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Italian, U.S. Scientists Unveil Human Cloning Efforts
Lepruhkawn writes: "As described in this
Yahoo article , scientists say they plan to clone members of infertile couples. I imagine that it's not so much success that people are concerned about as the failed attempts. Alien: Resurrection anyone?"
You could stick it in a cage, take pictures and open up a pay-per website.
What I really want, though, is for science to come up with a method to take a sperm cell and grow it until it becomes large enough to keep as a pet. What a great thrill it would be to take a sperm out for a walk. Of course, it would suck if it ran away. You'd be walking around shouting out "Here Spermy, Spermy, Spermy" and then listening for squishing noises. Then there's the risk of the sperm falling into the ocean and impregnating a whale, creating a master race of whomans. Still, though, giant sperm on a leash is worth it all.
I've been on both Slashdot since we thought people with UIDS above 1000 were newcomers, I've been on the Well even longer, and I have never thought Slashdot was as polite or well-moderated as the Well.
And FYI, Rob Malda couldn't spell then either, and we *liked* him that way, dammit!
- Robin 'roblimo' Miller
"happily not correcting CmdrTaco's
spelling since Slashdot started."
I have to admit that I don't quite understand the ethical hysteria that has surrounded the issue of human cloning. It's not as if "cloning" will produce an exact replica of a person, right down to the last sub-atomic particle. All that cloning would do is produce a being that is genetically identical to the being that it was cloned from.
;)
so does this mean that the world will finally have satan and sadam as gay lovers? i knew the south park movie was an omen....
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
Biotech is Godzilla
Further, the argument that no-one is more important, more useful, or otherwise better than anyone else is the cry of those that are, themselves, of no importance, use to Society, etc.
One effect that I predict is that (since this is likely to be expensive), it will be limited to those who have in some way been successful and have some wealth or income. This will then pretty much guarantee that resources will be available to the resulting child to adulthood and also that it will be limited to those that have in some way already contributed to Society.
Oh yeah. And HUMAN CLONING is *so easy*.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Previous poster said that adoption was hard. As if that was a justification for the ethical nightmares of human cloning (which btw isn't particularly easy either, even if it were legal).
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
What if he needs a heart?
-josh
Actually, the DNA endcaps are called telomers. "Telomerase" is some substance that regenerates it.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Most all of the various non-DNA prints that are in use today are determined developmentally, not by the DNA. In other words, a set of identical twins has different fingerprints, retina prints, and so on. 50 cloned people will also have different prints.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
If anything, it's a sign that whatever's being done ought not to be done.
So I take it you spend a lot of time staring into the sun?
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
This is how it starts. First they say it's just some harmless cloning. Then soon their are some Jedi that get cloned and all of a sudden you have a full blown clone wars on your hands. Don't these scientist realize what road they are taking us on.
That's the same type of argument that can be used to show the ethical problem with manufacturing crowbars. Someone might use the crowbar to burglarize, or they might hit someone over the head with it.
Just about anything can be abused in some way. That doesn't mean that everything comes with an "ethical problem."
BTW, If your hypothetical rich person imprisons or kills the clone or otherwise helps himself to the needed organ without the clone's consent, then he's breaking laws that already exist.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It seems that POKEY was right about those Italians all along.
tried to adopt. (I agree with this previous poster.) I work with a guy who (he and his wife) has tried 3 different times to adopt since they are unable to conceive on their own. He's one of the nicest guys you could meet and they would make great parents.
o me. Instead it's as political as everything else.
1st time: birth mother changed her mind at the last minute.
2nd time: it was an interstate operation and some beaurocrat found a blank on a form they forgot to sign (there were about 30 to sign and they'd already signed twice on the page.). This was after they had had the kid for a week! (you never saw a grown man cry like that)
3rd time: the biological grandparents wanted the kid and had decided this after my friend and his wife had put in lots of time and money.
My friend went through his entire life savings doing this shit and look what it got him. My apologies for cussing but some of you idiots only seem to listen if there is profanity involved. FUCKING MORONS! pull your heads out of your asses and SHUT THE HELL UP if you've never been through the adoption process. It's not as simple as here's-a-loving-family-who-will-give-you-a-good-h
``We have a great deal of knowledge. We can grade embryos, we can do genetic screening, we can do quality control,'' Zavos said.
It sounds to me like they're trying to make the precept of the movie 'Gattica' reality. You filter out the bad genes, keep the 'good' ones and voila! Super-Baby(tm)!
I, for one, do not want to go through a DNA-checking machine when I enter work in the morning. Swiping my badge through the door locks is bad enough.
der dee der.
Funny you should harp on CmdrTaco's grammatical mistakes (bad as they are) when you don't realise that pluralising with an apostrophe is never correct.
--
You're a suburbanite.
Having just undergone a surrogacy procedure, I can shed some light on this. Embryos are graded on their ability to grow and divide. In an introvito fertilization (IVF) procedure, a 'raw' egg is withdrawn from the female donor and combined in a laboratory with the sperm of the male donor. Fertilization takes place and the resulting embryo is permitted to divide several times. However, not all embryos are created equal. Some of them divide, some of them divide faster, and some fail to divide at all. Embryos that divide faster are preferred over those that divide at slower rates. Besides, in cloning situations, the genetic makeup of the cloned embryo would be identical to that of the genetic donor. Furthermore, with very few exceptions, we don't really know which genes cause specific diseases, so I don't think we need to worry too much about perfect babies. Give it a couple of years, though! nebulo
If you clone an infertile parent, don't you end up with someone infertile? Seems a bit depressing.
Someone please mod up the comments pointing out the technical flaws (telomeres, not telemorases; more "complex" genome; etc) and mod down the "technical issues of 'human cloning'" post.
I come here hoping to read intelligent comments by knowledgable folks. The last thing we need is some blow-hard, claiming credentials he obviously doesn't have, getting modded up to 5! For goodness sake, my degree is in Physics/Mathematics, no biology since high school, and even I know the difference between telomeres and telomerase, and that human genomes are no more complex than other higher vertebrates!
If you have something to say, by all means say it, but don't claim to be an expert when you don't know a telomere from your ass!
Bobby
You might want to read the scifi book _Spares_ by Michael Marshall Smith. It's related to clones used as spare parts.
No, you arent the only one.
The line that got me is this one:
``We have a great deal of knowledge. We can grade embryos, we can do genetic screening, we can do quality control,'' Zavos said.
Grading? Screening? Quality Control? All imply an imperfect creation process. And, on what criteria do we screen? or grade? What passes? No artheritis genes? no alergies? are we just looking for 12 toes? how about weight? we only want the big babies (new studies claim big babies smarter).
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
The reference to "the American attitude" typifies the trivialization of Hollywood. Hollywood is an extremely ethical issue, "one which readers of slashdot probably have some intelligent opinions [sic]."
I remember when Hollywood was like entertainment, a polite, well-moderated haven in amongst the tabloid junk and filth. Now it's all about Slashdot, which is a shame.
Honk if you know the difference
between parody and satire.
The genie is out of the bottle.
It's late and I can't easily form cogent arguments.
Fuck religious/moral screwballs and grow my evil twin!
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Ye non-believers can skip this one.
Assuming they could, as dr. D pointed out, make it past the problems of knowing, well very little, about developmental biology (a fetus can't sign a waiver to draw blood for study... research irb's would just laugh at the thought), would this thing get a soul? Is this a property of a body given at birth or something assigned at conception?
Any of you (prolly one) theologists out there please give a serious response. I'm really interested in this.
What? wtf does that have to do with anything?
As if that was a justification for the ethical nightmares of human cloning
Well seeing that I am the previous poster, I feel I am an expert on my comment, and that is not what I was trying to say at all. What I was trying to say was that the original poster in this thread was using unjustified and ridiculous facts. I wasn't trying to justify human cloning, just saying that the original poster in the thread's was doing his best Al Gore impersonation.
Others have pointed out the flaws in your argument, but I think that even your data is flawed. I have actually heard that it is REALLY hard to adopt a child. I know of a fairly wealthy couple who had to travel to Russia to find one. Do you have any support for your claim of "millions of children waiting to be adobted," because the number seems extremely inflated.
Your "arguments" are full of ad hominem attacks ... just in case you didn't notice it before.
I'm not nearly old enough to be a hippie, I'm not a poet, there is reality between the extremes of "everyone is living out some kind of complex scenario" and "it's all as simple as this," and yes I have interacted with a large number of human beings in the various places in which I've lived.
I never said that everybody was great, only that "they" (the particular "type" of people you were describing) aren't all as simple and cruel as you would portray them.
But what do I know, now I'm just a "fucking hippie." So stop wasting your time with dumb fucks like me and go give the good news to all of the neurologists out there that you've discovered the underlying principles of human thought and behavior. What a brilliant and observant person you are.
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
It's truthful only in that it shows how stupid, small-minded, and insensitive some people are. It does nothing to prove that orphans are vile human beings or that their parents were the scum of the Earth. There's an assumed superiority here that harkens back to "we don't let them in our schools because those filthy blacks would do nothing but taint our godly white kids." That is to say that the real underlying motive is dehumanization. All of this ridiculous vile talk only serves to strip a human being of his or her title as "human being" and (in the mind of the speaker) justifies any equally awful behavior toward the person(s). In any case, the poster's remark describing the sort of children who are up for adoption is NOT truthful ... the life of any human being is never as simple as that.
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
Gosh you've got it all pinned down right there. As if there can be any case that's actually as simple as that. You will, of course, remember that the next time you do something stupid ... it will encapsulate *you* for the rest of your life. That is, if you trip and fall tomorrow ... your children will be stupid monkeys incapable of standing on their own two legs. As for the "crap shoot" scenario ... even Einsteins come out of "sloppy trailer-park whores" (as if that label actually embodies ANY single human being.)
What mistakes did your ancestors make?
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
Well said. The issue of cloning was discussed in my Cell Bio class back when that old physicist guy said he would do it 2 years ago. The word that my professor used to describe him was "Quack", with a capitol Q. The technical details of doing the actual work in a lab currently require millions of dollars of equipment, a very well educated team of researchers, and at best you'll get one-in-a-thousand successful results each step of the way. The second you come out as a scientist saying you're cloning anything, you'd better have a prominent job title and a reputable school or company behind your name, and most importantly, be able to point to your own published results in a REPUTABLE journal. Otherwise you're asking for ridicule from your collegues, and you can kiss your biotech career goodbye.
Better yet two Katz's and two sets of his ever popular stories.
It's nice that they have finally decided to go public with the information. I suspect that infertile (and same-sex) couples have been beating down the doors of genetics researchers for such attempts since the Scottish sheep announcement. There has probably already been clandestine attempts and maybe even a success.
But it all has to start somewhere. I don't see how it's possible to go from knowing that cloning is possible straight to what I see as the goal of the research, which is to be able to clone specific organs or whole blood. I think that you have to start by building a few whole bodies, since that's the simplest thing to do. If we can do so under the moniker of 'helping childless couples', fine, as long as the research gets done.
I don't think anyone wants to be the last person to die from failing to get an organ transplant. This research is vitally important, it has to start somewhere.
Yes, I know that the world is overpopulated. Genetic research may provide solutions to that, too, better food, more efficiency, trees that grow up to be houses, who knows?
I know that someone will probably try to 'engineer' a nine foot tall basketball hero. But, really, who is going to be able to get away with such nonsense in the media circus/infopocalypse we have today? Everyone can find out anything they want to know about anyone they want to research. Do you think that no one is going to notice when two short people have gigantic athlete offspring?
This is the world we live in. Morality will adjust itself to the concept of cloning soon since it's pro-survival. Our concepts of ethics are based on the continuation of our society, and ultimately cloning will benefit humanity.
Frankly, that's not terribly exciting. You can stick luciferace, or just about anything you want into a primate or any other animal. (Even plants.... some genetic botanist made a glow in the dark tabacco plant on my campus [luciferace (glow gene) coupled to a promotor of xylem growth]).
There's really not much "genetic engineering" going on. It's primarily genetic addition, and furthermore, it's very heavy handed to say the least.
Don Armstrong -".naidnE elttiL etah I"
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Twins have similar, but different, fingerprints and retinal scans.
Search google on "twins fingerprints retinal" to retrieve numerous references.
It's nice to keep in mind that numerous individuals with identical DNA exist. Don't go off the deep end, dude. Like everything else that people get excited about, it is just an incremental change.
I don't know if any of you have read the book "Cyteen", but it goes into some of the issues mentioned in comments.
the idea of a set of 'twins' 30 years apart, and clones having seperate identities.
Poor little no puppy toe!
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?3357354385
Suppose a couple decides to have themselves cloned, and raise the clones as children. This could lead to some strange social consequences. What would happen if the children fell in love, and decided to start a family of their own? Secondly, if that were to happen, would the children be at all attracted to their parents?
.).
Next problem. We've got technology that can use biotechnology as a security measure, because (in theory, anyway) no two fingerprints/retina scans/voiceprints/etc. are the same. What would happen if we had 50 people with the same physical features? That would almost certainly kill this security technology because it would probably be ineffective against clones (perhaps not the voiceprints, but otherwise . .
Finally, and this is again in the security area, wouldn't clones be far more likely to guess your passwords?
I don't think the ethical issue arises until they have to decide whether or not to destroy one of their mistakes.
Yeah, it's serious. So is having sex. Birth defects, abortion, overpopulation...
The Roto-Rooter man if it got stuck.
Is it legal to kill a clone?
I mean, are you killing a human, or does the clone fit into the "cloned for meat/body parts" category?
bart
... welcome to Gattaca!
___________
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
The greatest strength of humanity is neither our Science, our Technology, or our Military. It is our diversity.
Why did we as a species survive the Black Death in Europe? How do we ensure the proliferation of the species in the face of so many unknowns:- new diseases, climatic variations, emergance of new rivals...? Simple - we diversify.
Having a very diverse pool makes a species resilliant. For individuals, it tends to suck, but for the species as a whole it's Nature's best way of ensuring that we survive in the face of unknown dangers. Give us diversity, and allow the species to adapt.
Many of the so-called genetic "disorders" that people complain of are theref or a very good reason. My strongest example is Sickle Cell Anaemia in Africa. The reason this fatal (recessive) genetic disorder has not been eliminated is because in it's inactive state it confers some resistance to Malaria
Bizarrely enough, the same thing seems to be true with culture. A diverse cultuure is a vibrant, thriving one. Culture dominated by one group becomes bland, grey, and less free.
I've always considered that the great joke of life is that diversity is our strength, and yet so many people seem to loathe it. "We don't like you new folks round here, with your foreign ways..." Someone up there really knew how to stitch us up :)
But broadly, I'm oppossed to Human Cloning because I see vast moral issues here, and because I feel that the process of duplicating an existing Human does not do anything to strengthen our culture. The potential for abuse horrifies me.
Yeah... Okay, I had a few too many beers in me to be constructing posts to Slashdot... and of course "Preview" seemed like a waste of time :)
Justin
I've wondered about cloning myself... if either my wife (I'm unmarried -- this is hypothetical) were ever sterile.
I think it would be inresting... to say the last. Personally I was born with some birth defects; I've always wondered what I would be without them -- they're cosmetic (as beat as we can tell)... but I've wondered what I would be like _without_ those.
Aside from that.. I'm an irregular person.. my parents were greatly confused by me when I was growing up for reasons I won't go into -- I'm also of considerably above average intelligence.
Given my genetic makeup... and the possibly of being raised by a person who knew _exactly_ how your mind operated would be rather intresting.
To some extent I see it as being able to go back in time and to teach yourself things you know now ahead of time -- and speed up your development. Which is perhaps what parents do now; but with it being YOU that you're teaching it brings thing to a whole new level.
It's interesting.. perhaps completely unethical and wrong.. but an interesting thought. The funny part I've often wondered about is this: Say I clonsed myself for the first child.. and my wife for the second. Logically the two children would also be good mates for eachother (assuming things like this are genetic) and it would be naturual for the "children" to couple together late in life. Very freaking weird thought there...
Justin Buist
Alien Resurrection? Maybe Gattica or something, but Alien 4 was just plain silly...
In any case, if couples are infertile, am I the only one who thinks adoption is a better alternative to cloning? Yes, there's the vanity of having a child who will more likely than not resemble one of the parents, and yes, there is the biological imperative of passing on your genes, but dammit, them's a lot of babies out there without parents...
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
appear to be saying that if you clone an infertile couple, you'll get an infertile child. isn't the point of selecting the genes of the clone to prevent 'defects' like that?
blahblahblah, i know selecting the genes you want goes against nature and natural selection and all that good stuff, but i think saying that 'the clone of an infertile couple will be infertile' is unreasonable... right?
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
This is weird. I assume that the fertilized egg would be implanted in the mother-to-be's womb for gestation. Oooh that gets strange. In a matter of speaking, you give birth to either yourself, or your husband.
Inquiring mind to CloneKid: So, who's your Mom?
CloneKid: I am!
Har!
Did these people happen to think about this? Cripes I think I would be too wierded out for words. I can understand growing a clone for aftermarket parts, so to speak. But not growing a little you so you can have kids. Adopt. It's much better psychologically. Think of the little rug rat. What's it going to do to the little tikes noodle when mum or pop is its identical twin as well?
This is too much for me.
Derek
..but cloning of people who have been removed from the gene pool via "Natural Selection" is.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
Just wait until you need a new liver or heart transplant, then you'll be wishing they could just clone you a new one. One of the benefits of cloning is making replacements parts, not entire humans.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Yup. Assuming the father was prediposed to be attracted to the mother, so with the "son" = Father, II, be so disposed. Same is true for the
mother, she'll be just as attracted to her "son" as she was to his replica 20 years before.
What if there are a son and daughter, they'll fall in love with each other and with their mother and father!!
there are too many ppl in the world already, seems strange not to adopt someone who is wanting parents and instead go thru the expense of cloning or IVF or whatever
The sooner they clone someone, the sooner everyone can shut up and stop bitching about it
/me waits to be modded down by all the braindead slashbots.
You can't stop sciance.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Cloning is a social liberty, If I want a clone, It is within my own personal freedom to do about the process of obtaining one.
To say otherwise is a encroachment on MY personal freedoms, and is simply another case of someone trying to legislate morality.
www.lp.org/quiz
From the article: scientists say they plan to clone members of infertile couples.
Great. All we need is more diks in America.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
How is this a "Troll"?
Unless your reading this and they've sorted it out. In which case,
I guess this is "Redundant".
Brown
It is plainly obvious that this is against the natural and harmonic flow of the universe. It's f'n ridiculous. ... ANY cloning. We are NOT God. Not even close.
ONE cockup now can DESTROY the entire gene pool. Genetic problems don't necessarily arise in the current generation. They can take MANY generations to surface. And what then?
Fucking IDIOTS.
There should be some SERIOUS punishment for individuals engaging in human cloning, and come to think of it
Idiots! You'll destroy us ALL!
>> You can't stop sciance.
> Nope, but you can spell it properly...
> now I KNOW this will get modded down...
I would have modded it up (as funny), were it not for your "prediction" about being modded down.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
ouch.
Cloning is like having an identical twin who is much younger and has a different birthday.. I think it's kind of amusing... Anyhow, if a person is cloned, the clone and the _original_ only share common DNA, but the environmental differences allow a completely different person to exist.. They will have different experiences, health, physique, etc. I bet psychologists would have a field day if they could study two people with the same genetics and different experiences (nature vs. nurture). Another issue to consider is, if people do have souls, can a cloned, engineered, etc. person have a soul? I don't see why not. But then, thinking about such issues forces people to think about stuff they'd rather not.. Maybe people feel that if a belief is questioned, they might find out they are wrong and can't handle the reality. However, questioning is good, because I don't want to believe in lies... ragnar
As Coluche said: "I don't get it, even though homesexuals can't reproduce, there are more of them everyday !"
:)
and evolution will primarily act in ways that will make us more attractive
In countries like Canada and the US, it is as likely to happen that evolution selects on absent-mindedness -- "oops, forgot to take the pill/carry a condom/get my birth-control injection/..."
In Canada, we're not even breeding fast enough to maintain our population (it is growing, largely because of immigration)
A human clone ... would presumably be soulless....
It is reasonable to assume that a cloned human would be the theological equivalent of a cat...
It would? It Is??? You seem so certain. And *so* fucked up:
So what would they say? What would they do? Would they be capable of moral or ethical behavior, or would they operate on pure instinct as the animal kingdom does?
Where did you get your theological philosophy? Frankenstein? Do you think that without a soul, you would be reduced to grunting and pointing? That you would go on a mad spree of rape and pillage?
I don't even know where to start with this argument. On the one hand, it looks like the most sophisticated troll I have ever seen, but it's just too well-punctuated to be a troll. Here are some random objections to your apparent position on ensoulment:
1. Why do you presume that a divine being would withold a soul from a human being created in a non-traditional fashion? If that were the case, then there must already be hundreds or thousands of people running around who were made in test-tubes. Why don't you study them to see how they act, or whether they operate on pure instinct? It appears that you presume that ensoulment happens when a sperm and an egg are united. (I refer you to the esteemed British philosopher M. Python for a further treatise on this theory.) While this is self-consistent, you must consider that huge proportions of such unions do not result in a live birth. What happens to the souls?
2. Why do you tar cloned humans with the epithet "man-made", but not humans who are created via the traditional means? The process is almost entirely identical over the long run, the only difference is the way the zygote is created. Surely, all humans are man-made! And yet God deigns to provide souls anyway.
3. Is your concept of God so small that you believe he would withold souls from these humans? Just because they weren't made by using a penis...
4. Why do you believe that animals operate "on pure instinct?" Was this something you were taught in church? All research on higher vertebrates suggests that their reasoning processes are actually quite complex. Whether you would define it as "moral or ethical behavior" depends on whether you define flipping off and screaming at someone who cuts you off on the highway as "moral or ethical behavior" instead of "pure instinct".
5. Why do you believe that animals do not also have souls? Just becuase you dissected a cat in high school biology lab and didn't find one there?
6. Theological experiment? How do you propose to construct an experiment with no measurements that can be objectively verified, or no hypothesis which can be falsified? There's no experiment possible here, unless you can find a way to reliably demonstrate the presence or absence of a soul -- which would really shake western theology up but good.
-- end rant ---
cje, please, please, please. For your own good, and for the good of the rest of humanity, try to take some philosophy and/or theology classes there at university.
The main argument in the article is that adoption is generally used to increase the chances of your species' survival. However, this argument doesn't seem valid when you apply it to a species that's at the top of the food chain, decimates the Earth, creates great literature, produces crappy Hollywood movies and great cyberpunk novels, etc..
Some humans are just self-centered and don't take into consideration that somewhere on this planet, there's a child waiting to be rescued.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
No, it is a valid arguement. The idea is, if the couple can't have kids the old fashioned way, there are a number of options available.
What's central to the arguement made is that if you want to have a child (but can't biologically produce one) you can adopt one of the many children who need parents, or you can spend loads of money on an unproven, possibly offensive technology, to pass on a few genes. I have to agree with the root poster of this thread. Why don't some people realize THEY AREN'T IMPORTANT! People seem to be oblivious to the fact that they get the right to utilize another of their 70-some years here is just a miracle consider all the things that can go wrong.
If I could think of something pithy to say, I'd put it here. No really.
I just don't see growing a person solely for the purpose of ripping their lungs, heart and liver out of them as being very moral.
Hence, this does raise ethical questions.
You may not agree with my particular comments about the questions. But they are still there.
To email, do the obvious.
Said clone is raised uneducated. But given the best physical surroundings, good nutrition, medical care, and encouraged to keep physically fit. But out of the way, in some small country, on a well guarded estate.
Then in 20 years or so, the rich old person needs a kidney. Or a lung. Perhaps some bone marrow. How about a liver or heart?
Hmmm... I wonder where they'd find organs with no risk of rejection?
No ethical problem?
To email, do the obvious.
Have you seen the movie? Do you know the scene which is being referred to? It was the most horrifying scene in the movie, where we see the failed attempts to make the Wynona Rider character, which are grotesque deformed hers. Yeah it was a sensational hollywood movie blah blah blah, but that shows an example of the fears people may have about such 'advancements'.
I for one wish science would get its head out of its ass on this issue and forget about it. Cloning of a full human is just not needed and opens more doors than should ever be. I can see the use for organ cloning etc, but why living humans? Can anyone think of a legit purpose? And 'so that rich impotents can have kids' is not a legit purpose IMO.
// It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis
I could use a few clones to debug my code while I'm at the beach.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Dinner time wouldn't be as easy for the young child:
"Eat your broccoli!"
"I don't like it!"
"I know you like it because I do, now eat it!"
Hey, did anyone else notice?
A clone isn't a combination of DNA from the parents. It's a copy of one of the parent's DNA.
So, whoever's contributing the DNA will be the sole "parent". And I put that word in quotes because it won't quite be like being a parent, either. It'll be more like you're a much older identical twin of someone who came out of your wife (or yourself, as the case may be.)
This ought to give the geneologists of the world a lot more headaches than they already have...
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Yeah, it'd be great...
Right about until the time the company that augmented you decides to enforce its patents and claims to own you because you incorporate proprietary DNA. They claim you're their IP and that they can do with you whatever you want.
Oh, also, while they were in there rewriting your genetic code, they added a few things that they didn't bother to tell your parents about. There's now sections of your DNA which they can use to track you wherever you go, and what's more, they have a "self-destruct" sequence installed into your DNA, which gives you a rapid-onset form of cancer that will kill you within 24 hours, "just in case". No civil disobedience for you!
Meanwhile, your unaugmented older brother who was born before this technology was perfected can't get any kind of reasonably-priced health coverage because of a genetic predisposition to whatever disease.
It'll be as close to Utopia as we can get on this planet. I can't wait.
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Well, that's just the sort of thing I was trying to stir up by airing my concerns. Of course how technology may be utilized can be governed by laws. But then, of course, laws can always be circumvented and ignored. There was a great, big, (apparently only nearly) universal "No!" on human cloning just last year. Nothing's officially changed, but here we have people working on it anyway. The laws aren't as failsafe as you make it seem.
At any rate, if people aren't aware of the possible abuses that I brought up, they aren't going to push to legislate against those abuses, either, are they?
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I hardly think that failed attempts at cloning a human will result in horrible genetic mutants. Current cloning methods basically take all the genetic data out of a cell and drop it into another. (actually, I believe that in all actuality, they take the entire nucleus out of a cell and put it into a cell which has already had its nucleus removed) The risk of genetic mutation from this is effectively nil. If the genetic data itself is moved, then it's possible that a chromosome may have been left behind, but if this is the case, the fetus will not develop and will be a miscarriage. Even if you assume that a genetic defect occurs, the odds that it will occur in a place where it will either 1) allow the fetus to continue developing or 2) have an effect on the resulting person is extremely close to nil.
Wasn't when they cloned dolly, they ran into genome aging bug? It has something do to with,
when a cell replicates, DNA is shortened, in
non crucial part, and once it is short too much cell does not replicate, sort of recursion control. One thing copying DNA another is actually modifying it.
just my 3c (inflation man!)
why would god refuse to imbue a clone with a soul? clones start with a human egg, and according to the catholics, the egg already contains a soul. as to the ethical question, in a world with limited resources, and rampant overpopulation, I find fertility clinics, human cloning, artificial insemination, envitro fertilization and all such pursuits as it pertains to humans, unconscionable. the question is not whether man is playing god, but whether man is destroying the planet, and letting thousands starve, so that one person can achieve a form of self aggrandized immortality.
Years ago we did 'test tube babies'. Now we are doing cloning. Is it something that is really wrong?
Does this mean the US govt is going to clone people for war?
In case you are wondering...no I am not serious or from Sirius.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
evolutionary success is dependent on the ability to breed...
All that cloning would do is produce a being that is genetically identical to the being that it was cloned from.
We see on Slashdot many articles about DNA testing and collection, for crime solving or crime prevention. Clones that are genetically identical may well be framed for crimes or whatever.
Then you have the ethics of the rights of a clone. Does a clone have rights? Can a clone be purchased? Can you buy a made-to-order baby clone? Will Disneyland make mutant Mickey Mouse clones to work there? Will there be armies of clones used as disposable troops?
Then there's the biology, if cloning shortens life spans, do we have the right to clone? it's a life that wouldn't have existed before, so maybe we do have the right to create a short one? would clones have identical fingerprints? if a clone breeds with another clone, will mutations occur?
There's a lot of ethical issues when it comes to clones.
In all likelihood, your friend will regret it later. 20 is far too young to be making serious irreversible decisions (and getting tatoos and trying LSD don't count). I just hope when she falls in love with someone she would like to have a kid with, science can help her.
By your logic, that human being is just going to be dead in 125 years anyway. So fuck 'em.
So what happens as the kids grow up?
1). This will start the nature vs nurture crowd going again - here you have someone growing up who is genetically identical to someone 30 years older - but in a very different environment. "parents [...] expect their kids to be just like them. [...] Kids need their own identity." (From previous post). This expectation will be greatly increased if the child actaully is just like them. So what do you think the effect's going to be if the child doesn't develop the same way?
2. How are the parents going to decide who's going to be cloned? Maybe they'll clone both of them, have a matched pair - this is a logical solution. So, what if you have a situation where both parents were cloned? Would the son and daughter would grow up feeling they were matched for each other... would they marry? How would they feel about having other boy/girlfriends?
3. Just because the parent didn't have a particular disease / condition doesn't mean the child won't. Some disorders are genetically encoded as 'likelihoods' - ie, the set of genes might have a 25% chance of having a heart disease, etc. (Seen Gattaca? That touched on this.) Also, a lot of problems are caused by external (non-genetic) causes, such as accidents and diseases (just because dad didn't get disease x doesn't mean jr won't). How would you, as a parent, feel if your baby clone was dropped on his/her head and developed severe brain damage?
4. As the child, how would you feel knowing you were just like your dad / mum? A lot of people see defects in their parents and think, "I hope I won't be like that'. So how would the child feel if he/she was actually just like their parent?
5. And I can see a lot of children being ostracised because of this. Just imagine:
From the article:
its very easy to be a critic. its more difficult to say something relevant to the point.
... It's unscientific
...
the point here is to DISCUSS -- IT IS A DISCUSSION FORUM not a research paper. Can you add anything useful besides pointing out gramatical errors in the original post?
>You've tried?
you're trolling
>
Clearly spoken by the paragon of logic. If you believe the statement is false, I challenge you to provide even marginally supportive evidence that anyone is close to human cloning.
>Since the egg is a simple repository for the nucleus
as you are so quick to point out -- not proven
>they don't all have to be from one woman
huh? non sequitur. The article is a about an infertile _couple_ attempting to clone a child.
on complexity, your statement is true, as is mine, what was your point?
>This has not been proven
DUH! none of this has been proven. you're trolling again.
as for my research -- given the overall hostile nature of most of the responses I've seen-- I wouldn't want any of you to know. It's not cloning or even genetics, and I never purported it to be.
Cloning is reproduction without sex. From an evolutionary perspective this is a bad idea. You need sex to generate the variability and diversity that make populations adpatable and versatile. In nature, reproduction without sex is called parthenogenenis. There are a few insects, fish and reptiles that can perform this trick but as you can see all around you, this is an idea that hasn't quite caught on with the rest of the planet. Messy are it may seem to some, the advantages of sexual reproduction are just overwhelming compared to asexual reproduction, which is what cloning is. While I don't have any objections to the use of cloning in agriculture, I think the we should stop screwing around with the future of the human species.
How about I clone a good 1000 midgets and make them act out the civil war? And then sell tickets to the show which would be over a period of 3 months at $10 a day for 90 days and at about 800 people attending I would make $720000 which isn't too bad of a deal. And no one would care if the midgets kill each other because they all look the same so it doesn't matter. And you could sell the leftovers as slaves to the people who attend.
Smev
Didn't hitler try this?
Smev
Well if you can clone people, whats stopping the richer people from making clones for backup body parts. Like a heart that fits perfectly etc. And if you clone someone then who owns them? If they were created by man and not god then would the creator have ownership? And would these clones have the same rights as real people?
Smev
Traditionally it goes: "Two wrongs don't make a right."
But now it can be: "One wrong and one right and you've got "WHHHHAAAAAAA!."
And there's always casual sex: "Two rights make an opps."
> Now, the REAL issue would be whether we have the right to play god.
I don't understand how you can segregate some natural actions as "god's" exclusive domain. I suppose the creation of new isotopes is also playing god. How can we (if we believed it was necessary) determine which activities fall within the definition of "playing human"?
It seems to me that the uproar about playing god is just people's fear about scientific innovation that they don't understand. This is not to say that I support human cloning necessarily, but it brings up many better 'REAL issues' than that.
We have many natural clones running around (identical twins)
I remember reading in Scientific American an article about telomeres, sequences of DNA at the end of chromosomes. (Under certain conditions,) the number of telomeres decreases each time a cell divides. The researchers in the article believe that this contributes to the aging process.
I don't know how many times the stem cells to be used have divided, but it will be interesting to see if cloned children end up with a shorter lifespan than their "parents".
1. The cell would be stimulated to divide and create an embryo equipped with all the specialty cells that make up a copy of the man.
Now does this means that only the main characteristics can be cloned and there is no 100% cloning as of now.
If so that would mean the clone would be very similar to the parent and not an exact copy. And therefore very much like a natural child who has great resemblance to the parent.
That would also imply that the cloned personality will be a different personality even though he may look the same, especially considering his socialization which is said to be the next major influence in formulating a persons personality.
2.Could cloning therefore render marriage unnecessary to propagate your family line?
Infact people may try to have pure races and pure familiesand avoid adultration.
That could also mean women may no longer need men in marriage for children or social security anymore, these being the 2 most accepted reasons for marriage. So feminist activism could rise.
3.You don't want to create a monster.
Would we still have black sheep in the family?
4. Therefore would that mean we still will have the same old society with all its good and bad quailties only now we can blame the docs and not family traditions.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
When we completly understand the manipulation of DNA to achieve desired effects- Sex will be obsolete. It will just be a source of pleasure. We do not need to worry about a few clones preserving undesired characteristics now- people will eventually have the ability to choose desired characteristics such as intelligence and physical perfection in their offspring. The people who do not choose to plan the traits of their offspring will be left behind on the evolutionary ladder- l8r fundamentalists and all fearful religious/prideful types!!
Our children will be the product of our desire, not of the physical limitations we live by now. A new improved human is on the horizon. This is just evolution going doubletime... sweet.
L8r.
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
I have thought a lot about the question of eithics of cloning humans. I guess that cloning in itself is neither ethical nor unethical. However, I have serious concerns for the type fo genetic control that this sort of thing could create. I just hope that we are ready because for better or worse, someone will do it.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
People have always done things simply to test their ability-- hey, look at open source! How many of program things because we can. It is no different really, except in the amount of power ti can gice to the wrong hands.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Why does conception matter? Is it some kind of religious thing?
We already have extraordinarily similar identical twins running around, so two genetically identical people running around of different ages shouldn't be such a shocker.
Is it stupid and sick that I look a hell of a lot like my dad and I have a lot of his traits? It doesn't bother me, I like my dad. I wouldn't mind being more like him in the least.
What's stupid and sick is fearing any concept that's new and different for no other reason than it's new and differenct.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
So freedom to procreate with willing participant(s), in your mind, implies freedom to enslave and torture people? Are you retarded? Do you really see one as the logical extension of the other?
Wait, I've got one: You're free to express an opinion against the government without government intervention, therefore you're allowed to shoot cops.
Oh, another one: You're free to choose not to eat meat, therefore you're allowed to blow up a McDonalds
This is pretty fun; soon, I shall come across the "logical" implication that makes me Master of the Universe. HE-MAN!
Creating a new one now for nothing? An entry cost of 100 bucks would be a pretty good idea (maybe we can install interac based chastity belts?) In any case, people have miscarriages and malformed babies now, but we don't outlaw procreation.
Cloning is nothing more than another method for a person to contribute cells to the development of a new human being. The "grey area" (rich people cloning for organs) doesn't even enter into it; a clone is a person, and would have to be treated the same as any other person.
By all means, if someone comes to your house and starts cloning in your living room, you can say "Get out of here with all that there cloning! And stop chopping up that cow!"
By the same token, though, nothing gives you the right to come into my house and knock over the test tube where mini-me slowly gestates. What business is it of yours if someone decides to take some of their own cells and create a new human being? What right do you actually have (besides some "divine" right you've inherited from a 2000 year old book of fables) to decide how those cells go from being me to being something else?
If you're searching for the answer, it's none. Wasn't that fun?
So if everyone is unimportant (and i wholly agree here.. the future of any one person, group of persons, or our entire species matters not a whit in the eyes of the universe), what makes these needy children so deserving of adpotion? Their lives are just as unimportant as the bloodlines of the people whom you seem to disdain so heartily.
I don't intend to have children or to adopt children and neither does my girlfriend. We agree we'd not make good parents and realize there are enough people out there churning out babies by the dozen that our contribution is not necessary to perpetuate the species.. but if that's what you want to do, do it.
Adoption carries all sorts of issues with it. If the child is young enough not to know what's going on, he'll find out eventually, and how difficult a situation is That to deal with? Or if the kid is old enough to know he's being adopted you have to deal with him knowing that no matter how many bycicles you buy him, you're Not his birth parents.. and while that may not technically make a difference it can emotionally in a familial situation. Meeting a kid at an aoption agency and seeing how he behaves when he's doing his damndest to get himself a family is one thing, but what happens if you wind up with a kid you really just don't like? By the time you get them it's too late to forcibly imprint a warped version of your own personality on them..
Now there are drawbacks to live birth too.. the pain etc. for the woman being the primary one, not to mention the possibility of birth defects, and you can still end up having a kid that just refuses to take that personality imprinting and insists on having a mind of their own..
But really, what difference does it make? You said yourself that we're all really very unimportant. If I wanted to get myself cloned instead of adopting, so what? You can say the kid i didn't adopt might've grown up to be a great person, an inventor or an artist or a world leader or whatever, but the same can be said about the kid i didn't have the other way. In the end it's all just a matter of choice, and whether you adopt or clone or have fertility treatments won't make proxima centauri burn out one century sooner (well, okay.. there are certain very remote chances it Could.. but it's really unlikely).
See Sig append. Append Sig, append. Good Sig.
clones wouldn't be your children because they weren't conceived and they are still another human being so thinking of them as a smaller self and a child is stupid and sick.
Industrialized nations have a negative population growth or very low growth rate. The problem is the uneducated third world. Statistics show that the more educated a country's female population the lower the birth rate. These techniques would only be used in the industrialized nations where birthrates are dropping.
Travis
"Flesh does what flesh is told" Morden after Sheridan nuked Z'ha'dum
Instinct is something we have to put up with because it was hardwired into us. It's not a reason for doing anything. If anything, it's a sign that whatever's being done ought not to be done.
Read the rest of this comment...
>The sooner they clone someone, the sooner >everyone can shut up and stop bitching about it
>
>You can't stop sciance.
Nope, but you can spell it properly...
now I KNOW this will get modded down...
________________________________
________________________________
"I'm the King of the Trolls!"
please please please can I have 5 clones of Jenna Jamison please please please please
Through the perception of illusion, we experience reality.
No mention there what the matter with that poor kid was, though. It could have been genetic engineering or clone research. It could have been any number of natural causes. Do we get any hints? ;)
I didn't pay for my operating system either
Human cloning's real ethical problem is the same as that of all of the other ridiculously expensive reproductive technologies that have been developed. We don't need more births, we need fewer. There are too many people being born already, regardless of whether they're cloned, grown in a test tube, or born to a sixty-year old woman. Spending millions of dollars to pull this kind of stunt is completely irresponsible.
But what's even worse is this: If you read the Yahoo article, this same guy also has a project to grow human sperm in mice.
Now that is disturbing. Ick.
just in case you hadn't noticed....
you know what i meant....
A whole range of conditions that used to result in short lifespans have now been overcome... Physically/mentally handicapped people can now have children almost as easily as anyone else (I'll let others debate the ethics of that)... Modern immigration patterns are spreading our gene pools across the planet - no more localization in the long run... And of course there's enough stupid men as there are stupid women, so there's a continual stream of stupid children (ok ok so maybe that one is a joke :)
Regardless, human evolution has been anything BUT natural for centuries now, it's only a matter of time before it pretty much comes to a stop. Unless we intervene and create races of super-beings of course (just clone me, we're well on our way! :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
well, and what happened last time a major cloning brakethrough took place?
-------------------------
The GUI Food Chain:
Somehow, this just seems to go against the basic rules of evolution: people who can't have kids don't.
Hmm, judging by my userID, I've been here at least two or so years longer than you have, and even I can't remember Slashdot being "a polite, well moderated haven." You sure it wasn't kuro5hin.org you were talking about?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Sure, by definition of wealth. But most people believe that the wealthy don't deserve better health care, better access to the legal system or more political influence, since these are basic human rights which apply to every person equally. So equalization at least in those areas is completely justified.
By the way, since you were talking about the miserable failures of communism, you may also want to investigate the embarassing recent failures of trying to introduce capitalism in Eastern Europe.
--
Your argument makes me wonder what people thought about the invention of the gun. Was there some wacko out there saying that because of the invention of the gun, everyone would own one, and we'd all kill each other off within a month?
Your argument only makes sense if you think that government isn't made up of PEOPLE. Laws exist, as do grassroots movements that affect change.
Perhaps we should just not do ANY medical research that could be beneficial - gosh, someone might misuse it!
Get a grip.
It depends on WHY the parent(s) was sterile in the first place. Plenty of people become sterile because of accidents or diseases.
Nevertheless, I'm a big believer in adoption.
But on the other hand, I think cloning _technology_ is a great thing - if they can make it possible to clone individual bodyparts, that would go a long way toward helping out people who need transplants. I'd certainly like a replacement organ to get rid of my Diabetes. *sigh*
As far as cloning someone who is genetically sterile - that's not necessarily a bad thing. What if Einstein had been sterile? Would that make cloned offspring of his a bad idea? No way! Something to think about...
Far out! That is so awesome. That's even better than Bart Simpson's idea of a half-man, half-monkey type creature. "God, schmod, I want my monkey-man!"
But think about it - what if we COULD change our DNA? I wouldn't mind getting rid of genetic diseases for good. I'm sure my entire family could do without having Diabetes, for one, and the history of cancer & heart disease isn't too pleasant, either, or the congenital heart problems and kidney problems that run in the other side of the family.
Equating fixing genetic diseases with creating Frankensteinian monsters is taking things to a major extreme. There _can_ be a happy medium, _assuming_ we can master the technology involved, which is, I'll admit, a pretty big assumption.
If they can just get rid of that Republican & Democrat DNA...*wishful thinking*
Yeah, and if they each have a clone of themselves, then when the little ones grow up, they can marry each other and continue it indefinitely!
To paraphrase Mr. Spock, "It's incest, Jim, but not as we know it."
Society will get _seriously_ fucked up, but I'm sure the ratings on Jerry Springer will skyrocket!
The problem I see with cloning is not that people wouldn't find it ethically bankrupt, it's that people are so bent on perfection that they will try to conceal ideas behind the notion of applying medicine. Right now we are all so comfortable with frivolous surgeries and manipulation of ourselves that the "should we?" question about cloning has really already been answered. Look at our entire philosophy on medicine: we believe in learning technology and applying it. When you really consider the kinds of medical procedures we have been practicing, it does not seem unthinkable that we have been playing God for some time.
The sad truth is that disease and disability are just nature's way of maintaining balance; they will not render us extinct, we will.
Called identical twins.
Maybe 50% of personality is genetic and other 50%
is life experiences. Identical twins will have
somewhat similar personalities from genetics and
being raised together.
I have no moral problem with cloning as long as they do it right which obviously takes some scientific experimentation to get to the point where it does work 99% of the time. No other way to become expert at a new technology. But for the couples I don't see why they bother. I'd just adopt. What you put in a kids head does at least as much to shape who they are as your genetics so why risk all kinds of medical problems in your child due to mistakes in the experimental cloning process? Let them perfect it on sheep first. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Think about it. The people likely to use cloning are those that cannot reproduce in the first place. Generally these people's genes die with them, taking with them whatever mutation lead to their infertility.
Now, cloning comes into the mix and allows these people to pass on their genes. The clone has a higher likelihood of being infertile as well (assuming the fertility problem was genetically related).
This is not neccesarily bad, but it brings with it the spectre of creating a large population of people who cannot reproduce normally - in essence a new species dependent on technology for their reproduction and entirely genetically isolated from the human population as a whole.
-josh
I can't believe how many times I've heard people refer to babies as a "little Jeffery" (where Jeffery is the father's name) or the same for the mother if it's a girl. Too often, parents buy into that idea and expect their kids to be just like them. They're at best disapointed when this doesn't happen.
Kids need their own identity.
Now you think that's bad when they have a mix of genes from both parents... Wait until you have a kid that is essentially a 30-year-younger identical twin of the parent. Ick.
You can't stop it. I mean, cloning *sterile* people? How are those clones going to reproduce if their "parents", or should I say "originals", are sterile, hence themselves as well? Unless they start modifying their genes, I don't see an end to it.
Well, they could clone some fully functional person too I guess, but it raises many serious ethical factors for which I don't see any chances of positive consensus in the forseeable future.
Fuck, those unfortunate parents could adopt one (ore more) of the millions of orphans the World unfortunately bears, it would do much more good to humanity than starting to play a game for which we don't know all the rules yet.
/RANT
max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
I don't have a link, but I distinctly remember that resolution being passed.
There has been some whining about human cloning in various documents from UN agencies such as UNESCO, but I think that the UN doesn't really have the power to make anything like this illegal.
In any case, how is this really different from any other artificial method of producing an embryo using genetic material from sperm banks, donated eggs, etc.? We have many natural clones running around (identical twins) anyway. How will a few artificial ones be materially different?
Of much greater concern is genetically modified humans. THAT is something very serious - and the time is coming. I recently saw an article describing the first genetically modified primate - a monkey with a special gene that produces a flourescent dye for use in research. Now THAT is scary.
Saying that you "see no ethical problems" is a different statement than "I don't quite understand". I will see if I can explain a couple of the issues so you will come to a greater understanding.
It's not as if "cloning" will produce an exact replica of a person, right down to the last sub-atomic particle. All that cloning would do is produce a being that is genetically identical to the being that it was cloned from.
Of course. I don't think the cloning issues have to do with the behaviors of the clone being the same as the behaviors of the cloned person.
In fact, if people want to see what a clone would be like, all they have to do is look at the human clones that we have all over the place: identical twins. These are people who, after they were conceived, split into two people. They are genetically identical.
So there are no issues about the genome being an issue.
The religious argument here is a non-issue.
That's a pretty strong statement to say. So you are discounting any issues that might have a basis other than in pure science?
Let me give you a couple issues that have to do with religion and society:
The first is one of the big ones. The process of cloning that has taken place so far in animals has been one that kills a lot of animals. Dolly was the only survivor of many sheep. The genetic material was inserted into many eggs, implanted into many sheep uterii, and many sheep started growing. Almost all of them died. The few of them who survived until birth died within the first few days.
That's the process that has currently been used. Many will say that there is work happening in other areas. All I can say is that that's the route that has worked so far. And no one has been able to reproduce the results that Dr. Wilmut produced.
So what we face today is the prospect of conceiving hundreds of embryos, only to have them spontaneously abort or die a couple days after birth. There isn't even a guarantee that one child will survive. Is this what we wish to do?
Since you bring God and the Soul into the picture, I want to specifically point out the life issue here. Many good people disagree on this point, but there are many in this society who believe that life begins at conception. Still others believe that life begins sometime after sustainability in the uterus. Others believe that life begins at birth. In every form of cloing that's been successful, more death happens at every stage of this new life, however you define it, than does successful life. Is this the way that we should bring a new child into the world - on the dead bodies of so many others?
You would be right in saying that this isn't a scientific issue, but it is a social, political, and religious one. And no less important at that.
Then I want you to consider the issue of the long-term effects. Dolly was produced with a genetic code that has very shortened telomeres, the ends of the nuclear code that protect it from disintegrating. (Paraphrasing greatly here.) Modern science simply does not yet know what this will do to an organism, sheep or human.
Should we bring children into the world when we have no idea whether they will even survive? When we don't even know of the rest of their life will be plagued with ailments of which we know nothing? I would think that, even if you disagree with the life issues above, you would agree that scientific prudence insists that we learn a lot more about this before we start applying it to our children.
In fact, here's an interesting quote:
Heading into theology:It is reasonable to assume that a cloned human would be the theological equivalent of a cat or an emu or other such animal. In other words, they are a living, sentient being, but because their origins are man-made instead of divine, they (by definition) cannot have a soul.
Why do you think that man-assisted conception would be any less "soulful" than a "natural" conception? With your argument, those children who were born through the process of Artificial Insemination or In Vitro Fertilization have no souls. This is obviously false.
I hope that the above has brought another viewpoint to light that you might not have considered. There are a lot of issues here to resolve before we plunge headlong into the practical problems of human cloning.
-Sean
And what, exactly, is the problem with this? Is it that this hypothetical, evil "rich person" has a viable donor in case he needs one? I suppose that this will cause the downfall of Western Civilization as we know. Oh, woe be to us that those who have worked hard and proven their worth have sophisticated medical procedures at their fingertips! Can the downfall of humankind be far behind? Lord, help us!
.. invented.
Rich-bashing is a hobby that has gone out of style. Certain politicians have tried to revive it in certain recent elections, but those politicians have failed. Wealthy people have become tired of apologizing for being wealthy. In case you were not aware of it, wealthiness is not a crime, nor is it something to be ashamed of. Wealthiness is the result of a life of hard work or innovative thought. Your invented ethical "dilemma" about a wealthy person being able to clone himself to harvest organs is exactly that
This is a fact of life: the wealthy will always have more at their disposal than the poor. That's the way things work. If you are espousing a system where the government forcibly equalizes everybody so that they conform to the lowest common denominator, then you are advocating socialism or, worse yet, communism, in which case you disqualify yourself from any and all civilized discourse. Pay attention to the news. The Berlin Wall has crumbled. These experiments have been miserable, embarassing failures.
Sorry for the rant, but the anti-wealthy hatred on Slashdot really bothers me.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I think the _real_ fear people have is the idea that the clone will have the same memories as the original, pretty much like what happens in "6th Day". This, coupled with the notion that a clone will have the same age as the original.
For this reason I believe that while opposing fanatics will always exist, most people will end up thinking there is no big deal about it, because their real fear had nothing to do with cloning in first place.
(8-DCS)
"it turns out human cloning is not possible right now. This is close to my area of research."
You've tried? Unless it's your area of research and you're a principal investigator, I don't know that you can make that statement. It's unscientific.
"The risks associated from harvesting that many eggs from one human would be high."
Since the egg is a simple repository for the nucleus, they don't all have to be from one woman.
"Turns out the success rates go dawn sharply as the genome gets more complex."
Relatively speaking, the genomes of all higher vertebrates are of the same complexity. Small changes rather than overall shifts in 'complexity' are responsible for what we observe as speciation from the general vertebrate body plan.
"Finally there is the telomerase issue..."
This has not been proven to correlate with decreased lifespan in the clones.
See John Varley's Steel Beach (and Golden Globe to a lesser extent) where the ability to genetically modify one's self is common place. People routinely switch sexes, attributes and entire body types, and in the context of the stories such changes are morally neutral, no more controversial than trends in fashionable clothing are today.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Timothy Leary used to say that one day reproduction would be asexual and that sex would be used for communication only. Of course, he did a lot of acid...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So which one do they clone? I can see this starting fights and breaking up mairages. Mabee they'll have two (a his & hers matched set.)
Or is there someway to artoficialy create genetic crossover from both parents?
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
> That your own genetics, in a sea of six billion other
> bags of dna, actually have any significance?
I'm not insensitive to the suffering that orphaned / fostered children have to go through, but looked at through a telescope, this argument works both ways. Your argument is full of logical flaws, basically. If we're all so worthless.. why bother with children? They lose their parents, toss 'em to the wolves. Hell.. why reproduce, period? We're all worthless!
Of course, that doesn't address the issue that clones are created and orphans are already here, which is a valid debate topic.. but your logical flaws weaken your argument. Those scientists, if they aren't adopting now, probably wouldn't adopt if you forced them to stop cloning. The two issues are exclusive to each other.
Now, the REAL issue would be whether we have the right to play god..
does not count. Good work much of it, but not literary speculative fiction like Alfred Bester, Samuel R. Delany, CT Cherryh, Julian May, and other geniuses of world building, characters, and realistic future speculation are my faves. -perdida
ummm...first of all I've never heard of "DragonsQuest", whatever that is. Secondly I, and many other people on slashdot, are quite familiar with the authors you cited; I think Alfred Bester was one of the best science fiction authors ever, and I enjoyed C.J. Cherryh's work (by the way, Cyteen wasn't the first time the azi were depicted; Serpent's Reach predates it by about 15 years). Slashdot is one of the few places I've found where intelligent science fiction is appreciated. Do a search on the older stuff link for science fiction, restricting it to book reviews; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. In addition to Bester's The Stars My Destination, reviews have been posted to A Canticle for Leibowitz (in my opinion the greatest science fiction novel of all time), The Chrysalids, and a lot of other works of literary sci-fi.
--
There is another reader of real science fiction in the house.
Slashdot doesn't really lack science fiction readers you know...
--
I hope they are going to do it with humans, since for some species, parthenogenesis is the normal way to reproduce.
But let's be honest. We always knew it: Sex is best.
-- Stanislav Shalunov
Unnecessary detail, anyone?
Much more thorough than the Yahoo article.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
The UN? Are we supposed to care what the UN thinks?
Oh oh! They better watch out! The UN might get mad! They might pass another resolution condemning them! Please, not that! Anything but the dreaded UN resolution!
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Such wisdom from someone so young.
This has gone too far, but it's just getting started. How long until changing your phenotype becomes a fashionable, and seasonal thing?
"My, aren't Mildred's antennae fashion-forward?"
"Yes. But her husband's goat legs are so retro. Was he born in the 90's or something?"
Face it. We are slaves three times over:
- slaves to our lifestyles(earn/spend social programming)
- slaves to our brains(ego/emotion firmware)
- slaves to our meat(DNA hard-wired instincts)
The big problem is, this is the shit that's going to make nuclear power and information technology look sick. And we're playing with it like it's fucking Lego.Who is going to take responsibility for the monsters? Nobody. When are we going to collectively grow up? Maybe never. Frankenstein was a self-obsessed ego maniac with no compassion for his creation. He was trying to show how far he could push his knowledge. He wanted to create life so he could become a god.
Life is not a toy. What is bio-tech?
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
According to the UN regulation passed a few years ago, human cloning is ILLEGAL on an international scale. I don't have a link, but I distinctly remember that resolution being passed.
So wehat's with this? Did they repeal the decision? Is it taking place in Yugoslavia? What are they doing?
# debian/rules
How can you simultaneously say people "just don't matter" and then tell them to "go make a difference in this world by adopting [a human]".
If humans don't matter in the grand scheme of things, why should they go adopt them?
"And like that
The reference to a sensational hollywood movie typifies the American attitude to everything.
Yeah, well stereo-typing is not much better than trivializing.
"And like that
If you clone an adult, at least you can be assured that the clone won't have any genetic childhood diseases that randomly might affect your offspring.
You'd get a lot of comments, saying, "You look just like your dad!"
In this world, we already have a high degree of acceptance for what *could* be termed genetically defective people. Why would a clone of someone with good genes really be that much of a shocker?
In the long run, we'll learn a lot about how to create genetically modified human beings without the societally unacceptable "mistakes". Who wouldn't want to give their children better health, longer life, more intelligence, and better looks?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Oh, please. The ethical problem there isn't the cloning, it's harvesting a living human being for organs, which is the same whther the harvestee is a clone, a close match chosen by genetic screening from the babies born in a third world city, or a guy mugged on the street.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
The lengths people will go to to avoid facing up to the reality that they just don't matter! It's obscene. You are totally unimportant. Here, have a Chinese baby; it makes a great way to vent out all your feelings of usefulness.
Granted, it's a pretty good idea, but I'm not altogether sure that it would make the world a better place
Oh, HOORAY! There is another reader of real science fiction in the house.
CJ Cherryh also considers that when you are manufacturing a population, wholesale, why not go whole-hog and mold psychologies towards obedient, specialized individuals?
Julian May, who wrote the Galactic Milieu and Pliocene Exile trilogies, also explores the issue with the idea of "nonborns" which are people cloned for reasons similar to those in the Merchanter world, those being war and space colonization.
-perdida
Goat sex free since 2001
Ah, yes. The good old days of Slashdot. Back then articles were carefully researched, double posts never occurred, and CmdrTaco carefully spell-checked everything. The site never crashed, it was solid as a rock. It was a rock. Mind you, we had to work for our articles. Back then, we didn't have this new fangled atch-tea-em-elle and atch-tea-tea-pea. We had raw text and gopher, and we liked it. To get the comments we had to carry a heavy bucket to CmdrTaco's apartment and carry the bits back ourselves. And it was uphill. Both ways.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I have to admit that I don't quite understand the ethical hysteria that has surrounded the issue of human cloning. It's not as if "cloning" will produce an exact replica of a person, right down to the last sub-atomic particle. All that cloning would do is produce a being that is genetically identical to the being that it was cloned from. Depending on the experiences that the clone has, it will differ from the being that it was cloned from. People don't claim that identical twins are the "same person", even though they may be visually indistinguishable.
The religious argument here is a non-issue. Scientists may be able to do genetic cloning, but the most important part of human beings is the soul, and the soul is divinely created (that is, it is separate from genetics.) A human clone would be genetically identical to the cloned subject, but it would presumably be soulless. In this respect it would almost be interesting to see what the results would be. The results of this experiment would be useful theological information.
It is reasonable to assume that a cloned human would be the theological equivalent of a cat or an emu or other such animal. In other words, they are a living, sentient being, but because their origins are man-made instead of divine, they (by definition) cannot have a soul. So what would they say? What would they do? Would they be capable of moral or ethical behavior, or would they operate on pure instinct as the animal kingdom does? These are important questions, and quite frankly, I'm willing to set aside any ethical considerations in order to see them answered.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Now we can have two CmdrTaco's and TWICE the spelling mistakes/re-posts!
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
There is a reason for this drive to pass on one's genes. It's called instinct. All living things exist at the most basic level to pass on their genes to the next generation. The definition of evolutionary success is just that. If the urge to pass on your genes did not exist, species would go extinct.
Ashes of Empires and bodies of kings,
The truth about Michael
I remember when Slashdot was like 'the well', a polite, well moderated haven in amongst the internet junk and filth. Nowadays its all a bit USAToday... Which is a shame.
Millions of children are waiting out there to be adopted, and yet we're spending fortunes on perfecting techniques of dubious ethical pedigree? Why? Because we're still hung up on the idea that your "bloodline" has any value? That your own genetics, in a sea of six billion other bags of dna, actually have any significance? The lengths people will go to to avoid facing up to the reality that they just don't matter! It's obscene.
For crying out loud, you're going to be dead in fifty years. Do something now to make a difference in this world by adopting and caring for an exisitng human being.
Read the rest of this comment...
it turns out human cloning is not possible right now. This is close to my area of research.
What people really mean about 'cloning' is the creation of new organisms that are identical genetically to adults (genetic material from fully differentiated cells). People naturally make clones earlier (twins) and artificially (fertility treatments). The real breakthrough with dolly & such was the ability to take an organism that has developed -- and hence we can observe the phenotype and turn its genotype to a new organism.
ok so along these lines: the initial dolly experiment can about from _hundreds_ of attempts. All the failures either never developed or aborted prematurely. The risks associated from harvesting that many eggs from one human would be high.
Additionally, no one has come close to performing fully differentiated genotype transfer in any higher organism close to man. A science article about a year ago had a good review of what had been tried. Turns out the success rates go dawn sharply as the genome gets more complex.
Finally there is the telomerase issue. We know aging occurs in high correlation with the shortening of end caps on the chromosomes called "telomerases" These shortened telomerases are already present in fully differentiated cells and it was measured in sheep that the cloned animals too have shorter telomerases. The result: there is strong suspicion that cloned animals may have shorter lifespan. Sequential cloning might be disastrous.