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.
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
If you can get your representative to draw a distinction between therapeutic cloning (make young healthy cells to repair damage in the host) and reproductive (make a baby), hats off to ya. Want to go for the jackpot? Explain it to the satisfaction of the religious right. I agree with your position, but adopting it would lose a congressman votes among the enormous "no attention for an argument longer than a bumper sticker" constituency.
As for the posts which talk about the weaker DNA and shortened life of clones, RTFA! There's a difference between cloned embyonic cells and cloned adult cells. But try explaining that to Slashdot. Much cleverer to say "Three thumbs up for cloning!" or the like and move on to other matters.
According to the Scientific American article (which you should read now), the company, Advanced Cell Technology, is not pursuing research on reproductive cloning. What they are pursuing is research on therapeutic cloning. Without going into details (go read the article), what this will eventually allow researchers to do is grow organs, tissues, etc. from the intended receipient's own stem cells. The stem cells are created using cloning. If this becomes reality, the benefits will be huge. It's called "regenerative medicine" (quoting their CEO) for a reason.
Reproductive cloning is more difficult. While the first stage is the same - insert new DNA into egg, prompt the start of division - reproductive cloning has many more steps required to create a baby. First of all, as far as I know, babies can't be grown in vitro, so you have to implant the cloned egg into a mother. There is massive potential for danger here, not only to the growing embryo but also to the mother. Furthermore, there are issues that have yet to be resolved, such as the possibility that cloned DNA is already "aged," leading to shorter life for the cloned person or animal. Neither of these absolutely critical issues is even touched by this research. Reproductive cloning is a long, long way off.
On the other hand, it appears therapeutic cloning is making much progress. I for one am excited by the possibilites, and I think that any legislative reaction to this research is purely reactive and would ignore the facts. I see no ethical problems with this research whatsoever, and neither did the ethical board overseeing this research.
-SymphonicMan
Thank you for insulting my intelligence.
There are millions of ways of advancing science. I'm arguing that there are better areas to focus our engergies - studies that will actually further society. I'm arguing that in this area not only would we "not benefit" from this, but that it would "add problems" because of the reasons I mentioned earlier. Just because we CAN doesn't mean we SHOULD. Your "forest" analogy has nothing to do with my statements. Humanity is more important then Science - period. Our decisions MUST be human centered, not "geekocentric".
"Why develop the integrated circuit, when I have a slide rule?".
You should review your debate tactics. It is intellectually dishonest to take an argument against a particular scientific advancement and generalize it as an argument against any scientific advancement. It is ludicrous to assume that I, a Computer Scientist, want to hinder scientific advancement.
Please focus on my core contention. I'm not necessarily against cloning specific cells or the research behind it. I'm against cloning humans as a species. It's called Responsible Science(tm).
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
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.