Slashdot Mirror
First Cloned Human Embryo
Human cloning, or at least the production of human embryos, is no longer hypothetical; a company called Advanced Cell Technology claims to have successfully done just that. DivideX0 writes: "The Scientific American has this article. Note the research was conducted in the U.S. although there are bills pending in Washington that will ban this research." There's also a story at MSNBC. Update: 11/25 16:07 GMT by T : Here's ACT's press release as well.
Can you tell me any biological difference between clones and twins? (besides the fact that they were done at the same time)
Identical twins are the same person at birth who have different events in life that alter their personalities and responses to shape a new individual.
This doesn't frighten me at all. No 'soul' bullshit, because if there are souls, then it's a new one in the clone, not the same one. This has a lot of potential for good, and I don't know of much that doesn't have it for bad too. So let's all relax and think before we cry 'OH DEAR GOD SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN'.
Unfortunately it looks like the debate in the US senate is going to be very one sided, and the senate will vote like the house did and pass a bill banning cloning research in broad strokes...including the research that was just announced, which is not meant to clone entire human beings, but an effort to conduct stem cell research to produce transplantable organs by taking dna from a patient and cloning compatible organ cells, to reduce the risk of rejection.
The long term plan for this company is to be able to use a synthetic process and skip the reproductive cells altogether, but to get there there needs to be intense research on how the stem cell process works, so that a organ specific process can be developed, which doesn't run the ethical risk of creating a whole person if some cells were quickly stolen from the lab and placed in a womb.
I find it somewhat ironic that so much research goes on with materials that have the potential to kill large amounts of human life...but research with the potential to create human life is so strongly opposed.
-jef
It's a shame Michael Shermer's article on ethics isn't online. Shermer finds most objections to cloning to be variations on "that's God's provenance and we shouldn't go there" which he finds absurd. "If God meant us to fly, we'd have wings" and such. Very thought-provoking, whether you agree with him or not.
If you find cloning interesting, I recommend getting the back issue.
You shouldn't mix up science fiction with reality. There's nothing scary happening here. By definition, cloning does not create something new but merely duplicates something existing. The debate when something becomes 'human life' is a pure relegious debate. From a scientific point of view however, there were never more than just the cells. You have one cluster of cells, you split it and you have two clusters of cells. If it happens under natural circumstances you call the end result a twin. If you help nature a little, some people suddenly think of it as Frankenstein's monster.
Apart from all the technical details, the cloning process is somthing like: take an egg, replace DNA with DNA of choice, grow the embryo, split the embryo, proceed using mother nature's own processes. From a religious point of view this is not even supposed to be possible but the end result is kind of hard to deny (challenging the assumptions that underly some religions). However, most relegions rely on ignorance anyway so I doubt that this development will affect them in anyway.
In any case, when my liver/kidney/heart/whatever fails I would be very pleased if a backup part, constructed from my own cells, would be available rather than having to rely on third party provided parts. Everyday lots of people die because there are no donor organs available. And even if there is a donor organ it is uncertain whether the transplantation will succeed. This technology could be a great contribution to a solution to this problem.
Jilles
You know, we have been artificially generating human beings since human life began on this planet. And the "potential for harm" is tremendous. Just think of this, every criminal that ever lived was created by an action of two other human beings, that is, by definition, an "artificial" creation.
Interestingly, not a single one of those criminals has ever been produced in a lab. So, the ethical problem is not "where and how will we create new human beings", the TRUE ethical question we must face is "how do we raise the human beings we create".
You obviously didn't read the article. They aren't cloning humans.
What they are doing is human cell cloning, which is hardly unethical. This is on the same ethical level as commonplace tissue transplants. They are not making embryos, but simply cells that can then be used to patch up damaged tissue in aging or diseased adults.
I think this sounds like a great idea - and with further research will beat the pants off the barely successful Frankenstein-like system of transplanting tissue between humans that we use now. The person instead gets their own copied cells.
Please take the time to really think about what this mean before jumping to conclusions.