other dogs are saying? Yes, because they spend too long with humans. I want to teach everyone that dogs have their own language, their own culture, their own expressions. It’s very important not to humanize dogs, because they do their own thing. But the reality is that most humans don’t know what they mean. It’s a very small percentage of humans who know what a dog is saying when he growls. And the best way to learn about dogs is when they are in a pack. That[s how I learned, how I was raised. And you should never change the nature of a dog, if you want to say what its saying. A dog isn’t talking to you. If it can’t talk to other dogs, it’s obviously isn’t talking to you.

MICK KACZOROWSKI, “Animal Planet” Executive Producer, October 17, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What is the greatest surprise you learned from your filming (of meerkats in “Meerkat Manor”)?
KACZOROWSKI: I would say how much personality they exhibit that reminds us of our own family relationships. Because they live in groups and their leader is a dominant female it’s wonderful to see how people relate to them, that’s very different from other animals that we make movies about at Animal Planet.

PATRICIA DALTON, clinical psychologist, March 20, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Are there better ways to deliver criticism so that people will better absorb it and not tune it out? What are the more effective ways to give someone criticism?
DALTON: The more you can deliver it directly and matter-of-factly, the better it will be received. It is especially useful to deliver it close to the time it occurred—unless emotions are running too high.

ROB STEIN, Michigan State University Neuroscience Professor, June 23, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Are there also physical conditions that are related to brain chemicals? I have read that the release of chemicals that indicate sexual orientation also make subtle body changes, such as the length of the second and fourth fingers. Is this true or is this a myth?
STEIN: Yes, there has been research comparing a variety of physical characteristics between homosexuals and heterosexuals, including finger length, and found differences. In additional to differences in the ratio of finger lengths, some studies have found differences in imperceptible clicking sounds in the ears and the direction of “hair whorls” on the back of the head. This is cited as further evidence that some fundamental developmental differences exists between homosexuals and heterosexuals.

MARC KAUFMAN, Washington Post staff writer, July 21, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Maybe this is all too philosophical, but have you heard the simplistic theory of the universe that explains that all matter is or was at some time alive, and that life is built upon complex organizations of matter where it is necessary to consume matter and energy to stay alive? Is this a possible explanation for the universe or just folklore?
KAUFMAN: I haven’t hear this theory before, and it does seem highly unlikely. However, your questions brings up an interesting point: Is the universe that we know and love the only one out there? To my surprise, I’ve found that the theory of the multiverse—that there are many universes existing in different dimensions, times, and spaces—is a serious one, and many cosmologists are inclined to think it could explain some otherwise difficult to explain realities. For instance, it appears that our universe is “fine-tuned” for life, meaning that if the basic underlying physics were even slightly different, stars wouldn’t form, heavy elements would be erased, and there would be no life. Some say this supports the idea of a Creator, others say it means there are many different universes out there.

RICK WEISS, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow, July 21, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: One thing I learned years ago is that DNA tests are accurate, but the people testing are not accurate. They found some testers were not doing the tests, or were spoiling the tests. Are people doing the tests properly?
WEISS: This is a big issue in genetic testing. Most of the bigger companies doing this testing are using labs that are Federally certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, the relevant Federal law on medical lab quality. So their reagents are fresh and the lab is clean…but how good are the tests? To know that, you’d have to have a system of proficiency testing. The Federal government runs such programs for technicians doing other kinds of medical tests, but does not have a system set up for genetic testing, despite recommendations from a Health and Human Services advisory committee that it do so. Beyond the question of whether the strict answer is correct (do you have a certain gene variant or not) there is the additional issue of whether the risk that is being attributed to that gene variant is correct. There are a lot of ways to make this calculation. Different companies do it differently. There is a lot of room for error or disagreement here.
CZIKOWSKY: How difficult is it to be a DNA tester and analyst?
WEISS: There are outstanding issues of proficiency testing. One problem in particular is that most DNA tests start with a very little bit of DNA and amplify it millions of times to get enough to do all the testing on. That means that the system is very susceptible to contamination. If even a smidgeon of the tester’s DNA got into the system while he or she was doing the work, for example, it could be amplified and pretty soon some poor client is getting a report in the mail that describes the lab technician’s medical risks. There are controls to limit this kind of error, but it does not happen (and has happened in crime labs, alas, as well) so lab and technician quality is crucial in this business.

MARC KAUFMAN, Washington Post Staff Writer, August 11, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Do experts believe there may someday be a chance that an explosion of spiders may reach an overpopulation threshold and that their numbers will decrease, insects will increase, and more birds may then return to Guam? May imbalances eventually lead to corrections in the imbalances?
KAULFMAN: Yes, it is already happening with the brown tree snakes. Their population expanded so quickly because there were so many birds they could easily catch and consume. Now they have to work harder to feed on lizards and rodents, and so the population has pretty much stabilized. Same will probably happen with the spiders—they will reach a point where their food supply won’t support the population, or where some predators find them.
But there has already been terrible damage done as a result of this invasive species, and there are many, many other examples throughout the world and over many years. Often, native species never make it back, or remain a shadow of what they once were.