Monsters or Miracles?

Gene therapy pioneer W. French Anderson taps into sci-fi and horror genres to find moral lessons for DNA-based research.

HE'S BEEN CALLED Frankenstein a few times. And he consulted on the 1997 futuristic parable, Gattaca. So it wasn’t completely out of character for internationally known gene therapist W. French Anderson to play literary and film critic in a May lecture titled “Frankenstein, Gattaca and Gene Therapy.” Anderson – a professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and pediatrics in the Keck School of Medicine of USC – carried out the first human gene therapy clinical trial 10 years ago. He’s now proposing to perform the first in utero gene therapy trial.
Frankenstein and Gattaca, Anderson feels, have something important to tell us about science. When Mary Shelley wrote her 1816 horror story, people believed scientists were on the verge of bringing back the dead. In an early experiment, doctors had obtained the newly executed body of a convict and administered an electric shock. When the corpse thrashed around, “it so terrified observers that [the convict] was re-killed, by cutting his jugular,” Anderson says. The message of Frankenstein is “if we do research we shouldn’t be doing, we will be punished.” He sees Gattaca as a preview of what society will be like in 100 years if gene research continues without any controls. “These stories help frame the moral issues of human genetic engineering,” he says.

CALLING HIMSELF “a presumptuous scientist,” Anderson offers an ethical litmus test, in the form of three questions, to guide today’s life-creating experiments:
Is there a need to do the research? With gene therapy, Anderson has no qualms: “It’s immoral not to go forward with research that can alleviate human suffering,” he says.
Is there a moral standard for judging research? Anderson likes the one articulated by the Pope in 1983: that scientific research must increase human dignity. “Cloning oneself does not meet that standard,” Anderson says, “but treating human disease does.”
Is there a process to insure that researchers adhere to the moral standard? Anderson has reservations here. He points to an emerging gene therapy treatment for hair growth. “If we can choose to have hair growth,” he says, “why not choose hair color? Why not skin color? What about other racial characteristics? Determining what’s normal and what’s an improvement is fraught with cultural biases.”


– Bob Calverley and Matt Blakeslee

Going the Distance
Tech or Treat
“Call me Candy,” says the woman in the no-nonsense business suit. The distinctly
un-macho handle belongs to newly hired director of Web services Candace Borland, a distance-learning guru recruited from Marina del Rey-based Quisic Inc., a producer of online courses. Borland arrives at a critical time as USC gears up for a major overhaul of its Web site. “We’d like to be able to make a host of improvements,” she says, rattling off a few pet projects: “personalization, portals for specialized audiences, Web applications development tools, content management, improved search and retrieval, improved multimedia delivery and ever-expanding Web access to the huge body of knowledge and resources at USC.” To see what goodies Borland has coming to a computer screen near you, keep your browser pointing to Good Ol’ www.usc.edu.


A Backward-Looking Forward

When hoop star David Bluthenthal bounds down Hellman Way, USC lore echoes in each footstep.
HE DUNKS. HE DRIBBLES. He davens (that’s Hebrew for “prays”). David Bluthenthal, a star during USC’s heady march to the “Elite Eight” of the NCAA basketball tournament last spring, embraces the heritage of both his African-American father and Jewish mother. The 6-foot-7, 220-pound forward is also a living link to USC’s birth. His father, Ralph, converted to Judaism when he married Suzanne, whose great-great-great-grandfather Isaias Hellman was one of the major donors of the land on which the university was founded.
The Southlander’s roots are what led him to pass on a scholarship to Oklahoma State, stay in L.A. and attend USC. For Bluthenthal, respect for his Jewish ancestry and love of basketball are connected. He was a 16-year-old high school senior in 1997 when he traveled to Israel and played at the Maccabiah Games, an Olympic-style competition for Jewish athletes.
Now a senior, Bluthenthal returns this fall for his last year at USC. He and his teammates come off a historic season with a 24-10 record, eventually falling to NCAA champion Duke in the Eastern Regional final. Bluthenthal shared the team MVP award with forward Sam Clancy and guard Brandon Granville. He was USC’s third-leading scorer (13.5) and second-leading rebounder (6.8). He led the Trojans in three-pointers (65) and three-point percentage (.409). He was also second in steals (50).

– Neil Miller

Milestones

Electrical engineer Chrysostomos L. “Max” Nikias, a nationally recognized leader in multimedia and Internet technologies, has been named dean of the USC School of Engineering. He succeeds Leonard M. Silverman, who has returned to research and teaching after the longest stint as dean in the school’s history. (Under Silverman, USC’s engineering school rose to 11th place in the U.S. News & World Report graduate rankings.) Nikias has been director of the school’s Integrated Media Systems Center since its inception in 1996. He led USC’s successful bid – against 116 challengers – to secure the $12.4 million National Science Foundation grant that created the national multimedia center. On the faculty since 1991 and an associate dean since 1992, Nikias has also held academic appointments at Northeastern University and the University of Connecticut. A native of Cyprus, he earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from SUNY Buffalo.
University Professor Michael S. Waterman has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, becoming the eighth USC faculty member in the prestigious organization established by Congress in 1863 to advise the government on science and technology. Waterman, who holds appointments in mathematics, biological sciences and computer science, was also recently named the first fellow in the Celera Fellowship Program, created by the biotech firm that first raced, then joined the federal program to map the human genome. Waterman helped develop the Lander-Waterman algorithm that enabled Celera to make its audacious sprint. He’s also co-developer of the earlier Smith-Waterman algorithm, still the gold standard for gene and protein sequence analysis and the keystone of computational genetics.

Illustrations by John Cuneo / photograph by Michele A.H. Smith / Bluthenthal photograph by Michele A.H. Smith
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