Lecture 40: Eugenics, Ethical Issues
1. What is meant by the concept of heritability when it is applied to a phenotypic trait that is influenced by polygenic inheritance? (You may need to go back to Lecture 38 notes for this one).
2. What is the current concensus view on the extent of heritability of human intelligence?
3. Why may it not be valid to assume, based on the heritability of human intelligence, that a large fraction of observed differences in IQ scores between ethnic groups is inherited?
4. Why is it valuable to have a high degree of heterozygosity in a population?
5. Eugenics was quite popular in the United States in the early 1900s.
a. What was the stated goal of the eugenics movement in the United States?
b. What measures were undertaken to achieve those goals?
c. What scientific considerations caused leading geneticists to oppose the eugenics movement?
d. What form is the eugenics movement currently taking in the United States?
e. Can prenatal testing and selective termination of pregnancies that would lead to birth of children with incurable genetic diseases be considered to be the practice of eugenics. Defend your answer.
6. Why is sterilization of homozygous afflicted individuals not a very effective means of eliminating relatively rare genetic defects?
7. What ethical problems have arisen from the widespread availability of genetic testing?
8. Ammendment V of the Unites States Constitution says in part "No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...". In your opinion, should this give a suspect the right to refuse to submit to DNA testing that might identify (or at least strongly implicate) him or her as the person who committed a violent crime?
9. While the publically funded Human Genome Project has focused on a top-down approach to sequencing the human genome, a private corporation, Celera Genomics, has made a major investment in a bottom-up approach that has resulted in the filing of some 6,500 patent applications for ESTs that they have sequenced.
a. Distinguish between top-down and bottom-up approaches to genomic sequencing in a manner that makes it clear you know what each is and how they differ.
b. What is an EST?
c. What is the potential commercial value of patents on ESTs?
d. What are the ethical issues that are raised by this large-scale patenting effort?
e. Roughly what fraction of the total human genomic sequence has been completed.
10. It has been argued that recombinant DNA technology and genetic engineering simply allow genetic alterations to be accomplished more quickly and easily that would be the case through selective breeding and similar techniques that do not involve recombinant DNA technology. What is the fallacy in that argument as it applies to current agricultural use of genetically engineered organisms?
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