INTERACT

Transgenics Scenario

Now, your doctor has a question:

When you first became ill the doctor took a biopsy of a few cells from your first tumor. Those cells were put in a nutrient solution in a laboratory dish and left to grow and reproduce. While other people's cells have always died out in a few days, for some reason yours are thriving.

Medical researchers have been trying for years to get human cells to survive in the laboratory. Your cells are the first success. This could be a medical breakthrough - your approval could allow researchers to evaluate drugs in a test tube before administering them to patients. Scientists would gain a new window on human cell growth and reproduction, enabling them to expose human cells to various chemicals to see what nurtures them and what will kill them. But this is a part of your body they are asking to use, and who knows what they might actually do with it? Are you willing to donate your own cells to scientific research?

See what really happened.

Skip forward 24 years.