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.

Comments

Still a significant achievement

[jabber]

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.