Britain Approves Human Cloning

albat0r writes: "The scientific community in Britain scored a huge victory on February 27th. A very influential and powerful committee in the House of Lords ruled that embryo cloning should be allowed to proceed-but only under strict conditions. The United States currently has ban on all forms of human cloning."

Comments

"Embryo"

[Nyphur]

"Human embryo cloning" is exactly what it says - the cloning of the human embryo. I do not believe they will be permitted to keep leving foetal clones. Though, the study of embryotic Stem cells is invaluable, in my opinion.

Re:Hmm..

[billcopc]

Does this mean there will be a (black) market for aborted fetuses ? I don't like the idea of a bunch of whores selling their unborn babies.

Re:It begins

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there american scientists? I thought all american scientists were actually born in Europe (von Braun, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Fermi, etc.)... :P

Seriously now, scientists already travel a lot, you know? This isn't going to make them "start travelling".

Since natural selection has ceased to work in human society, I think the only way our species is going to improve is through genetic engineering, so I agree with all research in that area. I think the USA will come to its senses sooner or later and lift the ban (in fact, there is probably some reasearch going on in military labs and kept secret from the public - as usual).

Re:Hmm..

[Monkelectric]

probably because a signifigant portion of the prison population is infected with HBV (heptatitus B).

Hmm yourself..

[skilef]

Last year, they became the first country to explicitly allow the creation of embryos as a source of stem cells.

In my opinion creation of embryos is equivalent to cloning of human beings. Cloning stem cells themselves is virtually impossible for now, since human cells are virtually impossible to culture, with HeLa-cells (and some other cancer cells) as an exception..

Re:No, it just continues

[A coward on a mouse]

I didn't say genetic engineering was "wrong", I merely stated that natural selection is still operating.

You may be right that there are checks on its operation, but it *is* still operating. For instance, you say that smarter people reproduce at a lower rate than others. That leads to the conclusion that natural selection currently favors those who have lots of children without thought to the economic or social consequences.

I know several women who would like to have children, but are incredibly picky about their mates: either he's not interesting enough (read: he's a nice boy) or he's an asshole (read: he's not a nice boy). These women are old enough now that their chances of finding mates and reproducing are pretty low; they are being selected against for their inability to (a) have respect for men that show them respect, (b) put up with men that don't show them respect, or (c) take the risk of having children without the aid of a co-parent.

Considering the severity of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, not to mention other diseases (TB, West Nile, drug-resistant Flu strains, etc., etc.), it would seem to me that humankind is still locked in an evolutionary race with various pathogens. If half of sub-Saharan Africa dies of AIDS, those who were exposed to but never contracted HIV will have been selected for.

Another example is the steady decline in sperm count. Some couples that have trouble conceiving have the money for expensive fertility treatments, but they are the minority even in the developed world, moreso when you include the rest of humanity. So, those men with low sperm counts are being selected against.

You don't offer any evidence that we are genetically identical to the Ancient Egyptians, and even if we were, a few thousand years is as nothing to the process of natural selection. Using this argument would be tantamount to saying that the continents haven't drifted considerably since then so therefore tectonic theory is a crock.

Stephen Jay Gould and others have amply demonstrated that evolution operates in fits and starts; the idea that evolution proceeds at a steady pace is at odds with the best science we've produced on the subject. It may be that we are not currently evolving at a rapid rate, but to infer from that that natural selection has ceased operating is hubris in the highest degree.

Face it, natural selection is here to stay. Until we have eliminated murder, accidental death, and all diseases from the world, and legislated that couples will be paired randomly, that all couples will have exactly two children (this will necessitate advances in fertility medicine to allow sterile individuals to have children), that is. You let me know when all of this has taken place, and I will concede the point.