Locating Species Identity: Towards a political biogeography

of transgenic animals

Gail Davies Department of GeographyUniversity College London

Cabinet of Natural History3rd March 2008

Outline

• Some points of departure:– Introducing transgenic and chimerical animals– From bioethics to biogeography

• Locating species identity:– The legal place of transgenic animals– Media spaces and species morphology– Locating natural species behaviour

• Some preliminary conclusions:– Towards a political biogeography of transgenic animals– Future research questions

‘Researchers are now involved in creating novel interspecies, whole organisms that are unique cellular and genetic admixtures’ Robert and Baylis (2003, p1)

Introducing human/animal chimeras

Category Uses Examples

Animal sources of cells, tissues or organs

Using GM or non GM animals as sources of cellular material, tissues or organs

Xenotransplantation, tissue engineering cultures

Pharming Transgenic modifications used to make animals produce human proteins with medicinal value

Goats modified to contain a human gene that codes for anti-thombin produce Atryn (human anti-clotting agent) in their milk

Medical Research models Animals models created to mimic human disease, study human mechanisms or test human drugs

Mice with human immune systems. Mice with human brain cells.

Stem cell harvesting Development and testing of stem cell therapies

Human cells fused with hollowed out rabbit eggs, then destroyed before 14 days after harvesting human stem cells.

Some challenges of transgenic

• Questions of efficacy and economics– breeding success, clinical efficacy

• Questions of containment – ecological risks, population risks,

zoonoses

• Questions of public safety– consumer choice, informed consent

• Questions of animal welfare and rights – reducing suffering and protecting

species identity ‘Pharmed’ goat drug not approvedBBC news 24 February 2006

Regulating species identity

• Report of WHO Consultation on xenotransplantation, Geneva, Switzerland, 28-30 October 1997 – ‘Mechanisms and procedures should be established or strengthened to

ensure animal welfare. This should be aimed at:• minimizing potentially adverse effects to the animals produced as sources of

cells, tissues or organs for xenotransplantation• overseeing genetic engineering to ensure that animals do not lose their identity

as members of their species’

• More recently, the Dutch National Committee on Animal Biotechnology (2006):

• ‘Biotechnological interventions are not only a problem because of the potential negative effects on the health and welfare of the animals, but also because changing the genetic material interferes with their identity’

From Bioethics to Biogeography

• “Transgenic (genetically altered) pigs are acceptable sources providing ‘the pig neither suffers unduly nor ceases recognisably to be a pig’. The last proviso suggests the surreal prospect of the archbishop and his authority being called upon to decide when a transgenic pig is still a pig – and doing so in the setting of laboratory research as well as clinical application’ (Editorial, The Lancet, 1997)

• What is a species?

• Where does this question arise around transgenic animals?

• Who is seen as providing a definition of species identity?

• In what ways do these definitions suggest a right to a species identity?

The legal spaces of transgenic animals

US denies patent for part-human hybridRick Weiss, Washington Post | February 13, 2005

A New York scientist's seven-year effort to win a patent on a laboratory-conceived creature that is part human and part animal ended in failure Friday, closing a historic and somewhat ghoulish chapter in US intellectual property law. The US Patent and Trademark Office rejected the claim, saying the hybrid - designed for use in medical research but not yet created - would be too closely related to a human to be patentable.

Paradoxically, the rejection was a victory of sorts for the inventor, Stuart Newman of New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y. An opponent of patents on living things, he had no intention of making the creatures. He said his goal was to set a legal precedent that would keep others from profiting from similar "inventions.“

"I don't think anyone knows in terms of crude percentages how to differentiate between humans and nonhumans," said John Doll, a deputy commissioner for patents. But the office also is not comfortable with a "we'll know it when we see it" approach, he added. "It would be very helpful . . . to have some guidance from Congress or the courts," he said.

Media spaces and species morphology

Interview with Ron James, managing director, PPL Therapeutics The Guardian Saturday January 6, 2001

James admits that "genetic abnormalities" can occur. So how many animals are born abnormal? "Taking all the experiments we've done, I would guess it would probably be about half."

Most of these victims have internal disorders, such as kidney malfunctions. James says: "There's been nothing you'd regard as being a monster. We haven't produced animals with two legs, or three heads, or anything like that."

The five cloned pigs: Noel, Angel, Star, Joy and Mary, PPL therapeutics 2002

Placing Alba

• The creation of Alba

• The containment of Alba

• The circulation of Alba

• The death, and ‘re-placing’ of Alba

Davies, G. (2003) A geography of monsters Geoforum 34, 4

http://www.juliafriedman.com

Locating natural animal behaviour

• UK DEFRA’S Animal Welfare Act 2006• The act obliges the keeper of an animal to

ensure its welfare by: – Providing a suitable environment

– Providing adequate food and water

– Allowing it to be housed with/apart from its own or other species

– Allowing appropriate protection from and diagnosis and treatment of pain, injury and disease.

– Allowing it to exhibit normal behaviour – (http://www.defra.gov.uk/, 2004, emphasis added)

The right to normal species behaviour

• Normative formulation underpinning animal rights

• Animals have interests because they are sentient, capable of pain and pleasure

• Animal sentience is evidenced through their reactions, seen as encoded in their biology or species identity.

• Such reactions are either studied through their behaviour in the field or in the laboratory

Animal enclosure and ethological indeterminacy

The key question “do cremidophorus lizard exhibit pseudo-copulatory behaviour which is relevant to their reproduction” has still to be answered (Collins and Pinch, 1993: 118).

Towards a ‘political biogeography’ of transgenic life(a first draft)

Biotechnological Zones Property rights

Public acceptability

Ethical normalisation

Spaces of definition, discontinuity and continuity

Genotype/

phenotype

Morphological/

corporeal

Behavioural

Spaces of containment and circulation

Patenting Media / Representational

Animal enclosures

Spaces of expertise and contestation

Legal Cultural Regulatory science

Conclusions and questions

• Biogeography is traditionally defined as study of the patterns of species distribution and the processes that result in such patterns.

• The potential to situate the study of GM animals, in ways that connect and add to our understanding of

– the circulation of biovalue (Sunder Rajan 2006), – different political cultures and bioethical concerns (Jasanoff 2005)– the emergence of different animal forms (Haraway 2003)?

• The potential to reveal complex tensions and ethical debate around – Control and enclosure as a modern spatiality of nature (Watts 2004)– Agency and recognition of natural exuberance (Clark 2004)– In both the increasing spatial separation and increased corporeal connections

between human and animal lives

Acknowledgements

• This presentation arises from a research fellowship funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council on ‘Biogeography and Transgenic Life’ (grant number RES-063-27-0093). I am grateful to the ESRC for this support.