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Cloned Animals Show Grave Health Problems
selectspec writes: "According to this article in the nytimes, scientists are reporting unexpected levels of defects in sheep and other animals cloned in recent years. Apparently, the cloned DNA is more susceptible to damage during the procedure. This pretty much rules out cloning humans for now." The pivotal battle of bioengineering gets a rain delay.
For all the hype and media attention over cloning, I still don't think anyone has come close to solving what is probably the fundamental problem with it: the fact that a cell's DNA becomes shorter at the ends (the telomeres) each time it replicates. Until someone figures how to fix this, cloning is pretty much a dead end. Either the clone itself will have a short lifespan or further cloning attempts will be unsuccessful somewhere down the line.
we call them 'twins'
I made that statement while being a bit emotionally charged. I did not mean that those with now knowedge should not comment, but so many /.'ers seem to make comments on fields completely outside their own area of interest with a very pumped up sense of importance, as if they DO KNOW all of the answers and aspects of what is being discussed is, and it is so obvious to them! I mainly intended that a lot of people here are so irrational - whether from ego or emotion, and this kind of subject NEEDS to be treated with utmost rationality.
Your post is a perfect example of how most people here DON'T post - it's well thought out, polite, inquisitive, and rational. As for an informed source, there are MANY better than me - I'm a senior college student majoring in both biology and computer science who is actually going into a graduate program in neuroscience.
My thoughts are that there ARE serious ethical questions to be discussed, but I don't think they are so serious as to stop research in the field. I think that issues can be handled by panels of people well versed in the problems (biologists, psychologists, ethicists). I don't think that it will ever be that someone can just get their dead wife cloned, but if human cloning does prove effective as a fertility treatment, it would be even more highly regulated than in-vitro techniques and euthanasia. As for the lesbian baby thing - I think that problems like that will be solved in Europe first, as they seem to be more socially-culturally liberal. But, I doubt that cloning HUMANS will prove to be all that necessary or desirable (although animal research cloning for endangered species, pharmecutical research, and agriculture has some very interesting applications).
I don't agree with the statement "Some questions should not ever need to be raised." If we don't ask questions, we don't grow. Even if those questions turn out to lead down dangerous paths, it is our nature as a curious sentient species to explore and grow along these paths. We need to be allowed to fail if we are to truly succeed. I guess in the end, I'm somewhat of an optimist when it comes to these things - I think that as long as we have rational debates on issues such as this, that the proper course will reveal itself.
BTW - you yourself sound quite informed, and that you've thought about this topic in some detail - may I inquire about your background as well?
Sincerely,
Kevin Christie
kwchri@wm.edu
(1) Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone,
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And after it's grown,
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.
(Chorus) Clone, clone of my own
With its Y chromosome changed to X
And when I'm alone,
With my own little clone,
We will both think of nothing but sex!
(2) Oh give me a clone
Is my sorrowful moan,
A clone that is wholly my own.
And if she's X-X
And the feminine sex
Oh, what fun we will have when we're prone!
(3) My heart's not of stone,
As I've frequently shown
When alone with my own little X.
And after we've dined,
I am sure we will find
Better incest than Oedipus Rex!
(4) Why should such sex vex
Or disturb or perplex
Or induce a disparaging tone?
After all, don't you see,
Since we're both of us me,
When we're having sex, I'm alone!
(5) And after I'm done
She will still have her fun
For I'll clone myself twice ere I die.
And this time without fail
They'll be both of them male
And they'll each ravage her by and by.
> In any case, cloning will NOT be the end of the world, nor will genetic engineering, as so many on Slashdot predict. If people are going to make statements about the effects of a field, they'd do best to actually have some knowledge in that field
Unfortunately, people who have knowledge in the field have repeatedly fucked up royally when messing with the environment. Two examples: pesticides that we were assured by specialists were "safe" nearly wiped out the bird-of-prey population in the U.S., and "safe" fertilizers have made most of the ground water in the midwest poisonous. Have your own well in rural kansas? Too bad, you can't safely drink from it.
While not a biologist, I've worked enough with biologists to know how damn little is understood about genetics. This "we know what we're doing" attitude is such crap. We don't have a freaking clue, and the potential disasters are much greater than the many that "experts in the field" have already visited upon us.
These two may be looking for attention, but you can't tell me that's atypical of scientists! It would be extremely prestigious to clone a human - but you cannot dismiss their credibility simply due to their desire to do so! It would also be prestigious to cure cancer - does that make someone who proposes doing so a quack?
A human clone has the same rights as any other person. There are no ambiguities at all about this - clones aren't manufactured independently of humans, they're born, just like all babies.
You're definitely letting your irrational, emotional aversion to cloning obscure your ability to reason logically.
As for 'whether we should or not', that's another issue, but I tell you this - if a parent had to choose between allowing their child to die, or using cloning technology to save them, they'll absolutely save their child. Those who choose not to will be about as rare as the present-day monsters who let their children die because they don't believe in immunizations.
Any technology getting right the first time is very difficult. In time they will get better in the process of creating clones. So this is no big suprise.
Yea, but we're gonna need SOMETHING to put in the Soylent Green factories...why not clones of yummy looking people? Presentation is everything, just ask as chef!
Attempting to clone humans at this time would be an Illegal Operation.
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And just what do we think about the natural process of creating new life? It really all depends on when you think life begins. We should all know that a fertilized egg will not necessarily stick to the wall of the uterus.
Isn't it a bit hypocritical of us to complain about the high rate of failure of artificial creation of life when the natural rate may not be all that much better?
There are two main oppositions to cloning:
1) Religious. To the vast majority of people, the power of Creation is God's and God's alone. A handful of atheist scientists and geeks don't count.
2) Ethical. What will we, as a race, do with artifical humans? Slave labor? Spare organs? Don't think it can't happen; it's a human conceit that to create a thing is to control a thing.
Super Humans aren't needed. The dumb ones are doing just fine in the governments.
And often by Anonymous Coward.
Ah, so that's why she's always wearing those short tennis dresses! ;-)
Well, numerous people have posted various ways how to read NYT articles without registering. The one I use is to log in as user/pass = slash2000/slash2000, which someone was kind enough to register. Don't forget to tell it to remember that login in a cookie. Never need to be bothered by NYT registration again.
"The simplest solution is to ignore your dead children."
Are the defects in the clones always the same? For example...if you clone twice, will both clones have the same defects?
Maybe that's already been answered here, but I didn't see anything off hand (but I've been told I was blind before).
SethD
a sharp needle and a strong stomach, I would think
# make clone
Gene error: Clone dumped
#
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Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
One of the biggest problems with endangered species is a lack of genetic diversity. having a bunch of cloned endangered animals would actually make the problem worse -- not better. Once the funding ran out, you'd have a bunch of (semi) identical twins, (and sick, to boot, given current problems).
AKA. A breeder's nightmare.
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Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
It would be nice if the lameness filter didn't block out out perfectly normal posts. (while allowing things like the goatsex ascii art).
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Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
As to the second half of your comment: If a clone makes it past the embryo stage, it won't necessarily get sick and die -- it might just get sick, and need continuous support after that. This is quite different than the ideal cdlone which would be a near identical copy of you (and supposedly just as healthy, intelligent, etc.).
Hmm... Blue face instead of blue screen..
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Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Every cell has some kind of telomerase activity. You have to think of that activity as the probability that the telomerase enzyme will function or whether it won't at any one point in time.
The age of a cell, if you measured it by the length of the telomeres in its DNA, would decrease exponentially, not linearly, unlike how most computers tell time. Very few processes in biology are linear...so the way a lot of people on Slashdot think about biology is completely off.
Biological processes are all about parallel processing, with multiple rates of enzyme activity, binding, transport mechanisms all working at the same time, arriving at an 'event' (like cell replicating, or a muscle contracting) that seem linear from a general view, but are actually the result of an innumerable amount of competitive or cooperative cellular functions all working and forming a very complex pattern of results.
Favorite
That is music to my ears. Good to know we won't be creating an army of Super Humans to fight our wars for us any time soon.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
I wish I hadn't used all my mod points on downvoting idiotic trolls. That was pretty damn funny.
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
If the current American president was cloned then it would be worth discussing any perceived mental deficiencies.. However, the last American president proves without a doubt that inproperly raised children induces moral and ethical deficiencies, along with a general lack of ability to properly consider the rammifications of one's actions regardless of the moral or ethical components. It may also induce a general deficiency in the lack of attention to spelling and gramar. ;-)
Or, it could be that certain people just don't give a hoot about spelling or grammar! In any case, I'd be interested in hearing what particular mental deficiencies you are refering to, as I'm not aware of any. You certainly can't be refering to GWB's intellect, as it has been proven that he performed much better in college than most people realize.
There are many occurances of "scandals" that have nothing to do with "personal matters." Forget about the Lewinsky matter. I wasn't even referring to that. What about "file gate" and the China issues, not to mention the Rich pardon? There have been so many questions regarding Clinton's judgement and ethics, other than the "personal matters," that the excuse you give fails to convince anyone anymore. Even people who voted for him both times are seeing the light. Plus, now that he's out of office everyone can see the result of his lack of attention to the economy, energy policy, and a list of other matters that are causing us pain now. Only the uneducated blame Bush for our current problems, as anyone with half a brain can see that the economy has been on a downward path for over a year and the energy crisis has been brewing for years.
But let's get back on topic. Would anyone want to see a clone of Clinton? I sincerely doubt it, as he didn't seem to have the foresight to avoid the current situation so I don't think he would be able to effectively deal with it now.
like if there were 20,000 Pamela Anderson clones walking arround
Well, PA would be a really bad choice for this since she was really pretty bad looking before all the surgery.
Personally I'd say make 20000 Jennifer Love Hewitt clones.
---CONFLICT!!---
All it will require is for ur to find the enzyme or dna sequence that starts the process the same way cnncer does; if these cells can reproduce indefinately, all cells can.
But without a culling process that targets the out of control cells, cancer results.
Somehow, I think this is the long end of darwin; the guys and gals with the cool dna will live longer, have more fun than the ones with the really bad dna. Unfortunately, most of us have worse DNA than the guys who smoke for forty years and don't get lung cancer.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
"This is what Slashdot does *RIGHT*"
/. but there is some really quality "wheat" that is mixed in too.
Absolutely on target! There is a lot of "chaff" on
My thanks to landley, too.
too lazy for a clever sig.
Good point. I'm still waiting to get that mute button on my ear. No more distractions when I want some peace!
Mike Roberto
- GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
"For example, some mouse clones grow fat, sometimes enormously obese, even though they are given exactly the same amount of food as otherwise identical mice that are not the products of cloning. The fat mice seem fine until an age that would be the equivalent of 30 for a person, when their weight starts to soar, said Dr. Ryuzo Yanagimachi, a University of Hawaii researcher who first cloned these animals and has studied cloning's consequences in them. I had the same thing happen to me at 30 :)
First off, so far, cloning involves taking out intact nuclei and putting them into an enucleated cell. We haven't gotten to the point where we can take naked DNA and stick it into an empty host nucleus.
This means that the proteins in the nucleus of the source cell will probably still have an effect on the development process, since, so far, there is no known technique that can remove all the proteins from the nucleus and still keep the structure of the nucleus intact. And it's already known that some of the proteins in an adult nucleus are different than what is found in the nucleus of a zygote.
The heart of the problem is this: a lot of embryological development is actually determined by elements in the cytoplasm, which must interact with elements within the nucleus (i.e., DNA plus proteins) What is speculated is that the different environment of the adult nucleus, particularly after the laboratory processing they undergo, causes all sorts of unpredictable interactions.
So in order to be more successful at cloning, we have to figure out how to reset the environment of the adult nucleus to match that of an embryonic nucleus.
But there is an even more basic problem than that: even natural fertilization and development is subject to a lot of random chance. Sometimes I think it's a wonder that life can reproduce at all. At least with humans, about 15% of recognized pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion and it is estimated that up to 50% of all conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, often before conception has been recognized. It's probably not too different for other mammals. So if scientists continue to get low yields, it shouldn't be that surprising. Even Nature doesn't get it right nearly half the time.
Oh, and just a little quibble about telomeres--a short sequence doesn't automatically and immediately doom a cell. A lot of cells your body have short telomeres and will never divide again, but they'll last almost your entire lifetime anyway (for example, almost all neurons)
These setbacks are dissappointing, however there is also good news. Initial fears "that clones would age rapidly or develop cancer" turned out to be unfounded, scientists said.
Hopefully we will overcome these setbacks and find out the causes for the defects and weight gain in the clones. This can only further our knowledge and discovery.
Nicely worded - except that it's more like "TTL decrement for certain cell types, or cancerous cells, gets deactivated" rather than "gets set to -1". Now if only we had a way to reset the TTLs for all the cells in an existing body - perhaps engineer a virus that specifically looks for the end of a DNA strand, and attaches base pairs at random (or pehaps biased towards A/T pairs)?
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I like to watch.
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I like to watch.
Weren't people going to clone a wierd hybrid headless human to take its organs...?, I think that's the major thing thats going to be set back, so if you were counting on that cloned liver, you better stop drinking now...
I wonder how you get sperm out of a stiff.
Need a website host? Try out http://WebQualityHost.net
Of course, this is BS. A clone is not really "offspring" of the clonee. Instead, a clone is more like a twin sibling. Genetically, the parents of the clone are the parents of the clonee.
However, I don't think that overpopulation is really a valid point against cloning. Clones are, and always will be, much more difficult and expensive to produce than non-clones. People seem to have this notion that cloning somehow enables the creation of factories that just stamp out copy after copy of people at high speed. It doesn't. Clones still have to go through the normal gestation period, inside a human mother's womb.
wow..you've clearly been doing a lot of thought and (possibly) some research about cloning..and you're coming from an well reasoned ethical/moral background and your writing is fantastic..do you have any links or source material to share?
I wonder how you get sperm out of a stiff.
Well, the guy is dead so you can just cut out the right parts and empty them. It's not like he's going to feel any pain.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
As a neuroscience grad student, I just wanted to make a few comments in defense of biological scientists. First, we are often accused of pushing ethics aside in favor of things we think are neat on an abstract scientific level. While there is certainly some truth to that, the primary difference between a scientist's perspective and a layperson's perspective is that the scientist generally has a better understanding of what the technological advances might actually mean in the not-too-distant future. For example, when most people hear cloning, they think of armies of duplicate slaves or something, but they don't realize that the techniques involved are likely to play important roles in the cures for many diseases, such as Parkinson's, Huntington's, and Alzheimer's (which will DESTROY the American economy if we don't figure it out before it hits the baby boomers). Likewise, technologies like transgenic rabbits expressing green fluorescent protein or whatever make many laypeople cringe, thinking of big industry selling bizarre genetically engineered novelty pets or something (I mention this because a previous poster did). They don't realize that certain breeds of rabbits are one of the number one model organisms for heart disease, a huge public health problem in the developed world, and there are various valid approaches for treatment with gene therapy. These things have to be worked out in animals before we try them on humans. Biotech has been portrayed as evil because of stupid marketing mistakes made by big companies making transgenic crops and etc., and people act like "golden rice" is the only good thing that's ever come of biomedical research. My point is, if that's what you think, you need to become better informed. Try working in a hospital for a while (I'm a med student too) and look at what ridiculous advances in medical technology have been made in even the past five years. Or try having a relative dying of a disease because new treatments are being delayed by ethical protests against testing it in mice. In any case, the thing I find most disturbing is that you never seem to see many people on /. talking about the ethical implications of quantum computing. Quantum computers that could quickly factor products of huge primes, for example, could completely turn the world upside down. It could topple governments or start world war 3. Then again, it might not, but a lot of poly sci and international relations people I know think it would, and in any case it's a good example of the biases irrational trends in pop culture place on the lay person's judgment of the ethics of various scientific developments.
*recalls why it is that he keeps reading here* Oh, yeah!
/. will know exactly what they're talking about.
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Thanks, landley, for a really informative post.
This is what Slashdot does *RIGHT*. Every time something which is genuinely technical or scientific comes up, there's actually a real chance that someone responding to it on
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All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
i'd much rather see more work in lab-grown replacement organs and limbs right, see the problem is that growing organs and tissues in a lab independantly (rather than growing a whole human and harvesting the organs) would use approximately the same technology, so it would have the same problems with premature cell aging, etc. the organs might stop functioning suddenly and before they should. this would be bad.
http://channel.nytimes.com/2001/03/25/world/25CLON .html
if you didn't know already ;-)
--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Knowledge is, a deadly friend
if no one, sets the rules
The fate of all, mankind I see
is in, the hands of fools
// It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis
'pretty much rules out cloning humans for now'
Why does that rule out cloning humans? I don't get it.
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You mean they all can't play tennis worth a damn?
She plays tennis?
Of course they are atypical of scientists. I like to think that Howard Stern isn't like most human beings either.
How exactly will cloning save your child? Will a clone (another child) just be an organ farm for your child?
responsible for abuse - should read: guilty of abuse
I should really preview these things first.
I don't doubt for a second that there aren't people willing to do it. Just because someone wants to do it doesn't make it right. I think the desirable goal would definitely be the ability to grow just organs. That would be absolutely marvelous.
it has some info to get you started, with a good amount of links to get you up to speed.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
Remember the last "Ahnold" movie _The Sixth Day_? It appeared in theatres in the Fall of 2000, and it describes a near future where everything and everyone is cloned....and recloned. Basically, the corporation would take a snapshot of your brain before you died, and would clone you, and re-upload your brain, so you resumed life as if nothing happened. This made you virtually immortal. One of the implications of this was that every clone had a genetic defect, so that their lifespans were limited, and so if they tried to turn on the corporation (like our beloved hero's clone), they would just die off within a year or two from stuff like cancer or other genetic diseases, and wouldn't be recloned, so then they would be really "dead".
"Everything is determined...by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the start. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."
Albert Einstein, Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929, Quoted in clark, Einstein
Oh, you say, I'm special? When you said there were too many people, I guess you meant too many other people. It's OK if 5 out of 6 people worldwide were to die, as long as none of those 5 out of 6 were you, your family, your friends, etc.
You wrote: Let's maybe think about issues like overpopulation, disease, and poverty before we start artificially create people to suffer from these problems.
How does cloning have anything special to do with overpopulation? Fertilization clinics that help infertile couples have kids have precisely the same effect. For that matter, so does sex without contraception. And I feel pretty confident in saying that there are a lot more people worldwide who practice sex without contraception than practice human cloning. If you want to make a difference, focus on the real issue.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Well, it won't be genetically unique, but then neither are natural identical twins, so I don't see how that has any bearing on "inherent dignity". Of course, the clone will be a mixture of two parents: the parents of the person who supplied the cell that was cloned.
How do we view ourselves if our sole reason for existence is not love, but utility?
How is this any different from the effects of fertilization techniques that infertile couples use to bear children? Why assume that the motive is "utility" rather than "love"?
How do we make sense of our identity within a family?
There are plenty of problems in this arena in a culture where divorce, remarriage, adoption, and so forth is rife.
If a doctor clones himself, and the clone decides that he wants to be an artist instead, the doctor will consider his "son" (or daughter) to be defective somehow.
Like this doesn't happen with naturally conceived kids either. (If you think it's not a big deal when it comes to career choice, replace "doctor" with "heterosexual" and "artist" with "homosexual" in the sentence above.) Cloning might intensify the level of identification with the offspring and the sense of letdown when it doesn't turn out the way the parents expected, but kids not turning out the way parents expected is as old as humanity itself.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
I will stop my "cloning" experiments in exchange for *pinky to mouth* One... Million Dollars!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
"How would you feel growing up knowing that you were only birthed to satisfy someones curiosity? Sort of takes you away from that "conceived in love idea." " As opposed to growing up knowing that you were conceived in horniness and alcohol??? C'mon, I really don't think clones would be all that more ill-adjusted nor have a more difficult upbringing than the rest of humanity.
Woman gives birth to boy. Woman lets boy be cloned. The clone is modified to have not much brain in order to provide spare body parts. Meanwhile, CR groups campaign against this. This results in the "spare boy" to be re-instated as a human being with rights. Boy gets sick and dies. Woman "adopts" spare boy and sues the scientists who modified the genes of "spare boy". Analyzing this sequence of events, one might suggest that "spare boy" should have been equipped with a normal brain. However, this would result in the creation of a class of sub-humans with no difference to other humans but their humans status. This is brutal, and will not be very acceptable, although it could make sense under certain circumstances.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
There ARE human clones. They are called "identical twins". They are more identical to each other than any laboratory clone could be to the DNA donor for it.
You could do the same thing - clone people into identical twins - by borrowing the normal way it happens. You let an embryo develop to around the 16 cell stage or so, split it into two 8 cell embryos, implant them and viola! You just cloned someone. Really cool would be to do it twice and create the first identical quadruplets. All clones.
Sure, it isn't as unusual as an adult with a (near) identical twin who is many years younger (a classic clone) but it IS cloning to perfection, so to speak.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Ah, simple and seemingly logical argument but flawed. The truth is that sperm are produced all the time by the billions in a man and that requires constant, non-stop cell divisions. The cells that make sperm are not younger than the body making those sperm.
Something similar occurs for the egg though not to the same extent since the eggs are already pre-made, so to speak, by the time a female is born. What has yet to happen is maturation of the set number of eggs. They are dormant, for the most part, and they form early and so are not subject to as many cell divisions as spermatagonia but they are not young cells either.
My personal theory is related to your general idea... The vast bulk of DNA repair enzymes are tied to transcription (or tightly associated with transcription). What THIS means is that each of your cells saves time and energy repairing the DNA that it uses - DNA that is actively transcribed into RNA - and for the most part ignores DNA that is not transcribed. In all cells except neurons, MOST genes are turned off and not transcribed and so are not a primary target for repair. Neurons, on the other hand, are the one cell type that has the most DNA being actively transcribed all the time. Thus, neurons have more of the cellular DNA subject to repair than any other cell.
What you COULD try to do is use glia DNA or neuronal DNA as a source for cloning, hoping that 1) a lot more of that DNA is open for business normally, so to speak, is therefore subject to constant surveillance and repair, and 2) a lot more of neuronal DNA is not silenced relative to other cell-types, and therefore not in need of turning on in the egg. Less chance for the hypothesized errors.
Another source for DNA for cloning would be adult stem cells that must retain the ability to become one of a range of cell-types at any time and, therefore, much of their DNA is also not likely to be heavily modified for silencing vs fully differentiated cells.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
So, there's some problems with cloning technique at the early stages. So what? Let's not forget the claims that the clones were going to live forever because their telomeres weren't getting shorter. What happened to that? Statistically it became insignificant as further studies were undertaken and showed it wasn't really the case. It was just a statistical anomaly. /., it is the code itself. The telomeres are only working at the cellular reproduction level. But clearly a human being is more than a collection of cells. A jellyfish is a highly organized cellular system. Higher mammals go way beyond that and their fatality is usually associated with some systemic failure rather than general cellular decay.
When Biology and Statistics get together to do a news piece, try and hold you nose and pretend you don't notice. People need to put out documents to get their certificates. We should be understanding of this fact, but let's not forget that people's academic degrees and hence research --even in the "hard" sciences-- tends to be a varying solution of hard research stirred in with a generous serving of zany drama that might even make it --gasp-- into the media.
As for those who want to get into the gory details as "evidence" of how bad this all is, well that's the same league as the goatse.cx crowd. You choose where you put your focus. If you just want to see the dark side of things, you don't have to go very far.
And as to the issue that should be important to those at
There must be some meta encoding that programs us to die. That seems so obvious. This is a place where the statistics have been kept for hundreds of years in medical records and even headstones. For example, if you look into mouth cancer, you'll find that while there are myriad suspected causes, there is a startling spike in the occurance of the disease at a certain age seemingly regardless of a person's personal habits or prior health status.
Clearly, something within us induces systemic failures. Perhaps cloning will help us to eventually understand this, but getting so converned about telomeres and bad lab techniques seems to be focusing a bit short of the important question: How am I going to take control of my own destiny as a mortal?
but it's got to be more than just cells falling apart.
That's what he's doing. I myself was framed for second degree murder and sentenced to five years of reading slashdot. I...I'll never make it...
The way I read the article, these researchers don't understand exactly how the gene "reprogramming" process works. Its hard to get better at something when you don't know what you're doing.
To understand what's right and wrong, the lawyers work in shifts ...
Hey...you're thinking the wrong way. We *should* have human cloning today, so when the horrifying results ensue, which they will, everybody will be sufficiently repulsed and human cloning would be banned indefinitely. It would be even better to have these clones produced by shady legal means, so as to fix the idea that cloners have about same capacity for feeling bad that lawyers do.
Not to mention that human germ cells aren't produced until later in the development cycle, and thus would have the same regenerate defects that lie in the DNA of the reasonably young. Once DNA can be physically constructed (via nano-assemblers or whatever) and sequencing becomes more rapid, you could even take a batch of germ cells from a human, use error checking to eliminate mutations/crossovers (just find the most common expression for each locus) and make a *perfect* clone by mating two germ cells with equal genetic code. This is hardly the last nail in the coffin for cloning - even human cloning.
You mean they all can't play tennis worth a damn?
Is this by any chance the mechanism for expression of the disease Progeria, the premature aging disease that strikes children? If these children have a genetic mutation where the telomeres are shorter (perhaps the division of the cells of the fetus shortened the teleomeres, oops), then they're already pretty old by the time they're born, and experience all the standard age-related diseases, e.g. poor healing capacity and general degeneration.
I adblock all animated gifs.
Blessed be the prime numbered slashdotters
Theory page on telomeres:
I adblock all animated gifs.
Blessed be the prime numbered slashdotters
The present technique has demonstrated that cloning can be done. But for the technique to be used more widely, it will definitely need to be improved. You don't see us still flying in the Wrights Brother's flyer.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
Humans do clone naturally but that happens to women only and in very rare circumstances.
Do you have some evidence for that, or are you just drugged, lying, or a devout Funny-mentalist Christian who is suffering from terminal cognitive dissonance?
Any cases of alleged "natural human cloning" I've ever heard of have inevitably been frauds.
Methinks someone reads the Weekly World News too much...and believes everything they read.
?!
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
However, we are still a few years short of the deadline set by the sci-fi media (e.g. Heinlein for a writer who was big on cloning and its applications to rejuvenation), so I wouldn't be surprised if the currently exponential rate of advance continues and we get better and better very swiftly.
Not that I am expecting nor advocating cloning myself to grow myself a new pair of testicles in the next 50 years :-)
1) In short, how far have we really come in the cloning process? I know that we have come very far, but in relation to how far we have to go to actually clone something, and do so consistently. I can think of Absolute zero and (Hot Fusion?) where we can "DO IT", or get real close, but we're still a long way off from it being useful or feasible.
2) Living matter versus inanimate objects. I know it doesn't seem to make sense, but if we can alter DNA and cell structure, what is the distance we need to go before we can actually alter the molecular structure of inanimate objects. (Lead into Gold)
3) What do I, as a person, have to fear, or admire, about cloning. I know there is a "mass hysteria" over around the subject, but that doesn't mean much to me.
I've been trying to keep up with events, but alas, there's too much info to follow. I could have a fool time job just reading everything I get in the mail. What sucks is that it's all good information too.
NT still runs on a hacked version of OS/2 1.3. The GUI is a clone of the PM Shell.
And like all good clones, it preserves the bad bits.
Windows is preemptive. Look at this list of tasks it pre-empts.
- It pre-emptively deletes files before you decide to.
- It pre-emptively shuts down, so it can show its pretty blue screen.
- It pre-emptively closes applications. Running a command from a console, with parameters is a good way of doing this
:)
Since it does lots of prem-emptive things, it is a pre-emptive multitasker.It mutates stating and stopping. It starts up to an array of blue screens (I call it rolling blue screens), and then you have to give it the three fingure salute to get it going (log on). Sort of like, foot in mouth.
Windows NT is stabler than Win 9x, because it was mutated off more of OS/2. What more can you say.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Duh.. how many reasonably intelligent people don't have multiple skill sets and wonder if their lives would have better if they had chosen career path B instead of path A. Its really stupid to expect everyone to be the same even if they are the same. Who's job dosn't get a little boring after 5 years and your on top of the learning curve. So lets have the clones have the excitement and challenges I had then I'll move on to something I'm passionat about, but will not support me and let the clones support me. We could live life as an tag-team event. We could even replicate the memory RNA and sync, each entity cauld concentrate on a different area and donate to the rest!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
its funny how an anonymous coward is having a go at me for being a newbe...
:)
its like a fatty calling another person fat
you're such a newbie!!! :)
Its people like you ruining slashdot
*Laughter*
Me newbie scum..
The newbie's run slashdot now and you know it!
I think boeing should re-introduce the Wright Brothers Flyer.. Imagine traveling interstate wearing those cool goggles and hat.. And the stewerdesses dresses might fly up because of all the wind (being that there's no walls)...
Just a thought...
You're ignoring one of the largest motivations for human cloning: those who want to clone a dead loved one.
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The last article I read about cloning went something like this: 1. Egg stripped of its genetic material. 2. "Parent" cell w/genetic material from parent inserted into "empty" Egg. 3. The whole mess is shocked with an electric current to get the cell reprogramming started. Scientists aren't really sure why the reprogramming happens. Doesn't this seem really crude?
OK so there are some humans we might want to clone, like if there were 20,000 Pamela Anderson clones walking arround the natural action of supply and demand would mean that pretty much anyone who wanted to could date one of them, only you would still need to wait at least 16 years by which time even a clone of PA is probably not going to give you time of day unless you are driving either a Red Ferrari or an open top Jaguar in British Racing Green.
There is little point in cloning people for their intelligence since genetics only gets you so far at the genius level. They tried to 'clone' Leonardo da Vinci by sending his cousin off to sire a son with a woman from the same village as da Vinci's mom came from. The prodgeny didn't do much of significance before dying of some plague.
Back to stuff it would be worth cloning, like a T-Rex. I don't think it would matter much if Dino got to fat, just put him on a cholesterol free diet, would still be way kool.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
hyuk hyuk, what if microsoft tried to clone someone? it would bluescreen! HYUK HYUK!!!!
I protestify this slanderiferous libelishelling of the First Texan.
Just because the clones may get sick or die wont stop people from doing it. The people that would do it obviously dont care about what others think, whether its ethically right or legal etc. They would do it so they could be the first if for no other reason
Yeah.. Who knew that little harmless lowtax could start an internet phenomenon. I'd be gloating a lot more if I were him.
Who are you to say that this research is wrong? What would your solution be? Censor it? 'Banned research' just smacks of 'big brother'. For all we know, research that follows on from, or is inspired by this could dramatically improve our way of life. I admit that the idea of cloning people scares me, and I don't think that people should be allowed to do it, but that doesn't mean that there should be no research in the field. The ethical question is: if people have this technology, what will they use it for? I believe that research is always right, it's just the application that is sometimes wrong.
--
Hollywood representatives have publicly stated that skipping commercials is "stealing."
However one can be pretty sure, based on a few theoretical basis, that cloning is real bad for beings. On one organism DNA may suffer tons of damages.
Huh? The only thing one can say now is that current methods of cloning may introduce defects in DNA. Cloning, as an idea, is simply the creation of an animal with the same genetic sequence as an existing one. There is no theoretical reason that cloning must produce defects in cloned DNA. Heck, cells "clone" DNA all the time during cell division, and it hardly ever introduces mutations (witness the millions of cells in your body with the exact same DNA).
To avoid serious mutations and rise the chance of survival there is sex.
I'm sorry, but that's not true. According to evolution and natural selection, the purpose of sex is to mix and match existing mutations, in order to get a large number of different combinations, to see which works the best. Sex does not either prevent or cause mutations. Mutations happen all the time, randomly, by natural processes. Most are too small to be noticed.
The reason animals have sex is not because cloning themselves is impractical or damaging, it's because it mixes up the gene pool and gives a greater variety of organisms. This increases a species' chances of survival, because it allows them to adapt through natural selection (the animals that get the bad genes die, the animals that get the good genes thrive and the good genes spread faster).
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
And our environment doesn't produce mutations?
Of course it does, as I note later on in my post. We are in agreement on that. However, that has nothing to do with my point there, which is that you can't say that it is impossible to clone an animal without introducing defects.
the large majority of mutations are dangerous for organisms.
I don't think that's true. Do you have any evidence to back that up or is it just your opinion? Anyway, that doesn't support your original point that cloning is and must be detrimental to the health of beings. Cloning on an EXTREMELY large scale for many millenia would stop natural selection (but not mutations) and therefore be bad for beings, but not because of any defects introduced by the cloning process itself.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Would be nice if the lameness filter blocked ascii art...
Whooooaaa!! No need for men?? You've got yourself a recruit - down with cloning! (Because as a man, I KNOW there will always be need for women)
I've overclocked my brain!!!
Hasn't anybody seen the movie X-men? why, this is a wonderful opportunity we have here with human cloning--especially with these new findings we've got here. these random genetic flaws and mutations are perfect; all we need to do is try it a few times until we wind up with a Wolverine or a Cyclops. so what if we wind up with a few, horribly genetically flawed babies that die sometime immediately before or after birth. after all, they're just babies, and if you support abortion (which I do) then you can't really care about them anyway, since they aren't even aware of their own existence. I say we use this article as further proof that we only need to push farther and faster ahead with human cloning, before somebody like the Raeliens accidently make a Magneto. What would we do then? We'd be doomed!
____________________________________________
"I'd rather be rich than stupid."
____________________________________________
"I'd rather be rich than stupid."
-- Jack Handey
Yeah, a mechanical heart that triggers off a large percentage of your T-cells... While the standard biological responce sends tons of T-cells to this device(even ones that won't react to it) they aren't in other places where real infections can crop up.
OTOH if you have such major problems that you need a totally new heart, you may die of other things before this becomes a big problem.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
"The primary problem is that cloning violates the unique identity and inherent dignity of each person."
Well, since this is not the case your argument in that quote is largely BS. There is no such thing as an exact copy of a person. Twins are not totally identical, and neither are clones. That quote even pointed out that the clone may have totally different person interests than the origional(art instead of medicine).
As for the identity chrud, that happens to normal people anyway.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Early computers, medicine and pretty much any other techonology was unreliable at best when it was first invented. In time, better techniques will be invented.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I am certain there would be people willing to harvest a clone to save their 'real' child, much like there are people who are willing to harvest unwilling victoms(get drunk with a cute girl, wake up in the morning missing a kidney).
Hopefully we well be able to grow just organs, which would solve both problems
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I mean, what's the point in my getting a clone of my boa constricter (Richard the Third - not because of his lineage but because he's my third boa), if it's not going to live as long as the original?
Also, I wonder what the return policy will be like for professional cloning services, if it turns out I wasted my money on a lemon?
Food for thought.
If ya can't beat 'em, clone 'em.
Not necessarily used to fight, but super-humans ("Replicants") which only lived four years are very close to the mark on this topic. Being synthesized and not clones per say, nobody would care about their health defects and short life span. Considering where technology is now, we may very well have to start a "Retirement" force. :\
Why bother.
Anonymous Coward
Well, first off, if you don't like the way the site is managed, Go off and make your own forum that only you and your friends would want to come to. That's always a really popular way to get a bulletin board site off the ground... And then I can come and complain about how you're doing everything all wrong, and how you should be more like Slashdot. However, you do have a point about the NY Times bit. All this talk about keeping personal information secure, and yet we're forced to send information to one of the most popular newspapers in the western hemisphere to read half the stuff posted here.
No good can come of this...not for a while, anyways. Cloning certainly isn't stable enough to try on humanity, even though it probably is being attempted as we speak. A couple of weeks ago I read something on MSN.com about a couple doctors who were going to give it a shot despite the expected rate of failure. It's only a matter of time...months, even...before reports of grotesquely malformed human clones hit the news, and all hell breaks loose. If you thought the school shooting news coverage was bad...just wait.
.sig
Now if only we could do something about the death penalty...
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
"According to this article in the nytimes, scientists are reporting unexpected levels of defects in sheep and other animals cloned in recent years. Apparently, the cloned DNA is more susceptible to damage during the procedure. This pretty much rules out cloning humans for now."
And it doesn't bode well for cloning animals either.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Wrong DNA testing will hopefully address issues surrounding health and anyone who uses cloning as an argument is blind to science and the real truth surrounding cloning.
Testing will tell you that you have a problem, not fix it for you.
Given the current state of the art, cloning won't solve anyone's problems. The knowledge gained by experimental cloning will, however, eventually be more helpful. The full process of cloning is simply an 'interesting' and ethically challenging side effect of the real potential. The real benefit would be the ability to take a skin sample and grow a viable internal organ for someone who needs a new one. Even if the replacement DOES have the same unfortunate characteristics that caused the old one to fail, it will probably take as long (possibly decades) to fail as the first one did. That's gotta be worth something.
Later advances may allow any unfortunate faults in the DNA to be corrected before growing the new organ while maintaining perfect tissue compatability.
Much of this cloning research is closely related to stem cell research. Cloning (once improved) may turn out to be a good method for producing compatable stem cells for a patient. Other research may allow for a more direct process that doesn't involve implanting the nucleus into an ovum at all. Only time will tell. Even if so, knowledge gained from early cloning experiments will probably contribute to the solution.
The problems with public perception are an effect of the media which apparently prefers headlines like "Mad Scientists will make dozens of clones of you who will leave their dirty sweatsocks on your coffee table!" over "Cloning research may eventually lead to important medical advances. Limitations make unethical uses unlikely at this time".
First this is Deja Vu. The story that Dolly had serious health problems was even discussed here some time ago.
Second what do you think sex is? Just a oooh-my-Gooooooodddd-ooooh-mommmy??? Just ignore this factor for a moment and think. Nature shows that there are some points when even complex organisms may clone. However this occurs in moments when sex turns impracticable. Besides most organisms still try to find solutions to this situation in terms of sex. At least it is known that some birds have the capacity to change sex when there appears only and exclusively members of one sex in the community.
In other cases, on superior animals, such things as cloning can only apear as anomalies. Humans do clone naturally but that happens to women only and in very rare circumstances.
Now why this. For sex to be so stubborn in organisms there should be reasons that practically exclude any other forms of reproduction. Besides it seems organisms do everything to impose a sexist world in reproduction. What is exactly the reason, no one can surely know as natural cloning is very rare. However one can be pretty sure, based on a few theoretical basis, that cloning is real bad for beings. On one organism DNA may suffer tons of damages. Besides, under one organism, reproduction is already on the loose. To avoid serious mutations and rise the chance of survival there is sex.
What is happening with Dolly is the natural result of getting things through the sink. Dolly didn't pass the natural process of selection. God knows what possible mutations can be on the original DNA. Well they were small as Dolly managed to come to light. But they are enough to destroy the poor lamb in a very short time.
Of course one may say that the next step will be to search for "clean" DNA. However, in Nature, that sounds like searching for the "Arians" of genetics. If someone finds a "perfect" DNA for Dolly v. 2.0.1 then that will force the overwrite of the theory of Evolution.
No that's not a problem of cloning but design mishap. It seems that this series of positron brains came really buggy. Some old forgotten code that someone wrote a while back in the 50's made it's path to the brain. Let's hope US Robotics & Mechanical Men Corp. finds a solution before he starts playing with the red button...
Not identical. There is a cell on the original organism that IS identical. But that cell may have been well bathed by radiation, beaten, washed, turmoiled, raped and finally removed by a group of clonisators...
So that cell may be something like 95% of the original organism IN GENERAL.
Some years ago I read an article where some scientists considered that after the specialization of different organs, DNA becomes selective. That means, the organism will work hard to protect those specific sections supposed to answer to the work of a specific organ, however in that organ, all other DNA will be exposed to God knows what. I don't know if this has become a fact or not. But the idea is very interesting. That would mean that cloning would only be worth to reproduce organs. Everything else would be playing with dice.
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I don't know about THAT...a typical human being comes from an hour (well, okay, 2 1/2 minutes :-) of "hot monkey sex", and we all know how defective a typical human being is... :-)
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I see the comment sender defaults to
formatting after lokking at the HMTL source.
I'll try to avoid this in the future.
The current mammalian cloning methodolgy
turns on an alien nucleus in an egg cell
with an electric or chemical shock.
This is literally the Frankenstein technique- lightning.
This shock is the probably cause of damage
and 97-99% failure rate.
I predict methods will improve with time
to at least human IVF yields (25% success).
I'd recommend delaying human procedures until
this success rate is reached.
To quote (perhaps misquote) the late Dr. Asimov:
"Oh give me a clone,
A-a clone of my own,
With its Y chromosome changed to X;
And when we're alone,
O-oh me and my clone,
We will both think of nothing but sex.
Clone, clone of my own
With your Y chromosome changed to X;
And when we're alone,
O-oh me and my clone
We will both think of nothing but sex!"
"The deep-fried Mars bar is a symptom of a wider crisis." -- Nutritionist Ann Ralph, on the Scottish diet
In any case, cloning will NOT be the end of the world, nor will genetic engineering, as so many on Slashdot predict.
My impression is that the general slashdot population has no problem with cloning whatsoever. We (being non-geneticists) know just enough to understand that really you're just talking about twins, not identical copies of adult humans with all your memories and desires. Its not the creation of a person who could "replace" you, which is the concern of those who don't know anything more than what they see in the movies.
Hearing this more detailed information on the negative effects of cloning on the clone (shorter lifespan, greater suceptibility to disease) is really the first time that i've been "worried" about cloning in any way whatsoever (other than the obviously high initial failure rate, which would not really be acceptable when you're talking about human beings)...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Isn't the actual American president a living proof that cloning also induces mental deficencies?
.max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
I agree. This sentence in particular brought it out for me:
"What do you do with humans who are born with half a kidney or no immune system?" And, he said, what about the possibility of creating children who appear to be normal but whose genes for neurological development work improperly?"
Well, you know, people "create" children like this every day, through "normal" reproduction. There are children who are born without immune systems (think of the Boy in the Bubble), with half, or even no kidneys, with neurological defects. It's rather strange to assume that these "defects" were created only by the cloning process, since we don't actually know what causes these defects in the first place. Generally, the mice and sheep that are cloned don't have their full DNA analysis prior to cloning. So, maybe they were actually carrying these recessive genes for fatness or bad immune response, or what have you. In any case, assuming that having cloning create a human that has health issues is unethical, while not saying that creating such children through reproduction is a problem, is definitely propaganda.
Thalia
If the recent Wired article is correct, there may already be human clones. What about them?
----------------------------
"Such births to me (sorry if I offend) are not about loving a child, they are about people having a child for themselves. I actually do consider such acts selfish ones. Creation of a child out of Love comes only from God. There goes the Luddite side of me again."
Huh? I don't see how two homosexuals having a child, and loving that child are mutually exclusive. Is it only mutually exclusive for homosexuals? Does it apply to "unnaturally" conceived children, e.g. by in vitro fertilization, or test tube babies? And how is it any less selfish for heterosexuals to have children? I don't see the difference between the homo- and hetero- case. If it's selfish, it's selfish accross the board. The child will consume just as many resources whether it has hetero- or homo- parents. Births to bobo workaholic parents who leave their children to be raised by television and day care seem "selfish" to me.
"I sincerely do not get all excited about the possiblities of cloning."
Minus the religious bit there, I agree. Just because we *can* does not necessarily mean we *should*. Think of the case where we eventually figure out how to live forever. *Should* we? If we posit that there are finite resources in the universe (don't know if that is true), then we can't both live forever *and* reproduce forever. Is it "fair" to deny successive generations their chance to live? This is just one humongous can of worms that we are barreling towards full steam.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
uhhh... she's currently ranked #7 in the WORLD. she may not be as good as hingis or seles or the williams sisters. but they are four of only six people in the WORLD that can say they are better than her. common misconception tho...
Justin Dubs
"The primary problem is that cloning violates the unique identity and inherent dignity of each person. The clone will not be the genetically unique mixture of two parents, but an exact replica of only one person. This lack of individual identity will cause massive psychological scarring and familial disruption. How can one live in the shadow of one's older self and their reputation, accomplishments (good or bad) and physical ailments? How do we view ourselves if our sole reason for existence is not love, but utility? How do we make sense of our identity within a family? These questions suggest that our culture's sense of human development, personal identity and family relationships will be shattered."
Anyone who's considering cloning themselves should think very hard about this. The parents and other family members will always expect the clone to be "just as good" as the original. If a doctor clones himself, and the clone decides that he wants to be an artist instead, the doctor will consider his "son" (or daughter) to be defective somehow. I suspect that if human cloning does become possible, we'll have a collection of clones with such massive psychological problems that it will become illegal.
--
Lord Nimon
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Your post is almost too much of a troll and flamebait to respond to, but you pushed my buttons so congrats! Some of the things people tend to either overlook, ignore, or just not know, is that cloning is not creating a perfect replication of life of any form. These findings will now support this
So the technology at the current stage is imperfect. So what? This is not an argument against cloning, this is an argument against cloning TODAY... I am not arguing that todays cloning methods are perfect (I am not an expert by any means) but this is not an ethical argument again cloning!
We may be able to cure cancer if cloning leads to a better understanding of cell differentiation. Theories exist about how cloning may lead to a cure for heart attacks, a revolution in cosmetic surgery, organs for organ transplantation, and predictions abound about how cloning technology will save thousands of lives. Wrong DNA testing will hopefully address issues surrounding health and anyone who uses cloning as an argument is blind to science and the real truth surrounding cloning.
You have given no evidence that this is a misconception... in fact it is likely to be true. With perfect (or near-perfect) copies of cells, logically treatments can be tested much more efficently.
Assumptions and statements such as this are thrown in the loop by those who are in power to gain financially by supporting cloning by attempting to empathize with those suffering.
You don't know that. You CAN'T know their reasons! And again, your suspicions about their empathy have nothing do do with any reason for or against cloning.
Endangered species could be saved - Through the research leading up to human cloning we will perfect the technology to clone animals, and thus we could forever preserve endangered species, including human beings.Animals and plants could be cloned for medical purposes - Through the research leading up to human cloning, we should discover how to clone animals and plants to produce life-saving medications. Personally I think DNA research is a better solution.
Maybe I'm just stupid, but that was not a response to the "misconception" at all. DNA research to save endangered species and plants??
I certainly don't want a world full of genetically identical people, but I do know that advances from cloning (and your precious DNA research) are going to improve the world around us. Further, the imperfect cloning technologies of today are also going to improve.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
OK, they have a process yield problem. The semiconductor industry deals with these problems all the time. First you figure out exactly what's being damaged, then you study the damage mechanism, and then you find a way to stop it. The cloning industry will have to develop similar solutions.
I had always heard there were severe problems with cloning...like premature aging, cancer, suceptibility of the entire population to a single epidemic.
yet some have said it's not the case, and now there are problems again.
i'm not a big fan of cloning...i think there are a lot of nasty issues when you start cranking out genetically identical populations.
i'd much rather see more work in lab-grown replacement organs and limbs...as well as bringing fetuses to term...although i have concerns about that too.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
With all this talk of implications flying around, I thought that I might mention some of the causes of clone health problems. Once an animal has ended the embryonic stage, the ends of its DNA start to decay whenever they are copied in cell division. For a long time, this is a non-issue, since there is "junk" DNA called teleomeres at the ends of animal DNA strands. Once a cell runs out of teleomeres, however, one of two things can happen: 1. Cell division stops, so the body begins the physical process of aging. 2. Copying goes on, and genetic information is lost, most likely resulting in cancer.
How does this apply to cloning? Well, DNA taken from an adult cell to make a clone has already begun to have it's teleomeres decay. So, while a clone's body may only be a few months old, it's DNA can be much older. Essentially, the aging process runs much faster.
This is not to say that making healthy clones is impossible, however. For several years, biochemists have been researching an enzyme called teleomerase. This enzyme repairs teleomeres, so that they never run out (cancerous tumors use teleomerase to grow beyond 90 or so cells). If teleomerase can be synthetically produced in mass quantities, not only will we have healthy clones, but we'll also have cured one of the most signifacant components of aging, dramatically increasing the human lifespan.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
A stell heart might be great, but they'll never make a steel liver. Natural replacement parts will be better most of the time.
That explains everything -- why, when that guy sold me that Anna Kournikova underwear and I extracted the sweat to clone my own AK, out came a middle-aged Portugese woman with a lisp. I thought maybe I'd gotten swindled, but now I can be sure it was just a freak mutation. Phew!
Back to the lab...
Drink more tea
organicgreenteas.com
flesh eating ants records
Sure, Kevin. I'm a 42-year-old guy with a degree in engineering, but who happens to find all this breakneck-paced technological development fascinating; I guess it suits my temperament. In that my daughter is going into the field (genetic counseling, which apparently combines the disciplines of genetic and ethics; she wants to help people make decisions in light of the advances available to them via genetics / proteomics et al). I find it incredibly fascinating (I think I mentioned that) because the ramifications of all this knowledge - what being able to do with it means to us as a culture and a society - are far-reaching. You yourself are going into the field of medical science and there are profound ethical questions you will wrestle with. I determined early on that I needed harder science, but found that my dilemmas were no less difficult. The arena of global thermonuclear warfare can be tricky as well.
It is good that you agree that public discourse on the subject is not only valid, but vital. I grew up believing in the ideal of the pure scientist, one for whom questions of ethics didn't really exist because his motives were purely driven by his inquisitive nature. In this day and age, unfortunately, that isn't the case. One can never be sure of an individual's trustworthiness; in fact it is the danger in this technology being delivered into the wrong hands that is often a big argument for continuing research wherever it might lead, so that we might be able to combat the "Dr. Evils' of the future world when they discover the technology independently*. This was also the argument in the 1950's for continuing research on atomic weapons. I don't have to tell you where that led: Plutonium Injections, the 'Green Run', and all sorts of environmental clean-up issues that persist today.
I don't know how to stop the incredible hubris of people, now that pure scientists don't exist so much anymore, or if they do, are overshadowed by greedy and evil men, or utter fools. But I can set them all up for one massive 'told ya so'!
What I meant about those questions should not need to be raised: hypothetically, sure, but perhaps not in real life. My kids have a cousin who was born to two Moms... so far, so good. Oh! That made me think of a fleeting thought I had about an hour ago. Such births to me (sorry if I offend) are not about loving a child, they are about people having a child for themselves. I actually do consider such acts selfish ones. Creation of a child out of Love comes only from God. There goes the Luddite side of me again. I sincerely do not get all excited about the possiblities of cloning. Genetics, sure, but not cloning. I am not a religious man, but I like to think I know God a little, and I am pretty sure that the job of creating life is still best left to Him. We are bound to cock it up!
BTW, you will almost Never see me comment on Linux issues or servers, although I read the posts. Programming in perl will have to be done in a future life. heh, maybe my clone will pick up on it...
One more personal note: you should not post as an AC, you have too much to offer this forum, and unless astute moderators pick up on your posts and elevate them, we might never get to see them.
*- and the fact that, as it turns out, cloning is not much more difficult than IV fertilization makes it especially dangerous. Very few people today can build a back-yard H-bomb.
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Good Post. I read in Matt Ridley's book "Genome" about this and was fascinated by it. So I guess what you are saying is that it's like a zipper that doesn't zip all the way down, getting shorter with each replication. So using adult cells means that the DNA is already sonewhat burned down and thus will yield for a shorter-lived being. I didn't think that the end was strictly "A"s but some innocuous sequence.
Now back to the topic: inasmuch as scientists are finding that they cannot completely duplicate the entire genomic sequence for a single creature, doesn't this mean that unless they have a way to accurately determine that the DNA matches exactly that of the adult, then they cannot legally, ethically, or morally proceed to clone humans (and PETA soon will speak up on the creation of animal monsters, I imagine)? Forgive my use of the perjorative 'monsters', but it is exactly how I see it. In this month's Wired we see the battles between an artist and a biotech firm over a glowing rabbit - a rabbit whose genes were spliced with (or somehow infused with) fluorescing bacteria. IMHO the genetic scientists have already crossed moral barriers in their research, but I suppose there is little we can do simply because corporations Want this technology. In the meantime we have recalls on genetically-modified corn (star-link?) in Trader Joe's food stores here, but corps are fighting for their FrankenFoods...
*sigh* Coming from Florida as I do, I know of the dangers of scientists' (and corps) meddling with nature. We have kudzu, supposed to be a boon for feeding goats, but instead a rampant consumer of everything in its path ("you have to close your windows at night to keep it out of your house"); we have love bugs, which were bred for noble reasons, I'm sure; and we have recently, in the University of Florida, seen African Trout, imported to help process wastewater streams, take over the habitats of all other fish. In California we have mustard plants, and of course everyone knows the story of killer bees.
Not to stray too far off-topic, but it seems to me that we are headed for monstrous problems of biblical proportions, revealing the real lesson behind the parable of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Mankind cannot be trusted with this information, because he can't help himself, even though he call himself a responsible scientist. Books are filled with the folly of arrogance, from Frankenstein (and don't tell me that it doesn't fit here) to Robin Cook's Acceptable Risk.
..and I'm serious when I say this: "God help us all." Wow, I've become a Luddite in five minutes.
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Let me get this straight: the telomeres are nature's Copy Protection? At least we know now that the number of lawyers the RIAA and MPAA can throw at someone is finite.
There is not, at present, any reason to believe that telomerase is active in most cancer cells. Efforts to assay for it's activity have as yet come out negative or inconclusive. There are definitely cancers without active telomerase.
For those slashdotters without a background in genetics, let me explain - most linear DNA chromosomes (like in people) have a bunch of gibberish at each end; this is because, when you duplicate something in the way linear DNA is duplicated, you lose a little off of each end. Telomeres (of which there are thousands, as I recall, on the end of each chromosome) are duplicated by a different mechanism. So, when a cell copies it's DNA, a telomere is lost, and telomerase (in those cells in which it is active) comes in and tags on a replacement telomere. Unlike other parts of the chromosome, this telomere is not a copy of what is on the opposite strand; it is copied from a special template that the telomerase enzyme carries with it. In cells without active telomerase, if and when they divide (which most cells in your body are not supposed to do) the telomeres are lost - if the telomeres ran out you'd start losing DNA on the chromosome itself. However, there are so many telomeres that a tumor, for example, would have to grow to the size of a small city before this happened, so it's not an issue. However, for complicated reasons which, I'm afraid, you computer types really wouldn't understand, it may matter how MANY telomeres you have on each end of a chromosome - no one's exactly sure why, but turning on telomerase in mice definitely does SOMETHING, and it IS NOT preventing the mice from "running out" of telomeres.
However, it is commonly agreed that a shortage of telomeres, even though these clones may suffer from it, is not what is causing these immune deficiencies or the mental retardation in the cloned mice.
On a side note, the NYtimes article talked down too much. "Reprogram the DNA" my ass. That's simplified to the point of being BS.
I agree with other posters that people with no particular background in genetics can, and indeed should, comment on this highly important topic. Cloning, I think, is perfectly ethical in and of itself, but there are a number of ethical issues, including in particular the health of the young women used as egg donors, and of the treatment of clones who may be grown as organ farms, that arise about and around cloning and the opinions of people with no background in genetics are as valid as the opinions of the previous poster and myself.
Dr. Preatorious is a character from Frankenstein. I'm still a graduate student. Wouldn't want to mis-characterise.
2) Ethical. What will we, as a race, do with artifical humans? Slave labor? Spare organs? Don't think it can't happen; it's a human conceit that to create a thing is to control a thing.
The post you're replying to...it's trying to point out exactly why this isn't a problem. Slave labor...yeah ok... how does that follow? Because we can do an artificial insemination where the the DNA is (mostly) identical to someone else's? Why does it follow from that that someone would say, "hey, this person isn't really a full-fledged person"? Do we say that about any "test tube babies"? No. And, gee...the DNA was always coming from someone before anyway, it's just that now it's coming from one person instead of two. Whoopty-do. Clearly that means that nobody will think they're actually full-fledged humans with real identities and they'll sell them to make soylent green.
-- dR.fuZZo
If a human clone dies will the scientists be held responsible for murder? If a human clone gets experiences other medical problems as a result of the cloning process...would the scientists responsible for the cloning be responsible for abuse?
Just because we have the scientific capability for cloning doesn't necessarily mean we should do it.
An hour of hot rough monkey sex has less defects than a controlled sterile scientific enviroment?
But why would you want to replace something so flawed and imperfect with something equally problematic? The fields of mechanical and materials engineering are very rapidly advancing. If instead of pumping millions of dollars into this ridiculous, trivial genetic "engineering", imagine what could be done by putting the money into researching powerful, reliable mechanical replacements for imperfect biological organs.
Imagine a steel heart. It would not have to worry about being rejected by the body. "Oh no, I am being attacked by T-Cells!!" the strong, reliable, mechanized heart would say as it steadily and rapidly pumped an abundant supply of oxygen-rich blood to the entire body for the next 400 years.
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Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
Thank you. It's good to be appreciated and honored by my peers.
Instead of a super human race of clones taking over the world i think its going to be the old super intelligent robots..
Failing that there's always the talking Apes...
Conceiving a clone
6 days
360 degrees of Karma
Mini-me's DNA was clearly damaged by Dr. Evil's cloning process. This should serve as a warning for anyone else who would consider cloning themselves.
Who cares if Kournikova clone #1 goes defective after a while - just toss her out of bed and bring on #2 and #3. They're all the same y'know!
So I'd say this news is a good thing, if it means that the feasibility of creating human clones is delayed until the furor on both sides of the current debate has calmed down.
*** Work like a king, command like a slave, create like a dog.
Not to stray too far off-topic, but it seems to me that we are headed for monstrous problems of biblical proportions, revealing the real lesson behind the parable of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Mankind cannot be trusted with this information, because he can't help himself, even though he call himself a responsible scientist.
Well, this is only "god awful" from the perspective of humans. Think about the human race from a meta-stance. When kudzu takes over the habitat, we throw up our arms and say "oh, look what it did!". When we take over the habitat of, say, himalayan black bears and they face extinction, it's "oh well, we've got to live somewhere".
Introducing foreign species to habitats is destined to wreak havoc on those habitats, no question about that. However, it is dumb to think of nature in terms of status quo. Nature constantly adjusts and reworks its balanced structure. Today kudzu took over half the Southern US, tomorrow another organism will make use of this vast amount of food supply and kill off most of kudzu. The nature will find a way to regulate itself.
We, as humans, should be less concerned about "preserving nature", but really we should concern ourselves with the fact that we are making the environment unfriendly to the survival of our own species. Life has many forms and even if we screw the environment many times over, some sort of life will continue to exist. The problem is that Earth won't be suitable to sustain Homo Sapiens Sapiens and we will have to either live under glass roofs in an artificial environment, or modify ourselves in order to be able to survive in a new habitat.
Either way is rather grim, although some people wouldn't see anything wrong with genetic modifications (think X-men). :)
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Bullshit. There's all kinds of evidence that telomerase is active in the vast majority of cancers. Even the most cursory search on Medline will show this to be the case. Just a few references (of literally hundereds):
Telomeres (of which there are thousands, as I recall, on the end of each chromosome) are duplicated by a different mechanism. So, when a cell copies it's DNA, a telomere is lost,
The "telomere" normally refers to the entire structure.
However, for complicated reasons which, I'm afraid, you computer types really wouldn't understand
Yeah, whatever. So you're a graduate student, are you? Please tell me it isn't in mol bio or anything medicine related.
I respectfully disagree with your condescending statement that, in essence, someone without knowledge of a field may not comment on it. While I agree that scientific study often goes far afield of one person's ability to understand all of what goes on in a given esoteric specialized field, the fact that one may have an opinion on the ramifications of the research needs to be respected. In fact, scientists often lose perspective completely in their zeal to continue their research. In a field I know a little more about, recall that it was Einstein who wrote the letter to (Truman?) warning him of the dangers of nuclear research. Contrast him with Edmund Teller who scoffed at the concerned scientists and pushed hard for the "Super" as he called it (the H-Bomb). Some scientists are moral and some lose their heads, it's as simple as that, but for a person of average intelligence to be disqualified in commenting on, say, the above story is to allow for the possibility that the debate about the chickens becomes limited exclusively to wolves. I agree that there will always be uninformed opinions, but I would prefer to ignore them and go on with the discussion rather than shouting them down and humiliating them so as to teach others a lesson.
Thank you for clarifying those important points about cancer and the Adenine string, I suspected it was a little off, however interesting.
Anyway, cloning is not the END of the world, as neither are kudzu, killer bees, and love bugs. It is a powerful technology that has a great inherent danger, and it may very well lead to the end of the world as we know it. Already we are contemplating a world in which eating meat becomes somewhat rare, as a direct result of things such as cows eating their ancestors' brains (a genetically-related disease if I am not mistaken). Scientists are aware of these but it doesn't necessarily stop them. How are we (as uninformed script kiddies) to reconcile Wired magazine's recent cover article "You Again: A Human will be Cloned this Year" with the abovementioned article?
You sound like an informed source. What are your thoughts on the ethics of cloning in light of the current state of the art? It's more than just being able to stick a nanometer pipette into a nucleus. I agree that research should probably continue, but even though I am pro-choice, I shudder at the thought of creating cloned human life for any reason. Many are sanguine, including Matt Ridley. We experienced this sort of moral dilemma when we were able to make test tube babies, it is true (through a process much like cloning), and it is also true that we are all pretty much okay with that now. But with all the litigation about parental custody over frozen embryos and sperm today, with lesbian couples having children without the benefit of a father, you can't tell me it doesn't pose real and critical moral dilemmas.
Now we're going to get men who want to have their wife back at any price after she died in a car accident so he creates a girl out of his wife's DNA. Think about it - and very much in the Frankenstein sense, in the soliloquy where he confronts his creator on top of the mountain (highly recommended passage BTW, if not the whole book) - what Right did the good Doctor have to create the monster? And what claim does the man have over his daughter, er, baby wife, er, whatever he had created?
Some questions should not ever need to raised, do you agree?
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And so we need to examine the rules for playing God, what that is all about, and the reasons why we want to clone. Without examining this we leave ourselves open to all kinds of criticism, bullets, and other consequences. Of course, if you are a god, you might have the option of not caring, or you may care too much. Opinions vary.
Part of playing at a God in this is being totally responsible for the act and for the consequences. Now you will have some that will say "I want to do it, and not be responsible for the results." Aside from the illogic of this, there is a certain similarity to criminal thought that some will find disturbing.
So part of this is in determining what your definition of a God is, what is a god responsible for, etc.
You also have to determine why you are doing the clone in the first place.Why are you doing this?
You also have to determine the fate of the human result. This is very sticky because it gets into the abortion issues, and the fates of embryos, etc. And you have to decide your position on this, and the fate of the people if they are born. After all, there is the argument that you wouldn't try of some these things after the birth event.
You also have to inspect the fruits of all of these actions for all lines of consequences. It is very usual to argue towards a pre-defined end-result, putting on blinders to other consequences. Leading to the "I didn't know it was loaded" argument when things go bad. This leads into the political arguments about such things as cloned armies (star wars), body part banks, and paranoid visions from the third Reich.
Which means that you need to sort what is means to be a god to in order to cover all of the loose ends. Even if it is to say that you are not responsible for that disaster over there, that belongs to the henchmen.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
All of the fore mentioned errors are those of technique. Of course there are going to be problems, like any technology in its infancy. Just like there were problems (and still are) with organ transplants, there will be problems with cloning. That doesn't mean anything is inherently baaaaddd, which is what the article makes it out to be.
This is just another article to scare the general public. The media likes doing that, and this is laden with religious innuendoes and scenes from science fiction. Science has always been held up by those who don't understand it, those who don't want it (because of lost industry -- see the industrial revolution), and those who think it's evil for whatever arbitrary reason.
Cloning a person isn't anything bad, even if it doesn't work 100%. The natural body makes mistakes too, just look at all the birth defects, genetic disorders, etc. It's just matter, so what would be different?
I think cloning was an issue which was just another area of research in genetic engineering until it became a political issue on the back of candidate cards, and they let the average Joe-blow hole and his frizzy hair wife have their 20 seconds of fame telling the world how bad it is. Or the president who uses such creative analogies as "...the warning light on the dashboard of America." have his say in it.
Ultimately, human and animal cloning will become the norm., despite the "errors" of first generation technology. I don't see it hindered by it at all; More like annoyed. All we need now is someone to make the first step, which you know is going to happen, before cloning starts to happen en masse--pretty soon it'll be at your local hospital.
Then, there will be another issue for everyone to concentrate on (e.g. world keeps turning, life goes on, blah blah)...
Love the media and frizzy haired, completely homogeneous general population.
Here's some good reading material on cloning I thought I should share from bookmarks. I know I should've posted them before but caffiene deficiency will do that.
D.N.Army: the Implications of Human Cloning on Future Military Forces
Bioethics of Cloning
HumanCloning.org
I have a shitload more so if anyone wants any email me for em. (you surely can find my email address now can you)
Well I know it has little to do with Dolly, but many people have taken the wrong views and assumptions of what cloning really is.
Speedy's not a clone
360 degrees of Karma
Um unless you haven't had a full understanding of this, Dolly was supposed to be the perfect clone of a sheep. Maybe its me misreading or something, but DNA testing holds the fixes for bad DNA and its DNA which makes the building blocks for life. Cloning something out of the blue will not fix any imperfections within anythings DNA
Ever notice that those in support of cloning either have extraordinary gains from it, finances, a loved one who is sick or died. Ever notice how they;re the ones to wholeheartedly vie for cloning. Last time I saw anyone outside of these means say "Hey why not just make a clone for the hey of it" was.... never Am I allowed to infer or must my opinion on the matter be revoked because someone doesn't neccessarily like what I say, or maybe misinteprets or misunderstand it?
It was a misprint but now that you mention it, lets take a close DNA exam of a Panda, how its body is composed, what illnesses is it succeptable to and act from there, you don't neccessarily need to clone an animal to save it if its endangered. You could study up on it and determine better situations for the remaining animals to survive in greater fashions.
You assume cloning will make things better whereas DNA is already there, its the building blocks of life not some copy or shoddily produce replica of it. So heres for your arguments sake...
Lets create say 10,000 clones to create, watch as they grow, learn, etc. Then lets watch these people (remember they're still people your clones) suffer through sicknesses and diseases while we play with copying life.
You have such a great idea
360 degrees of Karma
We have what, 6 billion people on this planet? Which is ,oh say,... 5 billion too many. Is cloning people something we should even be thinking about? Let's maybe think about issues like overpopulation, disease, and poverty before we start artificially create people to suffer from these problems.
...you are supposed to put your DNA_FTP client into binary mode before doing the copy. Just reformat the sheep and do the copy again--it'll work, trust me.
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324006
Before Linux's debut in 1991, scientists thought UNIX could not be cloned.
"With cloning a UNIX, you are asking a kernel to recompile in minutes or, at most, in hours," said Dr. Echalan, a professor of CS at the Whitbread Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "That's where the major problem is."
Some scientists say they shudder to think what might happen if Windows(TM) is cloned with today's techniques. While arguments over the ethics of cloning Windows have dominated the debate, these scientists say the real issue is the likelihood that clones would have source abnormalities that could result in stable and reliable operation. Until that problem is solved, they say, cloning Windows should be out of the question.
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The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
Some corrections to your post:
Telomeres are not just Adenine repeats - you're thinking of the "Poly-A" tails added to mRNA transcripts after DNA transcription. They *are* however, AT rich (i.e. composed of more Adenines and Thiamines than Cytosines and Guanines).
Also, the presence of telomerease in NOT the standard definition of cancer, although cancer cells certainly must have a way of preventing telomere degradation. There is a LOT of other important cellular machinery that also goes wrong in cancer, and thus you simply cannot sum up and "define" cancer so easily.
The effect of telomere maintenence is not fully understood yet. Mouse cells with telomerase expressed when it normally isn't DO live for quite a long time, certainly much longer than normal mice somatic cells, but NOT forever.
In any case, cloning will NOT be the end of the world, nor will genetic engineering, as so many on Slashdot predict. If people are going to make statements about the effects of a field, they'd do best to actually have some knowledge in that field (like the author of the parent post) rather than a bunch of code-monkeys who can hack Perl and then think they know more about nature, genetics and the enivronment than people who've spent most of their lives studying it.
Sincerely,
Kevin Christie
kwchri@wm.edu
The article really sounds like it was designed to dissuade people from ever cloning a human. The first page did sound like reasonable scientific presentations, but once I got to the second page, with its grotesque descriptions and subtle language tricks, it really is obvious that this is simple anti-cloning propaganda.
I don't think I buy the argument that it is really the 'rapid' duplication causing the problems, although it can certainly be one source of error. There is already a substantial body of scientific evidence of DNA deteriorating over time within a healthy organism. Every time a cell divides, errors are introduced, and every genetic error increases the possibility of a medical problem.
When you clone an animal, you are starting with 'corrupted' DNA, which understandably causes a lot of problems after further duplication. This was thought to be the source of many of the problems with 'Dolly' the sheep.
This problem could be possibly be solved by using DNA extracted from the very young.
But, of course, the article doesn't want you to consider this as a possibility, and uses subtle language to undermine the credibility of those who may support the cloning of humans.
For example, after decrying the evils of human cloning, they say that there are scientists proposing the cloning of humans (Dr. Zavos and Dr. Antinori) but that "Academic scientists say they would not dare to think of cloning a human at this time." Are these two not academic? Then why was their recent workshop sponsored by a Rome university? Zavos is even a Professor Emeritus from the University of Kentucky. His credentials are solid, but the article attempts to paint him as a quack.
The end of the article reminds us that House hearings will be starting shortly regarding human cloning. Is this a bit of a 'call-to-arms' by the NYTimes?
Each time the cell divides, the telomeres get shorter. The the DNA strands aren't copied all the way to the end, and they down like a fuse. Right next to the telomeres is vital metabolic proteins, so when the telomeres are exhausted the next cell division damages those genes and kills the cell. This is, fundamentally speaking, the cell's aging process.
There's an enzyme called telomerase that protects the telomeres during cell division so they don't get shorter. This means cells with this enzyme in them can divide an unlimited number of times. In the body, this is used during early fetal delopent, for the production of sex cells (so the next generation doesn't die sooner than the previous one), and in a few other places like bone marrow stem cells where unlimited cell division is pretty much required to keep the blood supply up.
The presence of telomerase in any other cell is pretty much the definition of cancer. Cancer cells divide an unlimited number of times because they have a genetic flaw that switches on the gene for telomerase, which is present in most cells but not enabled. (This is why testicular cancer and lukemia are so common: those cells use telomerase normally, so if their division process gets damaged and runs out of control they don't die off. There's no such thing as a benign bone marrow tumor, it won't use up all its cell divisions and die off normally.)
The problem with cloning is you're starting from a cell that's already aged, and so has shorter telomeres. The baby starts out with a much shorter lifespan, and a much slower healing process because its cells don't divide as easily (due to shorter telomeres being a smaller target for the division triggering enzymes to find).
What you need to make a good clone is some way to repair the telomeres AFTER they've already partially burned down. Gluing extra AAAAA sequences onto the end of each gene.
Active telomere reconstruction basically requires nanotechnology. On the bright side, it would be about 50% of the way to extending human lifespans indefinitely. (Limited cell division's half the problem. The other half is that our DNA is a recipe, not a blueprint, which means that it lists the steps required to make something but not what the finished product should look like. With a blueprint, you can fix the finished product because you know what it should look like. With a recipe, you have to start over from the beginning and build a new one, and see what you get.)
Now you know where my email address comes from. :)
Rob
Some of the things people tend to either overlook, ignore, or just not know, is that cloning is not creating a perfect replication of life of any form. These findings will now support this.
Misconceptions:
We may be able to cure cancer if cloning leads to a better understanding of cell differentiation. Theories exist about how cloning may lead to a cure for heart attacks, a revolution in cosmetic surgery, organs for organ transplantation, and predictions abound about how cloning technology will save thousands of lives.
Wrong DNA testing will hopefully address issues surrounding health and anyone who uses cloning as an argument is blind to science and the real truth surrounding cloning.
Medical tragedies - Many people have suffered accidental medical tragedies during their lifetimes. Read about a girl who needs a kidney, a burn victim, a girl born with cosmetic deformities, a man who needs a liver, a women who is infertile because of cancer, and a father who lost his only son.
Assumptions and statements such as this are thrown in the loop by those who are in power to gain financially by supporting cloning by attempting to empathize with those suffering.
All these people favor cloning and want the science to proceed. To cure infertility - Infertile people are discriminated against. Men are made to feel like they are not "real men." Women are made to feel as if they are useless barren vessels. Worse, being infertile is often not considered a "real medical problem" and insurance companies and governments are not sympathetic.
Again when dealing with situations like this, people are apt to just fall wholeheartedly into ideas presented by people without knowing underlying factors. No scientist who expects to gain finances will tell someone "We can create a beautiful person who looks like your son, but he will still have all the issues that killed him in the first place for $30,000.00"
Endangered species could be saved - Through the research leading up to human cloning we will perfect the technology to clone animals, and thus we could forever preserve endangered species, including human beings.Animals and plants could be cloned for medical purposes - Through the research leading up to human cloning, we should discover how to clone animals and plants to produce life-saving medications.
Personally I think DNA research is a better solution. Many people think of cloning as something of a Unix command:
for file in * ; do cat TOBECLONED | sort | uniq | grep -v PROBLEMS >> NEWTHING
Samples were taken from HumanCloning.org
crackbabies cloned
360 degrees of Karma