cells, – Radio Free

What’s behind the phony ‘Iranian sleeper cells’ hype?

The Grayzone — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 03:19:36 +0000

This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

Waterlogged Kolkata street did turn red after Eid qurbani: Alt News ground report rebuts police cyber cell’s denial

Ankita Mahalanobish — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 11:52:55 +0000

After Bakri Eid was celebrated in India on Saturday, June 7, a video went viral on Facebook claiming to show a blood-filled road in Kolkata following the Qurbani (sacrificial) ritual.

Several users shared visuals of a blood-filled road and remarked sarcastically, “This isn’t Bangladesh or Pakistan…” Some stated that parts of Kolkata resembled “scenes from Bangladesh”. The posts also claimed that the visuals were from Ward 44 in Kolkata. (Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4)

BJP leader Sajal Ghosh who represents Ward No. 50 in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), also shared the video on Facebook and claimed that it was from the Bhawani Dutta Lane and Neel Madhab Sen Lane areas of Bowbazar. In the post, He also urged ‘urban, smart, ultramodern seculars’ to wake up unless they wanted the same picture to emerge from their localities within four-five years.

খুশির ঈদে খুশির বন্যা l

না এটা বাংলাদেশ না পাকিস্তান, এ আমার সাধের মধ্য কলকাতার বউবাজার অঞ্চলের ভবানী দত্ত লেন ও নীল মধব সেন লেন অঞ্চলের ছবি l

ঈদ কুরবানী একটি সম্প্রদায়ের নিজস্ব বিষয়, সে নিয়ে আমি কিছু বলবো না, কিন্তু যে প্রাণীকে আমরা পূজা করি, তার এই পরিণতি আমাদের ভাবাবেগকেও আঘাত দেয় l
অদ্ভুতভাবে প্রশাসন এবং পুরসভা চোখে ঠুলি পড়ে আছেন‌ l
তাই সমস্ত শহুরে স্মার্ট অত্যাধুনিক সেকুলার মানুষজনকে আমার অনুরোধ নিজে জাগুন অন্যকেও জাগান l

নয়তো আর ৪-৫ বছর বাদেই ঈদের দিনের এটাই আপনার পাড়ার ছবি হবে।
Sajal Ghosh BJP West Bengal Kolkata Municipal Corporation

Posted by Sajal Ghosh on Sunday 8 June 2025

On the same day, the X handle of the West Bengal Police Cyber Crime Wing shared a related fact check. It picked up a Facebook post from a user named Nepal Saha, which contained six photos of purported Eid celebrations in Kolkata, and labelled them as fake. One of these photos is a screenshot from the viral video. The fact check claimed that the photos originated in Bangladesh, with a 2016 post from Dhaka cited as the source. However, the viral video screengrab is not part of the 2016 post, and only two of the five others flagged as fake can actually be traced back to it. (Archive)

A disturbing image falsely linked to Kolkata post-Eid is actually from Dhaka, 2016, after Eid-ul-Adha and heavy rain. It has no connection to West Bengal.#factcheckthetruth #factcheck #Bangladesh #WestBengal pic.twitter.com/SVSPwxr748

— Fact Check : The Truth (@t20274) June 8, 2025

We found a website (https://factcheck.wb.gov.in/) bearing the same logo which published the same fact check. The website describes itself as “the Fact Check Portal of the West Bengal Cyber Crime Wing (which) is ready to tackle the menace by presenting verified, accurate, reliable information…”. Note that it uses a gov.in domain.

We tried reaching out to the cyber cell of Bengal Police. When we called on their number, they asked us to speak to the social media cell. The officer who spoke to us from the social media cell confirmed that the fact check had indeed been done by West Bengal Police’s cyber cell. However, he said the concerned person was on leave and only he could enlighten us about it. When we called up again the next day, we were met with the same response — that the person in the know of things was not available.

Alt News Visited the Spot

Taking a cue from Sajal Ghosh’s Facebook post, Alt News was able to precisely identify the spot featured in the viral clip. Bhawani Dutta Lane and Neel Madhab Sen Lane are two narrow streets near the College Street — Mahatma Gandhi Road crossing, stones throw from the Presidency University. We visited the site and shot a video that shows the same area that is seen in the viral clip.

The business establishments visible toward the end of the footage all carry Kolkata addresses. (Outlined in red in the screengrabs below)

Click to view slideshow.

Key landmarks visible in the viral video — including a distinct red-coloured house, a grey coloured building with light blue stripes, and a black car — can be seen in the Alt News video as well. The grey building houses the historical and current sections of the West Bengal state archives and bears the address: 6, Bhawani Dutta Lane.

These elements have also been highlighted below:

Click to view slideshow.

Have Never Seen Streets Turn Red Like this Before: Locals

To understand what transpired, we spoke to several locals. They recounted that on the intervening night of June 6 and June 7, the area experienced heavy rainfall resulting in severe waterlogging. On Saturday, June 7, morning, the ritual of qurbani (animal sacrifice) was carried out in keeping with religious tradition, local residents observed.

With the lanes being already waterlogged from the overnight rain, blood from the animal sacrifices mixed with the stagnant rainwater. Locals themselves came forward to manually clear the drains before the intervention of the civic body.

Alt News spoke to a local shop owner, Rajesh, who said he had lived and worked in the neighbourhood for over four decades. He told us that he had never witnessed anything like this before.

“I’ve been living and working in this neighbourhood for over 40 years, and I’ve never witnessed anything like this. The area indeed gets waterlogged whenever it rains, and the ritual of qurbani is performed here every year. But this is the first time I’ve seen such a scene — it was truly unprecedented.” Rajesh also confirmed that the video shows his locality and is from last Saturday.

The same information was corroborated by another shop owner from the area who told us that he had been in business there for around five to seven years and “had never seen anything like it.” “The water was red and there was a pungent smell”, he told us.

To further corroborate the events, we spoke to another family that had been residing there for over 60 years. They told us that in all their time living there, they had never witnessed such a disturbing sight. According to them, waterlogging is a recurring issue whenever it rains — and Friday was no exception. That evening, the area experienced heavy rainfall, which led to water accumulation due to clogged drains. “I was born and brought up here. In my lifetime, this was the first time I had witnessed something like this. Yes, the streets get waterlogged after a heavy shower. And on Friday, we experienced a heavy rainfall, which led to the accumulation of water.”

“Even at around 7 am, the water was clear, and likely after an hour, it turned red. Yes, it was accompanied by foul odour,” members of the household told Alt News. they did not want to be named. The time of the water turning red was corroborated by two other witnesses.

When asked whether the ritual of qurbani is practised every year on Eid al-adah, the family said, “Yes, but it has never affected the neighbours in any manner.” They also observed that a few local residents took the initiative to clear the clogged drains using sticks in an attempt to improve the situation. Shortly after these efforts, municipal workers arrived, cleaned the affected area, and restored normalcy. “We saw a few locals trying to unclog the drains with sticks. And later the municipality intervened and cleared it up.”

Kamal Pandit, a priest at a nearby temple, repeated the same point — that this was unprecedented. “I have been working here for the past six years. In this span, I have never seen a filthy sight like this. Whenever it rains, the area gets waterlogged, but I have never seen it turn red. It was cleared up in the afternoon.”

To sum up, Alt News’ on-ground investigation confirmed that the viral video was indeed authentic and were filmed in Kolkata. On the night of June 6 (Friday), the city witnessed heavy rain in certain areas, including Bhawani Dutta Lane in central Kolkata. As a result, following the Qurbani (sacrificial) ritual on Bakri Eid the next day, the already waterlogged lanes turned red, possibly due to contamination with animal blood. However, the X handle of Bengal police’s cyber crime wing issued an inaccurate fact-check of a Facebook post carrying a screenshot from the same video, incorrectly claiming that it was from Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2016.

This story will be updated if we receive a response from the cyber cell of police.

The post Waterlogged Kolkata street did turn red after Eid qurbani: Alt News ground report rebuts police cyber cell’s denial appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Ankita Mahalanobish.

Uyghur migrants see no release after a decade in Bangkok cells

By RFA Staff — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 09:54:00 +0000

After fleeing China’s persecution and entering Thailand 10 years ago, more than 40 Uyghurs remain incarcerated in overcrowded detention centers for illegal entry without knowing their fate, their families and rights groups said at a weekend seminar.

They are among more than 500 Uyghurs who fled China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to Southeast Asian countries, according to Thai officials and NGOs. They hoped to be resettled in Turkey via Malaysia but only about 100 made their way through the red tape and intransigence of officials.

During the exodus from late 2013 to 2014, Thai immigration authorities arrested at least 475 Uyghurs – mostly on rubber plantations in Songkhla province – and detained them in March 2014, according to official figures.

Suspected Uyghurs are transported back to a detention facility in the town of Songkhla in southern Thailand after visiting women and children at a separate shelter March 26, 2014. (Reuters)

And the remaining Uyghurs have been held as illegal immigrants – not refugees – under “poor living conditions” in detention centers, unable to speak with outsiders, said an advisor to the country’s National Human Rights Commission, Rattikul Chansuriya, who contended that the Uyghurs could be in danger if repatriated to China.

“The concerned authorities should urgently find appropriate third countries or other destinations for Uyghur detainees,” she told the seminar in Bangkok on Saturday.

She made the same recommendation to Thailand’s civilian-led Srettha Thavisin government.

“The concerned authorities should expedite the implementation of the regulations for the screening of aliens who cannot be returned to their country of origin due to potential danger,” she said. “This is an important mechanism to provide protection to asylum seekers, including Uyghurs.”

Thailand’s foreign ministry had not responded to a request for comment on the Uyghurs by the time of publication.

Civilian government provides little hope

The life of Uyghurs under the then-government of Prayuth Chan-o-cha, a former army general who led the May 2014 coup, was harsh.

A month after the forced repatriation of 109 Uyghur men in July 2015, a bomb blast killed 20 people and injured more than 100 others at Bangkok’s Erawan Shrine, frequented by Chinese tourists. Thai officials believed the attack was in retaliation for China blocking the transfer of Uyghur refugees to Turkey after Ankara accepted more than 170 Uyghur women and children.

At that time, the Turkish embassy in Bangkok said it was willing to accept all the Uyghurs, but China protested. Beijing has continued to closely monitor the status of the detainees, prompting Bangkok to prevaricate.

One Thai NGO said in spite of international pressure on Thailand it continues to be hard to persuade the government to release the Uyghurs.

“The Uyghurs are a small group of people, [who] mean nothing. China keeps submitting letters to follow up on Uyghurs with the Thai foreign ministry every day,” said Chalida Tajaroensuk, director of the People’s Empowerment Foundation, a Thai NGO that assists Uyghur refugees in Thailand.

She said it was hard for NGOs and even for Thai officials to have access to the detainees, especially the two bomb suspects, because the government called the matter a “top secret security issue.”

An immigration detention center, where human rights activists believe that a group of Uyghurs are being detained, is pictured in the Sathorn area of Bangkok on Sept. 30, 2022. (AFP)

At least five Uyghurs died in detention, according to the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress.

The National Human Rights Commission advisor, Rattikul, said that Thailand’s Human Rights Commissioner would persist in advocating for various recommendations.

These include establishing a definitive timeline for third-country asylum, ensuring access to psychotherapy, enabling communication with outsiders, providing prompt notification in case of death, and improving detention facilities.

Additionally, the Commissioner is pushing for the authorities to identify a third country for asylum seekers and the implementation of a “no repatriation” policy when there is a potential danger. However, these recommendations have so far received no response from the Srettha administration.

“I thought this government would have a more liberal policy, or a balanced policy on this matter or human rights issues in general but it’s disappointing. I still didn’t hear anything about them upholding human rights issues in Thailand,” she said.

Following nine years of a military-backed government, the ruling coalition’s leading party Pheu Thai may not do much to improve the administration’s human rights focus.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, whom the media dub a “salesman” for his economic focus, is seen by many political pundits as disregarding human rights.

But Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson said Srettha needs to stop buckling under Beijing’s pressure.

“Thailand should say to China: ‘Look, according to our law and international standards, we can’t send them to you.’”

Waiting for his father

Speaking in an animated video at Saturday’s seminar, a Turkey-based man whose father remains in a Bangkok cell said no one wanted to become a refugee but did it out of necessity. He said his family was longing to be reunited.

The man said his parents and siblings were detained in Thailand on March 14, 2014, before all-but-his-father were released for settlement in Turkey.

“The most important man in our lives is missing ... We know where he is, but we cannot hug him,” said the man, who wished to remain anonymous to protect his family.

“His absence is the most visible wound in our soul.”

Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

This Youth Detention Center Superintendent Illegally Locks Kids Alone in Cells. No One Has Forced Him to Stop.

by Paige Pfleger, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

by Paige Pfleger, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WPLN/Nashville Public Radio. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

With a glint in his eye, Richard L. Bean reminisces about the days when children in his detention center could be paddled.

“We didn’t have any problems then,” Bean says. “I’d whip about six or eight a year and it run pretty smooth. They’d say, ‘You don’t want him to get hold of you.’” Once, he chuckles, a kid had to be held down by four guards to be spanked.

Bean took the helm of this East Tennessee detention center — now named the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center — in 1972. The laws and the science on how to treat children in detention have changed a bit since then.

Yet Bean has held on to an old-fashioned approach to his work. These days, he’s reliant on a different tool for keeping kids in line: locking them alone in cells for hours — sometimes even days — at a time.

“What we do is treat everybody like they’re in here for murder,” he says. “You don’t have a problem if you do that.”

Most of the children in the Bean Center are not in for murder — in fact, most have only been charged with a crime, but are awaiting court dates.

Listen to Richard L. Bean describe paddling kids as punishment. “Had a lot of problems since” the state made him stop, he says. (Paige Pfleger/Nashville Public Radio and ProPublica)

At 83, superintendent Bean uses a bamboo cane to give a tour of the 120-bed facility. It’s connected to the juvenile court by a maze of windowless corridors; kids are passed between the two buildings in uniforms and shackles.

It’s difficult to know how children have been treated inside the walls of institutions like this one because policies designed to protect the privacy of kids can also obscure what goes on in facilities that break the law.

That was the case at a juvenile court about 150 miles west in Rutherford County, where reporting from ProPublica and WPLN revealed that kids were being illegally detained — at rates far higher than anywhere else in the state — for the most minor crimes, or even, in at least one instance, crimes that didn’t exist. The proof was right there, being collected by the state and laid out, for years, in an annual report. Yet no one flagged that kids were being jailed at a staggering rate, and no one seemed to try to stop it.

Here at the Bean Center, records reveal different violations of the law.

What we do is treat everybody like they’re in here for murder. You don’t have a problem if you do that.”

—Richard L. Bean, superintendent of the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center

Kids have been locked alone in a cell here more often than other facilities in the state, sometimes as punishment, and sometimes for an indeterminate length of time. And even as the state has implemented reforms that would have made seclusion less common, the Bean Center remained reliant on the practice.

Here too, these violations are not a secret: The facility’s licensing agency, Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services, has been documenting this improper use of seclusion for years at Bean’s center and elsewhere. The Richard L. Bean Center has repeatedly been put on corrective action plans. Yet DCS continues to approve the center’s license to operate without the facility changing its ways.

The Rules of Seclusion

In 2016, a suit in Rutherford County challenged the use of solitary confinement in the juvenile detention center after a child was kept in solitary for days for disrupting class. Around the same time, research emerged showing that isolating children doesn’t actually improve their behavior — if anything, it could worsen it. Solitary confinement can cause psychological impacts like depression, anxiety or psychosis, and young people are especially vulnerable to those effects. The majority of suicides inside juvenile correction facilities in the United States happen when a child is isolated.

So in 2017, DCS mandated that juvenile detention centers throughout the state change the way they use seclusion, adding guidelines and a reporting requirement.

The new standards said that children kept in seclusion inside Tennessee’s juvenile detention centers could be locked into cells that are 50 square feet — about the size of a U-Haul cargo van — usually with a concrete slab for a bed and a metal toilet affixed to the wall.

A cell at the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center where kids are sometimes kept in isolation (William DeShazer for ProPublica)

Importantly, the standards made clear that seclusion was meant to be a last resort and should not be used as punishment.

“Seclusion shall only be used when necessary to prevent imminent harm to themselves, another person, prevent damage to property, or prevent the youth from escaping,” the standards dictate. “Staff shall never use seclusion for discipline, punishment, administrative convenience, retaliation, staffing shortages, or reasons other than a temporary response to behavior that threatens immediate harm to a youth or others.”

Shortly after, those standards were codified into state law.

In order to have their licenses renewed, which happens annually, juvenile detention centers are supposed to abide by DCS’ standards. Every few months, a DCS inspector drops into facilities unannounced to take a tour, review documentation of the use of tools like chemical sprays, and interview a few kids. The resulting inspection reports are written almost like a journal entry and provide a glimpse of life inside juvenile detention centers.

WPLN and ProPublica reviewed eight years of those inspection reports, covering 2016 to 2023, and found multiple instances of children being locked up in seclusion — sometimes for days or more than a week — for minor rule infractions like laughing during meals or talking during class. One facility put a child in seclusion for eight days for simply having head lice, which the inspector called “a little extreme.”

And while many facilities were documented using seclusion improperly, the Richard L. Bean Center emerged as particularly prolific in its use of seclusion as a means of punishment, even years after the state standards were imposed.

Tyshon Booker was 16 years old when he says he was secluded in the Richard L. Bean Center. Now he’s 24 and incarcerated at a nearby prison, serving a 51-year sentence for homicide — a sentence the state Supreme Court recently ruled amounted to cruel and unusual punishment for juveniles like Tyshon.

But even though it was years ago, he remembers his two-year stay at the Bean Center like it was yesterday. During his 2015-2017 detention there, he says he was kept in seclusion twice for several days on end, without reprieve. He was stripped to his boxers, a T-shirt and socks before being placed in a cell alone.

Boys at the Bean Center wear orange clothing and sandals. (William DeShazer for ProPublica)

He says he had to get creative to keep his mind from spinning out.

“I learned how to make dice out of bread,” Booker says. “I made dice, roll the dice for hours. And then you’ve got to remember, we’re in solitary confinement, so I’d get hungry and I’d eat the dice. So, like, just imagine, the savage life in solitary confinement — rolling dice on a dirty floor for hours,” he recalled. “It was horrible.”

He says he would also lay on the ground of his cell with his face pressed against the cold floor, trying to yell to another kid who was locked in a solitary cell nearby.

He says it was worse than anything he’s experienced in adult prison. He thinks prison conditions are better because there’s more oversight. At the Bean Center, on the other hand? “They think, ‘Oh, they’re kids. Nobody is going to do this to kids, nobody would treat kids like this.’ So I don’t think it’s as much eyes as the penitentiary.”

In 2018 reports from visits to the Bean Center, one child said he was secluded after he forgot to bring his books to class. “Staff will put you in seclusion if they don’t like you,” he told the inspector. Another child said he was secluded but he didn’t really understand why.

They think, ‘Oh, they’re kids. Nobody is going to do this to kids, nobody would treat kids like this.’ So I don’t think it’s as much eyes as the penitentiary.”

—Tyshon Booker, former detainee at the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center

The same inspector visited the facility twice in October of 2018. On Oct. 16 she wrote that the facility “continues to be in good standing with the DCS licensing” and that the facility had corrected all its problems and could have its license renewed for the year. But when she returned the next day, Oct. 17, documents show the facility was put on a corrective action plan for a list of problems, including using seclusion as punishment.

Then in 2019, an inspector returned and found that the Bean Center’s reliance on seclusion as punishment had escalated. Seclusions at the facility that year were about double what they had been the year before. In just a few months, it reported more than 160 instances of locking up children alone.

On that visit, the inspector talked to five kids. Each one of them had seen youth placed in seclusion for fighting or not following the rules. One child said he was secluded for talking back. That would break not only DCS’ standards but also the new state law. Despite documenting evidence that the Bean Center’s problem with seclusion had only gotten worse, the facility was taken off its corrective action plan and had its license approved for another year.

In an email to WPLN and ProPublica, DCS says it has multiple levers it can pull if a facility isn’t in compliance, including freezing or slowing admissions, decreasing capacity, or even refusing to approve a license. But DCS says it has never used any of those options at the Bean Center.

Inside the Bean Machine

From the outside, the one-story brick Bean Center looks more like an elementary school than a junior jail. It’s situated just a few miles from downtown Knoxville, next to an ill-kempt sports field where kids play peewee football.

Inside, colorful stripes on the walls help kids navigate the hallways, an eerie counterpart to their neon orange prison outfits and the handcuffs they sometimes wear.

Color coding in the Bean Center’s hallways helps kids know where to go. (William DeShazer for ProPublica) The facility sometimes uses handcuffs and leg shackles on the children. (William DeShazer for ProPublica. Names blurred by ProPublica.)

Bean can be found sitting behind a massive desk in his office. Where the rest of the detention center is sparse, his office is stuffed. His walls are covered in photos of himself through the years with visitors to the facility. His tenure has lasted so long that he’s run out of wall space — the photos spill out of his office and into the hallway.

The room is cluttered with memorabilia — a can of pinto beans from his family’s renowned meals with local politicians, dubbed Bean dinners; bumper stickers for the current juvenile court judge; figurines of elephants; and political tchotchkes.

He says he thinks the politicians making the rules around juvenile detention centers and seclusion don’t know what it’s like inside these facilities.

“Most people think we’re running a kindergarten,” Bean says. “We’re running the juvenile junior jail for Knox County. And there’s some tough kids — tougher than the ones in the jail, I guarantee.”

Bean doesn’t see reform laws as the state trying to do right by these kids; instead he sees it as the state making his job more difficult. He compares his relationship with the state and DCS to his marriage of 55 years.

“You have to do a lot of kissing,” he says, laughing. “A lot of, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ You can’t always have it your way in this business.”

Bean’s office (William DeShazer for ProPublica)

In 2021, when the state ruled that kids could not be secluded for longer than six hours because of the damaging effects isolation had on them, Bean didn’t shy away from telling inspectors his thoughts.

An inspector wrote in August 2021 that Bean “stated that he did not feel two to six hours was enough time to lock the youth in their rooms,” a reference to the limits in the new law. “I also asked if the facility’s policy and procedures manual had been updated to reflect the new seclusion bill requirements. … The current policy and procedure manual for the facility was last updated in 1999."

That inspector also noticed a pattern: Instead of writing down the time the child was let out of the cell, as he was supposed to do on forms for the state, Bean would just write his initials, “RLB.”

Despite DCS’ policies and the state law dictating exactly how long kids could be kept in seclusion, Bean decided to use his own discretion. He said writing “RLB” was his way of denoting that it was up to him to decide when the children were ready to be released and rejoin the other kids. He told the inspector that he’d make that decision based on how “remorseful” a child was.

“I asked them how their attitude is,” Bean says. “I can’t let the kids run the place. Sometimes you get a kid, you put him in his room, and he cuss and call you everything in the books. It’s hard to let him out.”

The use of “RLB” instead of a specific time also made it impossible for the state to discern how long kids were being locked up alone.

A Tennessee Department of Children’s Services report from August 2021 noted that records did not always show how long children were held in isolation. (Obtained by WPLN and ProPublica. Highlighting by ProPublica.)

For those seclusion incidents that were documented properly, it was evident that Bean was keeping kids in their cells longer than he was supposed to. Most of the incidents of seclusion were “either definitively over 6 hours, or for an indeterminate amount of time,” the inspector wrote in the same report. One youth told the inspector that he had been placed in seclusion for “several weeks” for fighting.

Then in late 2021, something new happened: Bean’s seclusion numbers started dropping. It was the same year that a new law laid out the option for something called “voluntary time-out,” through which a kid can request to be left alone in their room for a few hours but is allowed to come out whenever they want to.

As the number of seclusions has fallen at the Richard L. Bean Center, the number of what inspectors called “voluntary seclusions” skyrocketed — in August of 2022, the facility reported just 44 seclusions compared with 122 the previous August.

According to the inspections, the facility also reported 344 voluntary seclusions.

“We don’t use it as punishment,” Bean explains. “So all of it’s volunteer.”

But the DCS inspector who visited that year noted that it was uncertain how voluntary the process actually was at the Bean Center.

“It is unclear whether the youth are aware that they can come out of their room by choice,” the inspector wrote. “The previous rule at the facility was that youth had to stay in their room for the remainder of the day if they chose to voluntarily go to their room.”

Bean believes he can “get out of” any trouble he may get into for his disciplinary practices. (Paige Pfleger/Nashville Public Radio and ProPublica)

Recently, Bean said he started a new rule — if a kid requests a voluntary lockup to avoid going to school, he responds by secluding them until the next morning.

“And then next morning, we say, ‘You want to go to school today?’” Bean said. “Most of them say, ‘Yeah, I want to go. I don’t want to be locked up.’”

Bean doesn’t seem to worry too much about getting caught.

“If I got in trouble for it, I believe I could talk to whoever got me in trouble and get out of it.”

Run It Like A Business

When asked what happens to inspection reports after they are filled out, DCS said that evaluation summaries “are distributed to the appropriate administrative parties and filed in the licensing record.” The department also said it provides a list of violations to the facility administrator; the administrator typically has 30 days to submit compliance documentation, which is verified by licensing staff.

DCS confirms that in the time it has been licensing juvenile detention centers in Tennessee, it has never terminated a license. And records from the Bean Center illustrate that corrective action orders can be lifted without the violation being resolved.

The department declined to comment further on why it never did more to crack down on the Bean Center.

“You can write everything into statute and create some really solid legislation, but if it’s not being used or it’s not being enforced, then what’s the next step?” asks Kylie Graves, policy director of the independent state agency Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth.

Graves said that there has been a tendency for the state to look the other way when it comes to juvenile justice in Tennessee.

A statue outside of the Bean Center celebrates “lives saved through caring.” (William DeShazer for ProPublica)

“The idea of this practice ever being used in a foster home or something like that would immediately raise flags and horrify people,” she said.

The Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth is calling for a third-party review of juvenile detention centers and the entire youth justice system. The agency points to Kentucky, which has proposed setting aside money to do just that. Several other organizations are likewise advocating for a review, including Disability Rights Tennessee, an organization that acts as a monitoring agency for juvenile detention facilities and has special access to the kids and documents inside.

“What seems like a good approach starting in January when the legislature reconvenes is to talk about putting in some type of mechanism for enforcing compliance,” says Zoe Jamail of Disability Rights Tennessee.

One proposal, Jamail says, could be a clean-up bill that would take oversight of juvenile detention facilities out of DCS’ purview, though she says she isn’t sure what agency could take that on. An audit last year found that nearly half of new DCS workers quit within their first year. That problem was compounded by an influx of kids entering the foster care system.

And the involvement of a third party could help mitigate a conflict of interest — DCS is invested in keeping county detention centers open and operating. In addition to being the licensing agency for the county detention centers, DCS also has contracts with most of those facilities to hold kids who have been convicted of a crime while they try to find placement for them.

DCS declined to comment on that arrangement.

It’s an arrangement that Richard Bean says is mutually beneficial — DCS pays his facility more than $175 per day per kid. He calls those kids paying customers.

Bean says that’s in addition to the $120 per day he gets from detaining kids from surrounding counties that don’t have a juvenile detention center.

Resting his chin on his cane, Bean says he doesn’t intend to slow down. He has big plans to hire more staff and get more bodies in beds — especially kids sent his way by DCS.

“I mean, you’ve got to take care of the kids,” Bean says. “But … you got to kind of run it like a business, too. I could make over one million dollars for the county.”

Meribah Knight contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Paige Pfleger, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio.

Children from Gamete-like Cells: Dishing up a Eugenic Future

Tina Stevens – Stuart A. Newman — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 05:55:39 +0000

An induced pluripotent stem cell Photo Credit: Sony Biotechnology.

Research on the manufacture of egg-like and sperm-like cells for the purpose of producing laboratory-crafted human children is proceeding rapidly. The objective is to turn ordinary body cells of prospective parents into artificial eggs and sperm. Though ostensibly developed to facilitate reproduction in individuals for whom this capability is impaired or unavailable, the use of laboratory produced eggs and sperm represent an opening for the routine production and commercialization of “designer babies.”^[1] These are individuals whose hereditary components are technologically modified to meet one or more specified objectives.

Researchers refer to creating eggs and sperm (gametes) in the laboratory as in vitro gametogenesis or IVG. The experimental process begins with “somatic” or body cells, e.g., from adult blood or skin. These cells are not those that evolved to produce gametes during embryonic development. The somatic cells are modified with extra DNA or RNA, or by exposing them to proteins or drugs, which has the effect of turning some of them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The iPSCs are next exposed to other biomolecules or drugs, to convert them into cells resembling the specialized cells of the body, such as eggs or sperm. Molecular tests of artificially differentiated cells invariably show them to be not identical to their natural counterparts (also see below).^[2]

Promoters suggest that IVG would make it possible for medically infertile people to have biologically related children without seeking authentic eggs or sperm from a donor. Additionally, advocates for the technology’s clinical use argue that it will help people have biologically related children who are not medically infertile but who could be considered “socially” infertile. This category would include same sex couples or gay individuals as well as people past the age of viable medical reproduction.^[3] The technology would also make it possible for a fertile person wanting to become a single parent of a biologically related child to do so without gametes (egg or sperm) donated by an identifiable second person (solo IVG).

If it works, the technology will also make it possible to assist a “uni-parent” to reproduce; that is, a person from whom both synthetic eggs and sperm are derived. There are also possibilities for assisting “multiplex parenting” where more than two individuals want to have genetic ties to a single child.^[4] For all these categories, the preferencing of genetically related children over adopted children is implicit.

The technology, should it find its way into fertility clinics, may reduce the number of donor gametes that are necessary, but it is likely to vastly increase the need for women to serve as surrogates, especially for same-sex males seeking to reproduce genetically, unless the creation of artificial wombs, currently an actively researched prospect, becomes a reality.^[5] Proponents of IVG, acknowledging the health risks and discomfort associated with egg extraction, count as a benefit the expected reduced demand for women’s eggs. They fail to note, however, that for many decades the fertility industry has ignored calls for it to include health warnings on advertisements seeking young women to supply eggs and to investigate the long-term health risks for egg donors by establishing a national health registry.^[6] This does not bode well for how the increased number of surrogates would be targeted, especially in impoverished and patriarchal countries where patterns of coercive paternalism work against the ability of women to consent freely to function as surrogates.

From April 19-21, 2023, The US National Academies of Sciences (NAS) held a three-day workshop titled, “In Vitro Derived Human Gametes as Reproductive Technology: Scientific, Ethical, and Regulatory Implications: A Workshop”^[7]. Here, we offer a critique of that NAS workshop.^[8]

We observe, first, that there was no sustained discussion at the workshop about whether clinical application of this exotic technology should be allowed. Instead, the event’s unquestioned presumption was that the technology would advance to clinical use. While some invitees evinced concerns about moving forward with this technology, no one put forth a vigorous challenge to employing gametogenesis in fertility clinics. Some debate may have occurred in break-out sessions, but the proceedings of those were not shared with the public. In the plenary sessions, however, no one articulated significant opposition to the idea that commercial laboratories should be permitted to manufacture synthetic embryos for implantation and eventual birth. Our analysis of workshop deliberations suggests that, confined by structure and topical framing, while reservations about IVG may have been aired they were not debated. Based on the state of the relevant science and the lack of any pressing health need we conclude that IVG for reproductive purposes should be strongly opposed.

Corralling cautions and setting the agenda

The framing of the workshop’s agenda and labelling of its subsections discouraged consideration of whether synthetic gametes should be used to create functionally equivalent human embryos for implantation.^[9] Indeed, Yale University reproductive scientist Hugh Taylor enthused early on that, impressed by how quickly the field was evolving, he was confident that it was not a matter of ‘if’ this technology would be available for clinical practice but ‘when.’ He speculated that availability of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of embryos would increase opportunities for expanding embryo screening. That creating large numbers of embryos makes it possible to select for “desirable” traits was acknowledged as problematic, but did not dampen enthusiasm for moving forward.^[10] Boosters of the technology must have been gratified to hear Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), share with them the advice he likes his staff to offer lawmakers: “[y]ou’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle. It’s going to progress, whether it progresses here in the US or elsewhere. If we don’t get into this…you’re just putting ourselves behind the 8 ball of [not] being able to take some leadership in making sure it’s done correctly.” No one rejoined that the US could alternatively take leadership in curtailing its progress and avert a global scramble to the ethical bottom. Indeed, as the workshop wound down, Stanford Law Professor and bioethicist, Hank Greely, had heard nothing to dissuade him from the optimistic view that it was a matter of, “when this ultimately gets adopted.”

The agenda’s printed objectives for the social, ethical, and legal consideration of IVG and for how to engage the public, channeled critique into categories that presumed that fertility clinics would, eventually, offer IVG. Operative concepts included imagining pathways to clinical trials, facilitating governance of the technology, identifying challenges to securing equitable patient access, identifying “stakeholders,” and highlighting best practices.

During discussions, concerns were raised about how IVG amplified the possibility of eugenic outcomes, and was likely to exacerbate social inequities, especially in the global south where the demand for women to serve as surrogates would increase. There was also mention of the importance of ensuring safety for children born in this way. Notwithstanding all this, no one argued that ethical concerns about IVG were of a sufficient magnitude to support calls for a moratorium, a ban, or a prohibition of any aspect of IVG. A few non-scientist attendees lamented the lack of a presentation from a disability rights perspective, the intended panelist having cancelled owing to health concerns. Perhaps a more powerful consideration of how eugenic proclivities inhere in the very idea of IVG would have emerged had the cancellation not occurred.

Some concern was expressed about how the “genetic essentialism” of IVG carried an implied devaluing of children born using donor gametes. Yale Law School lecturer, Katherine Kraschel, noted that the gay community is not a monolith. Where some might welcome opportunities to have biologically related children as do their heterosexual counterparts, others, with an eye to challenging entrenched values, may be discomfited by the devaluing of children conceived using donor gametes.^[11] But no one made a sustained case for how this technology, marketed as preferencing the desirability of biologically related children, socially de-values adopted children, whether to gay or straight families, around the globe. Their status was implicitly sub-texted by gametogenic promoters as a substandard substitute for “the real thing.”

Only briefly referenced, but not discussed much less debated, is that embryo selection at the scale expected is eugenics. Moreover, manipulative intervention to bring about traits (in addition to those already offered through conventional prenatal selection in reproductive markets, such as sex, eye color, and presumed life prospects) will be unavoidable given the inherent commodification of the enterprise. Eugenics is not a possibility that can be avoided. It is inherent in the undertaking and is already underway. ^[12]

Conflicts of interest

Biographies of presenters listed academic affiliations and scientific institutional or science society affiliations. None, however, listed bio-companies that scientists either founded or with which they were affiliated. Similarly, the biographical summaries of legal-bioethical presenters, some of whose presentations were clearly facilitating moving the technology into clinical use, listed no connections to named commercial bio-labs. Once the workshop was underway, a few presenters made disclosures of their corporate ties or funding sources.^[13] How these might function to compromise neutral analysis of the technology was also not discussed. One funder of the workshop itself was also a funder of ongoing IVG research.^[14] There was no assessment of how those who stand to profit lavishly from the normalization of commercially produced gamete-like cells might be compromised as presumed sources of balanced social and ethical analysis of the technology. There was no recognition that clinicians operate as part of a multi-billion-dollar IVF industry that constitutes a massive global profit-focused concern. Fortune Business Insights, which conducts market studies of global businesses, reports that the global market for in vitro fertilization is estimated to reach USD 36.39 billion by 2026.^[15] The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), a self-described professional society, possesses powerful and operational lobbying capacity. One workshop conferee was its president-elect. Another, also a member of the planning committee, was an ASRM past president. A balanced analysis of IVG might include their points of view and input. But to avoid explicitly discussing the influence such connections may have on the conference framing, structure, and proposed policies suggests that disclosure of a conflict of interest is considered by the NAS to magically neutralize the effects of its possession. Registering any concern to the contrary did not appear to be an option.

Regulators or midwives?

Whereas the workshop format limited critical discussion, there was ample space for considering whether and how IVG could be shepherded into socio-legal acceptance and clinical use given the current regulatory landscape. This calls into question what it is that constitutes the role and social function of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS.) Is it meant to function as advocate for controversial technology? The self-described raison d’être of the NAS is to, “provide independent, objective advice to inform policy with evidence, spark progress and innovation, and confront challenging issues for the benefit of society.”^[16] The workshop on IVG, however, was less an independent, objective consideration of the scientific, regulatory, and ethical implications of reproductive use of gametogenesis, than a brainstorming opportunity to think through what it would take to assist IVG into becoming a legally accepted, societally normalized feature of clinical practice.

Scientists summarized their research, explaining how they are learning to make and mature gametes (actually, gamete-like cells) from stem cells, and they related what limitations they have encountered, given scientific, ethical, and regulatory constraints. In response, bioethical techno-boosters energetically shared advice on how to overcome obstacles to moving forward. This included speculating on how to skirt regulations and gain FDA approval by redefining terms and potentially parsing the creation of IVG embryos as not involving eggs and sperm, per se, but ‘manufactured products’.

Harvard Law professor and bioethicist Glenn Cohen asked scientists what questions they needed answered to “get their experiments off hold.” Alta Charo is Professor Emerita of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. After disclosing several conflicts of interests (including serving as a paid consultant to Conception Bioscience, whose CEO was also presenting at the workshop) her presentation and Q & A discussion analyzed the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, and a 2016 budgetary rider that prohibits federal funding of, “research in which a human embryo is intentionally created or modified to include a heritable genetic modification.”^[17] Would this apply to embryos made from IVG gametes? The language is, Charo advised, susceptible to multiple interpretations. But the original motivation behind the language would preclude it being liberally interpreted: “You might get away with the current language, you could have an interpretation that gives you the freedom, but I’d say that there’s an excellent chance that at the state and federal level, somebody’s going to catch on and pass something else that clarifies that this, too, is not allowed.”

Matt Krisiloff, CEO and Cofounder of Conception Bioscience, (and patent applicant) suggested that it could be argued that gametogenesis was less manipulative than other technologies, adding later that it might be possible to designate it as therapy and thereby evade prohibitions.

Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research of the FDA, fielded the question as to whether IVG embryos could be regulated as standard commercial biological products? Would the 12-year exclusivity period apply? Or would this be considered more of a human cell/tissue product? Marks responded that, “You’d like to refer to it as a cell or tissue product but given how it’s made, it’s more manipulated than that.…The reasons why I love what I do is that you’d probably have to find another pathway or adapt another pathway to make things work here. The concept of a human embryo having 12-year exclusivity is ‘off the rocker.’ But we’ve had to do worse…I never thought we’d be regulating human stool, and I’m doing that right now. So, we’ll find a way to adapt. We’d obviously have to do it in a humanistic way because, at the end of the day…you don’t want these children…you don’t want somebody to be growing up and feel like they were…figure out some nice name for new product – that that’s what they were. We’d want to figure out a way that would make this humanized.” There is an irony in fretting over how not to dehumanize non-existing future children while ignoring the present devaluing, if not dehumanization, of people with disabilities, adopted people, people born of donor gametes, and children of some ethnic groups who, owing to their disproportionate representation among the poor, do not participate in reproductive technologies.

No one questioned why it was appropriate for a representative of the FDA to be counseling IVG promoters concerning what it will take, in terms of defining terminology, to see the technology approved in advance of public consideration of whether it should be approved. Quite the contrary, bioethicist Hank Greely counseled Marks that he might want to think about ways of expediting the approval process.

Johns Hopkins bioethicist, Jeffrey Kahn counseled that when seeking approval, promoters might get traction with legislators if they talked about the issue of competitive leadership. Peter Marks agreed: talking about advanced technology leaving our shores gets some people “woken up.”

Near the end of the workshop, UCLA stem cell biologist Amander Clark admitted that, “It makes me very nervous to think of a [human] embryo as a manufactured product.” But this comment immediately followed her approvingly anticipating that “…we will be manufacturing a gamete that is then used to generate an embryo.” The cognitive dissonance is striking. How can an entity, constituted in a laboratory from manufactured gametes, not itself be a manufactured product? Either way, the terminological gymnastics of IVG advocates lands them on shaky ground. On the one hand, declaring the lab manufactured entity to be an embryo makes for an easier sell to potential parents who do not wish to burden their child with the stigma of being a product; on the other hand, declaring the entity to be a product could, arguably, avoid triggering federal funding prohibitions which applies to embryos (see above and footnote 17).

There is another key aspect concerning terminology that the NAS workshop overlooked: scientist-entrepreneurs are not manufacturing true gametes but, rather, “gamete-like” cells. The administrators and bioethicists at the NAS meeting went along with the scientist-entrepreneur business principals in referring to IVGs as gametes: i.e., eggs and sperm. Relevant to this is that IVG research is part of a larger program of scientific investigation devoted to deriving cells of all types from laboratory-engineered “induced pluripotent stem cells” or iPSCs. Scientists working in this area, both outside and inside the reproductive context, continually acknowledge that differentiated cells derived from IPSCs only resemble the real thing. They fall short in ways that can be measured genetically. Much of the field of IPSC research is devoted to bringing the gene expression profiles of experimental products in line with in vivo^[18] cell types. By this criterion the engineered cells that give rise to IVGs are “germ cell-like cells,” not actual germ cells. ^[19]

The acceptance by clients (potential parents) of this procedure will depend on their being seduced into thinking there is no difference between gamete-like cells and actual gametes. It is possible that there will be no way to produce completely normal gametes by these methods. There is a range of variations among normal gametes and there will be a different range for IVGs. There will be an overlap, but when hundreds of expressed genes are at issue (which is likely to be the case) normality cannot be rigorously defined. The criteria for calling something an egg or sperm cell are likely to be arbitrary and nonrigorous.

Opposing lab-manufactured humans

The most compelling reason to move forward with reproductive gametogenesis, declared Hank Greely, is that those who desire to have a biological child but cannot are suffering; because they are suffering, they deserve to be helped. The only good reason not to move ahead, he asserted, would be lack of safety guarantees. His framing went unchallenged at the workshop: any other ethical hesitations offered at the conference lost standing as justifications for curtailing the technology.

There is, of course, good reason to be concerned about safety. At what point can a child resulting from a synthetic embryo be considered safe from unintended consequences? The definition, health, and suitability for reproduction of authentic gametes depend on hundreds of thousands of factors whose coordinated function has been refined over millions of years of evolution. There is no way to test exhaustively if an IVG cell, concocted from a somatic cell in the lab, fulfills these criteria. While they can be used in fertilization and possibly yield something that looks like a normal embryo, how can its lack of procedure-introduced anomalies be confirmed? What are the criteria for determining safety? Over how many generations?

Conferees recognized the difficulties of tracking these human experiments, i.e., children born from IVG. Parents could give their consent to following the fate of their own children. But, at some point, the children themselves would need to give consent. And what about those children’s children? How many generations need to be tracked before IVG can be considered safe? Is intergenerational consent possible? If such human experimentation fails and children down the road are found to have developmental anomalies or impairments, who along the chain of production would be liable? If experimentation is not controlled (in the sense of comparative treatments with critical factors omitted), if accountability is impossible, is the program ethical? Enthusiasts were troubled but not deterred by the difficulties of long-term tracking of generations of children. The question of whether one can conduct a rigorous on-going scientific experiment without adequate data collection went unanswered. The even more fundamental questions of whether one can ethically experiment on prospective humans, the human gene pool, the human species, and with evolution itself went unasked.

Conclusion: Who wants synthetic eggs and sperm?

The National Infertility Association, RESOLVE, is a patient advocacy group for medically infertile people seeking to build families. When its representative at the workshop was asked if her clients were seeking synthetic gametes she replied, somewhat reluctantly, that they were not. Her answer opened an inquiry that was inadequately considered. But at a later session, University of Cape Town Professor of Sociology, Amrita Pande, asserted that, “demand for many things can be created…it’s not just about supply meeting demand…”. The observation begs questions: who, right now, is asking for IVG and what does it tell us?

Conception Bioscience is a company working to develop egg-like cells to be fertilized, implanted, and gestated. Its CEO Matt Krisiloff, mentioned above, reported that his company is often contacted by people wanting to have biological children. Such desires represent potential demand. IVG boosters in attendance shared ideas on undertaking patient advocacy to stimulate market demand, including selecting the most appealing first human experiment candidate to trigger sympathetic appeal (proposed as a young, female cancer survivor.) But, at present, there is scant call for synthetic eggs or sperm from medically infertile people seeking to have a child.

By contrast, entrepreneurial scientists with patent applications want in vitrogametes. Venture capitalists want them. IVF industry clinicians, in anticipation of an assumed demand, want them. Privately funded companies, like Conception Bioscience, which came into existence to capitalize on the expectant emerging disease category of the “socially infertile,” want them. Anyone with the incentive to invest in the technology wants them. And this raises a question: should individuals and contingents with such financial motivations be leading the opening volley on whether society should experiment so dramatically with the human species and, while doing so, embrace the ultimate human commodification: children.

Much disliked by techno boosters is the 1997 dystopian film Gattaca, describing as it does a future where, through freely chosen genetic selection, society has devolved into eugenic classes, the genetic “haves” and “have nots” (the movie’s “valids” and “invalids”). In 2015, a Nature editorial counseled its professional readers not to participate in discussions of the film, and a science writer for the NY Times called for “an international ban on invoking” it.^[20]Similarly, at the NAS workshop, Alta Charo prefaced her remote presentation with the off-hand instruction to colleagues in the room that it’s a good idea to avoid engaging the topic of eugenics.^[21]

In The New Yorker’s coverage of startup companies behind gametogenesis, “The Future of Fertility,” Emily Witt quotes Hank Greely predicting that, “…in the next twenty to forty years sex will no longer be the method by which most people make babies (“among humans with good health coverage,” he qualified). No wonder promoters of genetic reproductive technologies advise not talking about eugenics or its film avatar, Gattaca. If Greely’s prediction is correct, the film’s prescience (along with that of Aldous Huxley’s equally dystopian 1931 novel Brave New World) would be amply supported. While estimates vary, IVG users would be implanting their fabricated embryo after selection for experimental success (suitable traits, lack of evident errors) from scores or hundreds of similar ones. This would be assembly-line eugenics, with predictable social effects.^[22]

The NAS workshop on IVG was an occasion for interested parties to think through what it will take to enable IVG to become a legally accepted, societally normalized feature of clinical practice – an option on fertility clinics’ menu of services. The gathering was structured to dissipate the impact of objections to using IVG to create fabricated embryos for implantation and gestation. Rather than offering a balanced assessment of what is at stake for humanity should gametogenesis be clinically employed, the conference functioned to fine-tune public lobbying for normalization of an exotic and controversial technology. Advocates of the technology suggested instituting public outreach programs. Programs could include science museums for children that introduce them to eggs, embryos, and IVG; outreach should instill a degree of scientific literacy, pitched to a grade-school level, and sympathetically packaged. But there was no mention of teaching about the always-present risks of powerful technologies, or the need for social-science literacy, one that takes seriously critical considerations that advocates at the workshop did not see fit to engage.

The concept of the “technological imperative” is that new technologies, considered useful by their promoters, will inevitably be developed and applied. Even so, public debate fittingly ensues as to whether chatbots are conscious, whether AI paintings are art, or whether the imitative properties of lab-manufactured meat warrants the nutritive deficits required to accomplish them. Elite science society meetings should not obscure the fact that manufacturing synthetic embryos will blur the boundaries between humans and objects and, further, provide an incentive for “quality control” that develops, inexorably, into a platform for eugenics.^[23]

California coda

Technologies can stray far afield from their originally approved contexts. Conception Bioscience’s Matt Krisiloff explained, for example, the choice of California for its corporate base: it is a state that permits the creation of embryos. But California did not legalize the creation of embryos to enable manufacturing them, up to scale and on demand, to create children. Rather, California permitted creating embryos to facilitate researching embryonic stem cells to assist in finding cures for an array of diseases. Will a company be able to secure an enabling environment when the originating approval was for an entirely different reason? Should it be allowed to? Just how far can technologies be allowed to stray from their original contexts.^[24]

California has a lot at stake in getting the answer right. It may be a state that permits the creation of embryos but it is also a state that acknowledges its own shameful role in promoting 20th century eugenics. In March 2003, Governor Gray Davis apologized to all those affected by California’s eugenics movement.^[25] In June 2003, the California Senate passed Senate Resolution SR 20 acknowledging that: “The goal of the eugenics movement of the twentieth century was racial betterment through the elimination of hereditary disorders or genetic defects by means of sterilization, selective breeding, and social engineering.” It urged all citizens to become familiar with the history of the eugenics movement and resolved that: “this resolution addresses past bigotry and intolerance against the persons with disabilities and others who were viewed as “genetically unfit” by the eugenics movement…” ^[26] There has been sustained effort to compensate the victims of state sponsored eugenics.^[27] Additionally, in 2018, faculty at the University of California, Berkeley uncovered that the university was receiving ongoing research funding from the Genealogical Eugenics Institute Fund. The funds were frozen, and in 2020 its payouts were repurposed to educate the campus community and the public about eugenics’ cruel history.^[28]

Promoters of technologies with eugenic capacity often attempt to distinguish between state sponsored eugenics, on the one hand, and the mere aggregation of choices made in a free market, on the other. The distinction is disingenuous. Twentieth century eugenics is replete with examples of “Fitter Family Contests”.^[29] What could be more free market than competition? As public debates on reproductive gametogenesis get underway, California needs to consider its leadership role. Will it undo the singular moral impact of denouncing its infamous leadership in 20^th century eugenics only to launch a new chapter, leading the nation in 21^st century techno-eugenics?

Stuart Newman is Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy, New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, and a member of the board of directors of the Alliance for Humane Biotechnology (AHB), San Francisco, California. Tina Stevens is Lecturer Emerita of History, San Francisco State University and Director of the AHB. They are the authors of Biotech Juggernaut: Hope, Hype, and Hidden Agendas of Entrepreneurial Bioscience (Routledge, 2019). This article is based on an AHB White Paper.

Footnotes

[1] Newman, Stuart, “Our Assembly-Line Future?,” CounterPunch, July 31, 2018, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/31/our-assembly-line-future/

[2] Vaughan-Jackson, Alun, Szymon Stodolak, Kourosh H. Ebrahimi, Cathy Browne, Paul K. Reardon, Elisabete Pires, Javier Gilbert-Jaramillo, Sally A. Cowley, and William S. James. 2021. “Differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells to authentic macrophages using a defined, serum-free, open-source medium.” Stem Cell Reports 16 (7):1735-1748. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stemcr.2021.05.018; Chen, SW., Wong, YH. (2023). Directed Differentiation of Human iPSCs into Microglia-Like Cells Using Defined Transcription Factors. In: Huang, YW.A., Pak, C. (eds) Stem Cell-Based Neural Model Systems for Brain Disorders. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2683. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3287-1_5

[3] See, for example, Emily Witt, “The Future of Fertility: a new crop of biotech startups wants to revolutionize human reproduction,” The New Yorker, April 17, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/24/the-future-of-fertility

[4] See Day 1 presentation by Paula Amato of Oregon Health and Sciences University

[5] Ibid.

[6] http://www.humanebiotech.org/sign-egg-donor-petition

[7] https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/04-19-2023/in-vitro-derived-human-gametes-as-a-reproductive-technology-scientific-ethical-and-regulatory-implications-a-workshop?i=_w2WaLdVBmoX8Qhu35lMHUiFdk-doqH7

[8] See also: Katie Hasson, “Lab-Made Gametes Takes Center Stage,” BioPolitical Times, 05.16.23: https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/lab-made-gametes-take-center-stage

[9]National Academies, Agenda for workshop on In Vitro Derived Human Gametes.: Scientific, Ethical, Regulatory, Legal and Clinical Implications: A Workshop, April 19-21 https://www.nationalacademies.org/documents/embed/link/LF2255DA3DD1C41C0A42D3BEF0989ACAECE3053A6A9B/file/DA5ED106FF2081C69862FF4741D440B29583B2E3B06E?noSaveAs=1

[10] Hugh Taylor, MD. Yale University, past president of (American Society for Reproductive Medicine) ASRM https://www.nationalacademies.org/documents/embed/link/LF2255DA3DD1C41C0A42D3BEF0989ACAECE3053A6A9B/file/D6E1AB97133CA53B50915EF694553F8AAAB166467CDE?noSaveAs=1.

[11] On the questions of whether IVG is actually a boon for LGTBQ families see, Darnovsky, Marcy, “Bioengineered Gametes: Techno-Liberation or Techno-Trap,” BioPolitical Times 08.26.2020: https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/bioengineered-gametes-techno-liberation-or-techno-trap

[12] IVG also ramps up possibilities for the controversial use of polygenic risk scores to predict social success. See, Ball, Philip, “Polygenic screening of embryos is here but is it ethical,” The Guardian,10.17.2021

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/17/polygenic-screening-of-embryos-is-here-but-is-it-ethical

and Shanks, Pete, “ACMG: Do Not Use Polygenic Risk Scores for Embryo Selection,” 03.21.2023, https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/acmg-do-not-use-polygenic-risk-scores-embryo-selection

[13] Dr. Ari Brivanlou of Rockefeller University, for example, disclosed that he is also a Cofounder of Rumi Scientific which deals directly with clinical applications of the kind of work they do; Lawyer-bioethicist Alta Charo sits on the boards or advises bio-companies that are developing the technologies e.g., Conception BioSciences; Paula Amato, President elect of ASRM, receives funding from Open Philanthropy which also funded the workshop.

[14] Open Philanthropy, a funder of the National Academies Workshop also funds research by Paula Amato and Katsuhiko Hayashi, for example.

[15]Fortune Business Insights: “In Vitro Fertilization Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type (Conventional IVF, and IVF with ICSI), By Procedure (Fresh Non-donor, Frozen Non-donor, Fresh Donor, and Frozen Donor), By End User (Hospitals, and Fertility Clinics) and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026”

https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/in-vitro-fertilization-ivf-market-102189

[16]https://www.nationalacademies.org/about#:~:text=The%20National%20Academies%20of%20Sciences,for%20the%20benefit%20of%20society.

[17] “[The] Dickey-Wicker Amendment…has been passed annually within the federal budget for the US Department of Health and Human Services since 1995, prohibiting scientists from obtaining funding for human embryo research work from the US NIH…The Dickey-Wicker Amendment…specifically bans federal funding for “the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes or research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subject to risk of injury or death,” including developing hESC lines. The amendment only applies to federal funding and does not affect R&D funded by state or local governments or private institutions.” Mathews, Kristin RW and Morali, Daniel, “National human embryo and embryoid research policies: a survey or 22 top research-intensive countries,” Regenerative Medicine Vol. 15 No. 7

https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/10.2217/rme-2019-0138

[18] In vivo refers to a process that takes place inside a living organism, as opposed to test tubes culture dishes.

[19] See, for example, Seita Y, Hwang YS, Sasaki K. “Reconstitution of Human Prospermatogonial Development from Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.” Methods Mol Biol. 2023; 2656:145-159. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3139-3_8. PMID: 37249870. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37249870/

[20] See, Stevens, Tina and Newman, Stuart, Biotech Juggernaut: Hope, Hype and Hidden Agendas of Entrepreneurial BioScience (New York: Routledge 2019) p. 118).

[21] This admonition does not appear in the edited recorded version.

[22] See UC Davis Professor of Law Lisa Ikemoto’s presentations and Q & A regarding access and cost issues.

[23] Newman, Stuart, “Our Assembly-Line Future?,” (op. cit., ref. 1)

[24] Could gametogenic development be put in the service of global defense departments’ calls for “human augmentation” for military purpose? See, Ministry of Defence, “Human Augmentation – the Dawn of a New Paradigm.”https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/986301/Human_Augmentation_SIP_access2.pdf

[25]Ingram, Carl, “State Issues Apology for Policy of Sterilization,” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2003.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-12-me-sterile12-story.html

[26] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=200320040SR20

[27] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB3052

[28]Manke, Kara, “Berkeley Public Health announces plans to rename, repurpose former eugenic fund,” Berkeley News, October 26, 2020.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/10/26/berkeley-public-health-announces-plans-to-rename-repurpose-former-eugenics-fund/

[29]Uenuma, Francine, “‘Better Babies’ Contests Pushed for Much-Needed Infant Health but Also Played Into the Eugenics Movement,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 17, 2019. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/better-babies-contests-pushed-infant-health-also-played-eugenics-movement-180971288/

Tis article first appeared on Independent Science News.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Tina Stevens – Stuart A. Newman.

Children from Gamete-like Cells: Dishing up a Eugenic Future

Tina Stevens – Stuart A. Newman — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 05:55:39 +0000

An induced pluripotent stem cell Photo Credit: Sony Biotechnology.

Corralling cautions and setting the agenda

Conflicts of interest

Regulators or midwives?

Opposing lab-manufactured humans

Conclusion: Who wants synthetic eggs and sperm?

California coda

Footnotes

[1] Newman, Stuart, “Our Assembly-Line Future?,” CounterPunch, July 31, 2018, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/31/our-assembly-line-future/

[4] See Day 1 presentation by Paula Amato of Oregon Health and Sciences University

[5] Ibid.

[6] http://www.humanebiotech.org/sign-egg-donor-petition

[8] See also: Katie Hasson, “Lab-Made Gametes Takes Center Stage,” BioPolitical Times, 05.16.23: https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/lab-made-gametes-take-center-stage

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/17/polygenic-screening-of-embryos-is-here-but-is-it-ethical

[14] Open Philanthropy, a funder of the National Academies Workshop also funds research by Paula Amato and Katsuhiko Hayashi, for example.

https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/in-vitro-fertilization-ivf-market-102189

[16]https://www.nationalacademies.org/about#:~:text=The%20National%20Academies%20of%20Sciences,for%20the%20benefit%20of%20society.

https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/10.2217/rme-2019-0138

[18] In vivo refers to a process that takes place inside a living organism, as opposed to test tubes culture dishes.

[20] See, Stevens, Tina and Newman, Stuart, Biotech Juggernaut: Hope, Hype and Hidden Agendas of Entrepreneurial BioScience (New York: Routledge 2019) p. 118).

[21] This admonition does not appear in the edited recorded version.

[22] See UC Davis Professor of Law Lisa Ikemoto’s presentations and Q & A regarding access and cost issues.

[23] Newman, Stuart, “Our Assembly-Line Future?,” (op. cit., ref. 1)

[25]Ingram, Carl, “State Issues Apology for Policy of Sterilization,” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2003.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-12-me-sterile12-story.html

[26] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=200320040SR20

[27] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB3052

[28]Manke, Kara, “Berkeley Public Health announces plans to rename, repurpose former eugenic fund,” Berkeley News, October 26, 2020.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/10/26/berkeley-public-health-announces-plans-to-rename-repurpose-former-eugenics-fund/

Tis article first appeared on Independent Science News.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Tina Stevens – Stuart A. Newman.

Female Urinals, Extra-woke Hollywood, Privacy Violations, Mouse Brain Cells, Pizza & Disneyland

Mickey Z. — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 15:05:59 +0000

This criminal gaslighting ends when enough of us say NO.

Starting with next year’s Oscars, the Academy will require that a film meet two of the four inclusion standards above to be eligible for a best picture nomination.

Read the full Hollywood Reporter article here.

Indiana’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) has been caught selling drivers’ personal information without their consent and without the option for them to opt-out. Last year alone, the BMV made around $25 million from selling personal information.

Read the full article here.

The disappearance of the $1 slice in NYC is an unwelcome development for many reasons. (details) For example, so many of the homeless women I’ve helped over the years have relied on 2 Bros. Pizza for quick, affordable meals.

“The schemes of the devil…” (Ephesians 6:11)

(watch a short video here)

Click here for a one-minute video that will end this post with a smile!

The post Female Urinals, Extra-woke Hollywood, Privacy Violations, Mouse Brain Cells, Pizza & Disneyland first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

Female Urinals, Extra-woke Hollywood, Privacy Violations, Mouse Brain Cells, Pizza & Disneyland

Mickey Z. — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 15:05:59 +0000

This criminal gaslighting ends when enough of us say NO.

Starting with next year’s Oscars, the Academy will require that a film meet two of the four inclusion standards above to be eligible for a best picture nomination.

Read the full Hollywood Reporter article here.

Read the full article here.

“The schemes of the devil…” (Ephesians 6:11)

(watch a short video here)

Click here for a one-minute video that will end this post with a smile!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..