Department of Biology 2004 Convocation Address (excerpted)

By Professor Geoffrey Cooper, Biology Department chair

Good afternoon. I’m Geoffrey Cooper, chair of biology, and it’s my pleasure to welcome you to the 2004 Commencement Ceremony of the Biology Department of Boston University…. As you become Biology graduates, it seems appropriate to reflect on some of the recent advances in the life sciences, and to think about what now lies ahead. This year is a particularly fitting time for such reflection, since the year of your graduation coincides with the 100th anniversary of our department. The Biology department at Boston University was established in 1904, and consisted of one professor and 7 students. As you can see, there are a lot more faculty and students here today, and the growth in Biology at BU parallels the progress in the life sciences that has taken place over the last century.

In 1904, biologists were just beginning to understand the basic principles of genetics. The Austrian monk Gregor Mendel first deduced the existence of genes and the basic rules for genetic transmission in 1865, but he was ahead of his time, and it wasn’t until the early 1900s that Mendel’s laws were rediscovered and the role of chromosomes as the carriers of genes was recognized. Since then we’ve come a long, long way. As you graduate as the class of 2004, we know the complete sequence of the human genome as well as the genome sequences of a large and growing number of other organisms. So in the last 100 years, we’ve moved from the initial definition of genes and chromosomes to having unraveled the sequence of the 3 billion bases of DNA that constitute the genetic code responsible for our own development.

Now that’s remarkable progress, which serves as a reminder of how rapidly biology moves forward. Just during the years that you’ve been here as students, you’ve witnessed a number of major breakthroughs. Sequencing the human genome may be the most dramatic, but other notable advances include the development of the first designer drugs for cancer treatment and the progress in research on stem cells.

The rapidity of this progress serves to emphasize that biology is not an established classical body of knowledge. Rather, biology is very much a contemporary, actively moving science. Advances in the life sciences are happening at an ever-increasing pace, and many of these advances will continue to affect your lives in the years to come. This will be true not only for those of you who pursue careers in biology or medicine; those of you who choose to pursue careers in other fields will also be affected by the impact that continuing progress in the life sciences will have on society as a whole. As is often the case with scientific progress, many of the recent discoveries in biology bring not only the potential of great benefit, but also the risk of misuse. It will therefore be up to all of you, as educated and informed members of our society, to understand the significance and implications of future advances in our field, and to ensure that the benefits are realized while the potential pitfalls are avoided.

As one example, consider the excitement and controversies in the very rapidly moving areas of cloning and stem cell research. On the one hand, it’s clear that embryonic stem cells have the potential of providing new treatments for a variety of devastating diseases. The ability of these cells to differentiate into a wide variety of functional tissues opens exciting new possibilities for treating diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s by using stem cells to replace damaged tissue. Yet, like many scientific advances, the medical applications of embryonic stem cells raise complicated ethical questions and carry the clear potential for misuse.

The most effective use of embryonic stem cells for transplantation therapy would involve the transfer of nuclei from cells of the patient into an egg from which an embryo would then be developed and stem cells produced. This technique, called therapeutic cloning, yields stem cells that are genetically identical to the patient, allowing a compatible transplant. However, while this use of therapeutic cloning has enormous potential, it also raises the specter of reproductive cloning: a scenario in which nuclear transfer would be used not to create stem cells, but to create cloned human beings. The basic techniques of nuclear transfer needed for therapeutic and reproductive cloning are the same, and reproductive cloning has been successful in many species of animals, starting in 1997 with the birth of the famous sheep Dolly. Just a few months ago, marking the year of your graduation, a team of Korean scientists reported the first successful derivation of embryonic stem cells from a cloned human embryo—a critically important step towards therapeutic cloning, but also a major step towards reproductive cloning. Although a variety of problems make reproductive cloning of humans an unlikely undertaking at present, the same technologies that offer the potential of enormous benefit as therapeutic cloning clearly open the risk that they could be used to clone human beings. Many in the scientific and medical communities favor therapeutic cloning while strongly opposing reproductive cloning, but this whole area of biotechnology and medicine is obviously one of enormous concern and debate.

As biology graduates, you are in a special position to critically evaluate the promises and pitfalls of emerging scientific advances and to understand their impact, both positive and negative, on our society. This applies not only to medically-related issues like stem cells, but also to issues of ecology and conservation biology that can impact the entire global environment and threaten the very existence of whole species of plants and animals. We have the privilege of bearing witness to striking advances in biology that will affect all of our lives. With that privilege comes a responsibility to harness and direct the power of those advances to our benefit. Because of your background and education as Biology majors, you are prepared to understand and evaluate advances in the life sciences. Indeed, some of you who pursue careers in biology and medicine will be responsible for the advances of the 21st century. But whatever profession you now choose to pursue, I hope you use your education to understand continuing progress in biology, to promote intelligent and thoughtful discussion of new discoveries, and to ensure that our rapidly increasing knowledge is used for the benefit of all.