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Monkey Cloning. Sort Of.
A whole slew of people have written about the announcement
from scientists that they have "cloned" monkeys. Actually, in yet another case of bad science coverage (See my rant earlier today), they split an early-stage embryo. So, they really made artificial twins, which they then re-implanted into the mother. Still a heckuva a ways away from actually doing any sort of real cloning, IMHO.
cool. Now all we need is an assembly line doing this sort of shit and we can get that complete works of shakespeare going....
or double the IQ of texas or something...
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
Which in turn shows a measure of my own stupidity. There. I've said it. The rest of y'all can sit it out while I eat the crow. (Mm.. tastes like chicken.) I saw a headline, and thought the article reflected it. Pass the ketchup.
The reason I'm stepping forward is to start this discussion: how can a techie community browbeat the media into reporting with a clue? It's frightening to see how the media mislead the general populace so damn stupidly and see the techie sector utterly unable to do anything about it.
We've just made it out of the Y2K scare, and we're moving on the the usual fare (internet porn, et cetera, et cetera).
It's also sad to see how many scientists and engineers agree with the phrase "I'm not superstitious in general, but I believe reporters are bad luck."
*sigh*
It's not cloning by a long shot, but creating identical twins on demand has huge benefits.
For one, you can create a significant population for a 'nature vs. nurture' study.
Two, with an identical genetic baseline, all with a specific genetic defect, you can do comparative studies of different treatments. Since treatment on the genetic level is likely to be affected by the genetics of the individual being treated, a 'same' baseline allows for much more reasonable studies of treatment effectiveness.
Three, again a common genetic foundation in animals engineered to produce a hormone, or grow organs or whatever have you, is going to result in a much more consistent product. And Animal Farm (heh) can essencially be a mass-production assembly line, with little or no variance in the 'components'.
You can tweak a brood of embryos, analyse the yield, terminate those that are not desirable for your needs, and 'twin' the ones that are. No need to repeat the original impregnation and creation of life - since nature will do that for you. You just pick the good 'fruit' and reproduce it on an assembly line.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Did anyone notice the remark that they named it "Tetra" meaning "One of four?" Sounds like a borg monkey name.
In a sense, splitting an embryo IS cloning. In Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", this is exactly what's done (plus some other ethically very questionable things) to produce workers (gammas, deltas and epsilons) while higher caste embryos were left unsplitted.
Clones are twins. And twins are clones. I understand that you'll reserve the term "clone" until I can take a clipping from your fingernails and grow a Hemos Mark II inside a bubbling vat, but in my opinion it's pretty important not to make this false clone/twin distinction.
:-) then we know what will result. We've all read the sci-fi: sex slaves, war drones, and second class status.
The reason is that, if we continue to think of a clone as different from a twin in some vague, undefinable way, then we are sure to treat clones as less than human if ever the technology becomes widespread.
People are often arrogant about the things they create. If we allow ourselves to be deceived in considering clones "our creatures" rather than as human twins achieved at a rather late date
Yes it would be stupid! Surely the origin of a genetic duplicate is irrelevant when determing the intrinsic worth or rights of the duplicate. But somehow I fear that logic wouldn't play a very large role in the decision.
We have a chance to forstall all this if we try to change our thinking now, before clones are walking down the street alongside us.
Clones = Twins
Twins = Clones
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Too many reporters and media companies are not just clueless, but they don't care.
It's going to take a bit more.
My cell biology text says that a clone is "a population of organisms derived from a single ancestor and therefore homogeneous." Which is to say, a population in which all individuals have no genetic difference.
Cloning doesn't require that the original cells not be eggs. It is certainly true that the achievement is minor, since it imitates normal biological events that occur when producing identical twins.
What made Dolly neat was that they made a clone from a cell that had differentiated and was therefore in theory incapable of producing anything other than udder cells. Dolly is no more or less a clone than this monkey, and I bet that more monkeys survive this kind of cloning than would if they cloned skin cells.
Since so many monkeys are endangered, it isn't surprising that they want to be able to clone them, and this is cheaper and easier than what they did for Dolly.
Yes! This is great! We are one step closer to genetically engineering a race of super-monkeys to serve us. No longer will the disabled be the only ones to get cute little monkeys to do all their daily chores for them. Just think, monkeys smart enough to serve us in ways they are incapable of now, but not smart enough to rise up against us. I can't wait until the day when I come home from work and there are monkeys mowing the lawn, cooking dinner, etc. God bless the US of A!
-
"If a problem has a single neck, it has a simple solution."
"In 1993 Dr. Jerry Hall said he had cloned human embryos by splitting them, although he said the clones were destroyed."
He destroyed the clones?? At what point in the lifecycle, I wonder. It seems to me this would have been a huge deal-even if the clones weren't born yet. The pro-lifers would have had a cow. So how come I've never heard of it? They mentioned it so casually here.
Lisa
www.grrl.org
There are several steps to go before this technology can be truly useful
Here is what I would do if I were in charge of the program :
This only provides the raw material though - sort of like a hard disk factory that pumps out 20 GB drives at a rate of 100 per hour.
What we need to research is the ability to create clones that retain a pre-programmed memory. This way, we can run off a batch of clones that make up a ship's crew - Commander, Engineer, Navigator, Comms Officer, etc. The crew would have a useful lifespan, for operating the ship whilst the next batch of clones was growing in the tank.
On graduation day, when the next batch of clones matures to age 21, and the generation following them are confirmed to have passed their initial tests, the older redundant crew perform 'The Graduation Ceremony' :
This effectively solves the very-long-space-flight problem.
Animals fall into two broad classes, deuterostomes and protostomes. For protostomes, the mouth forms before the anus. Starfish, jellyfish and insects and protostomes. In deuterostome development, the anus forms first. Vertebrates are among the deuterostomes. The early cleavage of protostomes is spiral. For deuterostomes, it is radial.
If one removes cells from a protostome blastula after the first few divisions, a deformed, partial organism will develop. Cell differentiation starts early. Deuterostomes differentiate later. An animal can develop normally after removing a few cells from a blastula even after the first few divisions.
Once cells begin differentiating, it is hard to clone them. Dolly was such a feat because the managed to reset that cell differentiation clock removing the DNA from a zygote, putting in the parent's DNA and doing some chemical magic.
This feat was accomplished with a mouse a long time ago. I saw it on Nova. Those researchers also fused two separate, very tiny embryos. One embryo was from a line of white mice; the other from a line of black mice. They got a mouse with patches of both colors.
Splitting a tiny embryo to make several embryos is an accomplishment. The work is difficult and delicate. Even though cell differentiation begins later in deuterostomes, I imagine it is still challenging to get the cells to survive and then to grow normally.
Cloning usually means making a genetically identical copy. It comes from the Greek word for twig in reference to the horticultural practice of cutting and grafting small twigs to make clones. Most pecan trees in the USA actually have the roots of another species. Pecan trees do not have sturdy roots. Grafting them onto strong roots solves that problem. These scientists, however, did not make copies of an adult. They cannibalized an embryo. Cloning is still good enough, I think.