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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?"
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.
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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
Yep, and my family's been through it twice with success both times. There are ways to get a reliable adoption, but it requires not being so picky about gender, age and race.
Shit happens, but many many many adoptions happen successfully, too.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
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.
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There is another reader of real science fiction in the house.
Slashdot doesn't really lack science fiction readers you know...
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You're right. All the people in the world should only concentrate on one thing. And since all scientists all work for the same organization it should be easy for them to only work on one problem. And absolutely nothing else. In fact, you shouldn't even be posting on slashdot! go help some starving person!
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
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?
No, we can't stop science, but let's focus on a science that actually benefits people. We have millions of starving people, countries with great social unrest, and economies so bad that even the hardest working can barely put a roof over their head. Cloning, Mars Dirt, etc. is fine, but let's fix our fsck'd up earth! (Oh crap this goes against general Slashdot opinion I'm now a troll... maybe this will help:) As if all of this isn't bad enough, we can't seem to get rid of this "Windows" virus that keeps plaguing our computers!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
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.
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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.