Slashdot Mirror
First Human Clone Eight Weeks Along
Vegeta99 writes "An Italian researcher is claiming ground-breaking progress, and has successfully cloned a human, and the mother is now 8 weeks pregnant, according to this article. Now how long until I can buy my own clone?" It's worth noting that the Roman medical associations bioethicists denied Dr. Antinori permission to proceed with these experiments last month. So doing the math, Rome was a little late... If the pregnancy continues without miscarriage, the tyke may share a birthday with Marie Curie
This is not going to end well...
"I hope they legalize drugs so you hurry up and fucking die." Charles Bronson (the band, not the man)
Nice.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
They're simply time-shifted identical twins!
-e
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
Clone: Hello! I'm #15
Cute Chick: Well hello hansome! What star sign are you?
Clone: Pyrex
Cute Chick: Ohhh baby!
And things go downhill from there.
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
I just might get a first post:) Probably not, since I'm going to put some content here, but it's a nice thought.
I must say I'm a little torn on the issue. It's great if the technology can grow livers and hearts and kidneys and bone marrow and what have you, but I'm not sure there's any good reason to clone entire people. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out, in any event.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
What is this? Apocalypse hour on Slashdot? First the story on the implantable microchips, now clones...
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
All Mammal clones possible so far are FEMALE!
You will never see this fact cited ever in a non-journal article.
I have looked carefully in every news release since the original Dolly wave of press hysteria.
Cloning will never be popular or interesting until telomere ends can be repaired in the zygote to prevent bio-clock failures (aging too fast).
Cloning will also never be popular unless the person paying for the service (a rich white or asian male) can replicate himself, or his son.
You read it here first... In 2002 only female mammals are capable of being cloned.
(maybe they try to reduce rna conflicts from differring mitochondrial dna)
These clones only clone the genes in the chromosomes alone and not the mitochondrial entities (entombed bacteria from billions of years ago in evolution).
I think that some people, when they hear the word "clone" used, they immediately think that it is literally a clone -- the same appearance, the same likes, dislikes, etc. However, that isn't the case -- it is just a clone on the genetic level. The child will grow up and have different experiences, will probably look different, like different things, etc.
Think twins. Sorta.
It is ever-so-slightly worrying that the doctor in question, Severino Antinori, admitted in a press conference that Dolly, the cloned sheep, was suffering from premature aging. His defence, that the experiments were not conducted well, and that sheep cloning is vastly different to human cloning, does not inspire confidence.
This child (presuming it survives) is nothing more than a guinea pig for Dr. Antinori's ego. Will this child be able to live a normal life? No. Look at Dolly -- how many tests do you think she goes through on a daily basis?
Whilst I am reluctant to encourage animal testing, would it not be better for those in the same field as Dr. Antinori to perfect cloning of non-humans before moving onto humans? It seems the doctor is in a hurry to stake his name in history. If he is not careful, he'll get his wish, but it will appear closer to Josef Mengele than Marie Curie.
I suppose wanting to drive thing to the edge of what's possible is something that is built into human beings, but, in the case of cloning I think this just is irresponsible. Aside from all the ethical stuff (Like in The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin) chances are that the child won't live long because on DNA level the child is as old as the mother, but there are no definitive conclusions on that. All in all I think it unacceptable to perform such extreme experiments un children (or animals) who don't have a say in their treatment.
If only human beings knew their limits when messing around with technology some of the worst atrocities wouldn't have happened, but some revolutionary things that have enabled to prolong life and welfare on higher age wouldn't be discovered either. Fortunately I am no philosopher, or I would be driven mad when trying to decide whether technology is a blessing or a curse.
Quote from Blade Runner:
Replicants are like any other machine, they are either a benefit or a hazard, if they are a benefit it is not my problem.
Just because you deem it unethical doesn't mean I do.
What's so fucking terrifying about it? I'm not being facetious or trolling here. Seriously, what's so bad about it?
I don't see it as any more unnatural than testtube babies which have been aroud for a long time and no one seems to have any problem with it.
Clones WILL grow up to be their own individuals, just like identical twins do. It's not the freakshow the movies portray it as. So... why not?
You think they would have learned from those damned sheep. The clone's chromosomes are the same as the person they were taken from. Which means they will be born with already damaged and shortened chromosomes. This will mean further complications down the road for the child at a much earlier age, not to mention all the psyche help the kid is gonna need. I know im gonna get hit for this one.... First Post!!!
And why would you be indistinguishable from a clone. Random DNA mutations *do* occur, and the longer you are alive, the more 'copy errors' start showing up in your DNA. So if you look in close enough detail, there will always be differences.
The selection process, for one.
Once the technique is perfected, we'll have a supermarket of acceptable clone sources. Which person do you wish to clone? The smart one or the dumb one? The beautiful one or the plain one? The white one or the black one?
And, given the choice, would you rather have a child the natural way, or a clone of someone with admirable genes?
First of all: I do not believe this is actually true. Antinori really isn't better at cloning then the Roslin Institute, and they usually have a few hundred miscarriages for every successful pregnancy. Presuming Antinori did not have a few hundred women standing by to be impregnated, he really is very lucky to have a 100% success rate.
But anyway: Let's just assume this is an actual clone. Evidence is now coming through showing that dolly isn't quite as healty as we first expected.
Apparently she ages a lot faster, and has a number of diseases. Now imagine that, when the baby is born ('prototype clone'), (s)he starts getting all types of horrible diseases, limbs missing and what have you. That is when Joe Schmoe will understand you just can't copy people like you can copy a CD. Too bad someone has to suffer for it.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
And, given the choice, would you rather have a child the natural way, or a clone of someone with admirable genes?
;-)
The natural way please. There's more jiggy jiggy
With Dolly the sheep, the 'failure rate' was running at over 150:1 success.
The failure rate was mostly failures to implant, spontaneous abortions as well as some very deformed births; mostly some that died in a few days, and some that were euthanised.
If this translates into humans in the same way, for every successful clone we can expect several deformed, live, births.But there are questions as to whether Dolly is really 'successful'; the sheep is suffering from arthritis at an unusually young age for example. If you accept this as a cloning problem, then the failure rate runs at 100%.
Ignoring the ethics of successful cloning; given this deformation rate, given we do not allow euthenasia of human infants; is this really ethical right now?
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Prison should beckon for all involved.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
But then again won't this just even things up a little, with poorer less educated people having tons of kids.
apart from that rather obvoius troll, won't this be a good thing, natural selection isn't what it
used to be is it?
The ability to pass genes on is no longer limited to those that are best suited to survive (the fittest).
So what is the modern day equivalent of survival of the fittest?
Won't the race be improved?, especially if we could raise the average IQ a little, after all the traditional model would have had Steven Hawking eaten by a dinosour and his intellectual value would not have been realised.
(yes I know we wern't around with the dinosours, please it's just a way of emphasising a point)
Hey the world survived not being flat, not being the centre of the universe, revolving around the sun instead of the other way around, Darwin, nuclear science, space travel, television, the internet, the turn of the millenium etc. All this despite hords of hysterical people proclaiming it would be the end of the world as we know it. Just because large groups of people all believe the same doesn't make it true.
..). Up until now they were able to hide behind the illusion that humans are somehow different from animals (which from a biological point of view is nonsense, it's just another mammal). Other mammals have been cloned succesfully so from a scientific point of view cloning a human being is not a significant step forward. Of course there are technological problems (most notably the large amount of cloning attempts needed to perform one successful clone) with the procedure but as scientists continue to do research these problems will be resolved eventually.
Cloning is just another technology. What's hard to swallow for religious people is that it shouldn't be possible to do according to their beliefs and being proven wrong might have consequences for the validity of other things they belief (like having a soul, reincarnation, heaven, getting access to 70 virgins if you blow yourself up in a shopping centre,
Technology by itself is not bad. However certain applications of it can certainly be evil. A box of matches can be used to light a candle and it can be used to set fire to a house full of people. Does that make the box of matches evil technology? Of course not! Similarly cloning has a lot of applications where it's use would be beneficial. I, for instance, would love to have a clone of my heart available when my own one needs replacement in a couple of decades (not entirely unlikely given the number of heart deseases in my family). Of course I wouldn't want to kill a full grown living and breading clone of me to obtain that heart but that may very well be unnecessary.
There are religious and ethical people who want to attach full human rights to arbitrarily small clusters of human cells (fertalized eggs, tiny embryo's, etc.). From a scientific point of view this is of course complete nonsense. Based on this they would consider it murder if such tiny clusters of cells are manipulated. However, often the same people eat meat (requires killing of much larger clusters of non human cells) and have no problems with getting rid of annoying insects, which is very inconsistent to say the least.
Jilles
What would the Pope say?
La vita no e bella
Cloning humans bad
Looks likes its confirmed: slashdotters will finally be able to reproduce. Kinda. Of course, I didn't say anything about getting laid....
throw new CloneNotSupportedException();
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I've always wondered about finger prints.. perhaps this will shed some light.
If you're referring to the finger prints on your hands (as opposed to DNA finger prints) and you mean "Will they be the same on the clone?" then... probably not. Identical twins can have different finger prints because of differing environments, etc. I don't see why it would be any different for other types of clones (yes, I consider identical twins clones, they were just cloned at the embryo stage). In fact, the environment of the clone will be *very* different to the environment the adult it was cloned from developed in so I'd expect the difference to be even larger. But, I'm not a doctor so I could be wrong.
Such research often borders on medical research which arguably is beneficial to a lot of people. A lot of drugs used to persuade people into confessing stuff is based on research that might very well be used to treat people with mental disorders for instance.
The technique of an electric chair is obviously intended to kill human beings. But does that make electicity bad? You might argue that such a chair is specifically designed to kill but not destroy the body, however I counter that that knowledge has also been used to slaughter cattle in a less cruel way. Electric chairs are typically considered cruel instruments in most of the so-called civilized world (except for isolated parts of the world where state approved lynching is still being practiced).
Jilles
I agree with you in that technology isn't inherently bad, but there are certain technologies that shouldn't be tested *too* soon. Lot's of peopleare afraid of genetic engineering, but mankind has been doing that since who knows how long. Only then it is called breeding (animals) and ??? (plants and crops). But cloning is a bit different in my opinion; not because they now do it on humans, but more because they still don't have a clue about *how* DNA works. I mean we know a few things, but there's a whole lot more than we don't know. SO it's far too early to start messing around!
No, that should be reason to "mess with these things". You make it sound like this is some hack mixing DNA in pails in his garage.
Progress in medicine depends on experimentation. We'd still have shamans if people weren't willing to take risks and explore the unknown.
-Kevin
He has 500 women available for his experience! I am pretty sure he had his share of failure, miscarriage, abortion...
Nowhere is it said he has 100% rate, on the contrary. The first weeks are the one where he is most likely to have trouble, so after 8 weeks, chances are good that the baby is healthy and will get to term...
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
I agree that technology by itself is not bad. However, the process that is followed to develop the technology can be. IMHO Experimenting on humans to refine a new technology is not a good thing.
The point is, this experiment is being done knowing that the child produced could suffer physically in a similiar manner to the other clone experiments. Think about this from a personal standpoint. Picture being an 8 year old child who has a 80 year old body. Yes, there is a genetic condition which causes rapid aging of the cells, but in your case, it was not an acident of nature. You are just a test. They knew there were things they did not understand that were still going wrong when they made you. Rather than doing more tests to determine what were the causes of the failures, they just decided to roll the dice, make a mutant, become famous, and hope that you had the grace to die quickly, quietly, and with only a little pain.
I think the scientist should be executed the same day as the experiment dies because of "unforseen" defects. Yes, the human birth experience is a roll of the dice, but in this case, the scientist rolling the dice is doing it with the knowledge that there is next to no chance that things will turn out just fine. It would be another issue if we understood and corrected the problems with the other clones.
I personally have nothing against the idea of cloning. I do have a problem when science willfully ignores the individual upon which it inflicts suffering.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
This announcement has got to be worth a good $15M in ticket receipts for Ep.2.
Cool, now I can "back-up" myself :D
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
The main ethical thing I've seen that worries me, is the damage done to the chromosomes (or whatever) during cloning, which could cause health problems. I thought I read that the cloned animals were having some problems. Introducing a human into the world that would be burdened by cloning-caused illnesses is just plain wrong.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Nope. purely genetical. In fact one gene alone in the y-cromosome(which women don't have) makes a man.
The DNA for Linus, the well known operating system developer is now available as open source. This has taken the open source movement by storm as the possibilities of Linus clones become fully realised.
"Normal operating system developers suffer greatly from obsessive compulsive disorders, which causes many problems with other team members. Now we have access to the DNA for Linus, we are able to determine the causes of these disorders, and develop a fix" said Dr Jeckal, a leading expert in developer cloning.
Microsoft, who have no plan to make Bill Gates DNA available to the public have been strongly opposed to this idea.
"Imagine a world where every operating system was designed by a slightly different Bill Gates, each with its own quirks and eccentricities. It would be total chaos."
Microsoft are currently fighting a court case in which Sun, Oracle, Netscape and RedHat are all demanding access to Bill Gates DNA.
"How can we possibly compete with Microsoft unless we are able to clone our own version of Bill to run on our projects."
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
From what I remember reading, the major features of fingerprints - the locations of whorls, ridges etc - ARE genetically determined, but the details are not... You'd of course expect clones to have the same degree of similarity as identical twins in this respect (although due to different mitochondrial DNA, clones could be said to be less alike than idential twins - they'd have different metabolisms).
Eh, no.
Each ovum has an X chromosome. Each spermatozoa has an X xor Y chromosome. The only determiner of sex in baby mammals (and in birds afaik, as well) is which, of set (X,Y) chromosome the fertilizing spermatozoa carries. XX = female, XY = male (okay, this occasionally breaks, creating humans with XXY, XYY, etc combinations. If you want to know more, I highly recommend google.
For a clone, the *only* determiner of sex is the sex of the original cell, which will *always* be the same sex as the original donor.
There is evidence that temperature (as well as the amount of time between coitus and ovulation, and a few other things) affects the likelihood that a particular ovum will be fertilized by X-bearing or Y-bearing sperm in humans, and I suppose a similar thing could happen with chickens, but while I know of many lower animals (amphibians are, I believe, the highest order animals that do this) change sex in response to environmental change, I know of no birds or mammals that do so.
So two people with the same DNA will obvious not be reproducing in the usual way.
There have been experimental techniques involving fusing the genetic material in two ovum, and if this was used to produce offspring that had the same genetic-mother (or genetic-father, if a similar technique could be used for sperm, but that problem is more complex) then what would happen would depend largely on the genetic specifics of the person(s) involved. But the same thing could be done with two ova from a (non cloned) woman, so...
Yes. Human cloning.
This excuse for a doctor has gone against all laws to do this. He's just wanting to get something to experiment on and get his name in the papers. The man is another Mengele and should be treated as such.
Grab.
It reminds me of a survey once down about drug use. People were asked, "if drugs became legal tomorrow, would you use them?" 90% said no. Then when asked, "If drugs became legal tomorrow, would your neighbor use them?" 70% said yes.
Why are people so eager to believe their fellow human is more likely to do somthing they wouldn't do? Why are people so afraid of the unknown?
Cat
Is the relaxing of moral views really such a good thing? Today we accept cloning. Tomorrow we accept euthanasia of clones who are not healthy. The day after, we accept killing old people who are not healthy. Then we accept killing all people with uncurable diseases. Sure, we have strenuous procedures and laws for all of these, but we're still guilty of clensing the human race. (Rememeber Hitler?)
These are all logical steps. Maybe not within 4 days, 4 years or 4 generations, but they are certainly possible.
The loss of high moral standards is not always a good thing.
Jonas Salk developed technologies which led to a vaccine for polio. With a vaccine you're injecting a weakened version of a dangerous virus into a person to combat that same virus. That to me seems terribly dangerous, yet its now one of the most basic elements of modern health care.
Both Fleming and Salk are examples of people cautiously exploring dangerous areas. I don't know that Antinori (the person responsible for this cloning attempt) did proceed cautiously. The United States, the Vatican and other governments share the blame for this however. They've banned research in the area and by doing so they've ensured that only the more cavalier will carry out investigations. Any suffering which does result from this is the fault of both Antinori and the governments who try to ban the research.
I'm not a biologist or doctor, but it seems to me the proper first steps would be the cloning of individual human cells then clusters of human cells and possibly functional organs. After problems were solved through these steps then it would be time to investigate a human clone, in the mean time perhapas diabetics could be cured with cloned pancreas tissue or people with heart disease aided with cloned heart tissue. We've jumped to the most lucrative possibilities of cloning but skipped over the most therapeutic.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
I read an article some time ago that Dolly the sheep had developed arthritis and was suffering from obesity, both of these conditions being extremely rare for her age.
This person that has been created may suffer from intense health problems. I consider this action to be extremely unwise, as it will play into the hands of extremists seeking a ban.
I personally would like to see cloning technology developed, but used on humans only when it is both safe and effective.
What makes a man, is it the power in his hands?
Is it his quest for glory?
What makes a man, is it the woman in his hands,
Just 'cause she has big titties?
Or is it the way, he fights every day?
No, it's probably the titties!
Now you're a MAN! (MAN!)
Now you're a MAN! (MAN!)
Now you're a MAN! (MAN!)
MAN MAN MAN MAN M-A-N MAN
YOU'RE A MAAAAAAWWWWWWWNNNNNNNN!
Now you're a MAN!
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
The main problem is that many clones are deformed or stillborn. In lab animals this is not a problem; there's always another rat/pig/sheep to try. But in humans this is a disaster. It is not considered ethical to kill a baby if it has a severe deformity, so the carrying of clones to term creates the prospect of another thalidomide-type case, with hundreds or thousands of handicapped children produced.
Furthermore, most cloned embryos are miscarried on implantation, so this is a low-percentage gamble at best.
Sure, when it's perfected then it'll be a great technique for childless couples - as you say, just bcos someone's got the same DNA as you, it doesn't mean they'll be anything like you in personality. But until they've got it right, it's just too damn risky.
Grab.
Well, I am not religious and still believe that cloning is a bad idea.
Why? Well, not because it is "evil," but because I fear that it endangers basic democratic principles like human dignity. Think GATTACA, without the happy end. There are also biological consequences of cloning, like the reduction of biodiveristy.
My concern is mostly that everyone is excited about the possiblities of genetic technologies (as am I), but there is no real public discussion about the long-term social and biological consequences of the use of technologies, except the religious concerns that you've mentioned. In other words, one of my major fears is the fact that so many religious arguments are used in the public debates concerning genetic technology, and that valid scientific concerns are silenced alongside with the religious critics.
Exactly. Yet whenever someone criticizes cloning, they are silenced as some religious freak who dimisses technology and wants to halt progress. I am not opposed to the technology that allows cloning, I am opposed to its application for cloning. I am certain that the same technology allows many legitimate medical uses, like the growing of human organs for implantation you've mentioned, and should be used for those.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Human cloning will destroy the human genome by introducing hideous genetic mutation into the gene pool at an ever increasing rate. We may be able to struggle our way out but "homo-sapiens" will become extinct. So lets come up with a scientific name before the clone geeks do...here are my ideas..
Homer Sapiens
HS-V2R1
Homo-XP
Homo OhNo
What's the legal problem? The original person is one individual, the clone is another separate individual. No matter how strongly you may object to my continued existence, there's nothing you can do about it within the law! ;-) Obviously you *could* shoot me, but then you'd be liable for murder as per normal.
However, you may be able to claim for assault against the person who took a sample of your cells to produce the clone.
Grab.
Nope, he doesn't have the right to do so, and his government has made that clear by passing laws against it. If this news article is correct, he will be arrested and disbarred for conducting illegal experiments on ppl.
Certainly abuse _can_ take place, but it doesn't mean that "the world" will sit idly by. Josef Mengele and others conducted experiments on humans in WW2, and "the world" decided that they should be strung up for it.
Grab.
What are the chances that an individual with fertility problems won't produce a clone which also has fertility problems. What happens when that infertile clone wants to reproduce? What then? I know this 'should' never happen, but if cloning is allowed, who's to stop it? Then again, who's to say if it is right or wrong until cloning is proved a success or failure?
Saying that cloning is inherently evil would be stupid. But this "doctor" created an embryo that has a great chance of being malformed or suffer genetical diseases. And he seems to have done this for publicity. To use a technology -which effects are not fully understand to this date- in that irresposible way is criminal to me. Perhaps in 20 or 30 years will be (statistically) safe to clone people, but it is not now.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
It's all just practice!
---
I support spreading santorum
It's pretty common knowledge that the temperature in egg-ovens (the correct term just slipped, it's late) can be adjusted to ensure the sex of the chicks.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I, for instance, would love to have a clone of my heart available when my own one needs replacement in a couple of decades (not entirely unlikely given the number of heart deseases in my family).
One of the biggest pushes for research into cloning and stem cell technology is for this kind of thing. Being able to grow a new organ, either cultured from your own cells, or from a stem-cell line that closely matches yours, would result in a vastly reduced rate of rejection. And the reason transplant patients die is not because of some inherent medical/surgical issue from the transplantation, but rather the body's attempts to reject the transplantation as a foreign body. There are drugs to combat this, but take too little and you get rejection. Take too much and you open up your system to real infections. Either way it's fatal.
The support for full on human cloning is relatively small. And it's not just due to religious reasons - there are ethical and societal reasons why full cloning is reprehensible to some people.
Of course I wouldn't want to kill a full grown living and breading clone of me to obtain that heart but that may very well be unnecessary
Well that's good, because doing that would be murder. Your clone is not you. He does not belong to you. Believing otherwise is simply a new twist on slavery, nothing more. Odds are, your clone won't even think like you, because he is an entirely separate and independant person.
All Mammal clones possible so far are FEMALE!
You will never see this fact cited ever in a non-journal article.
You will never see this "fact" because it really isn't a fact.
See this article from way back in 1999 about the first male mouse clone.
In the 3 sentences that comprise the body of your post, you begin with an outright lie (born of equal parts ignorance and malice), move on to a meaningless and inane observation of the sub-motivations of all scientists, and close with an ad hominem attack so misinformed as to reveal the lazy, irrational, knee-jerk nature of your expressed opinion. Looks like you scored a shrub "trifecta" of obnoxious blathering.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Or as Bill Hicks once said, "I have wiped whole civilisations off my chest with a kleenex."
"Information wants to be paid"
I consider Dr. Antinori to be a rouge scientist...
Rouge scientist? You sure he's not a puce scientist or a maroon scientist?
Why oh why do so many people on Slashdot have this deep inability to spell ROGUE?
"Information wants to be paid"
You keep mentioning the religeous people as the opposition to this...believe it or not, there are more than a few non-religeous people who have a problem with it too.
Don't oversimplify the problem for the sake of reinforcing your biases.
I remember learning in science class that there are a number of aspects to our body's architecture which are not determined directly by genes. Fingerprints are one of them, and would therefore be unique, even for clones. One working theory is that they are a side effect of living in a fluid for 9 months while our body is actually constructed. Since the motion of the fluid cannot be predicted (we're talking about molecular levels of motion here, by the way), every person's fingerprints would always be unique.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Of course there are technological problems (most notably the large amount of cloning attempts needed to perform one successful clone) with the procedure but as scientists continue to do research these problems will be resolved eventually.
It is these technological issues, and nothing else in your post, that, IMHO causes ethical issues with creating human clones.
There's the high failure rate, the health problems that existing non-human clones, such as Dolly, have experienced such as premature ageing and arthritis.
Are we ready to push cloning to humans when it has proved dangerous to both the health of the child and the mother? No, I don't think so.
No one would be hot to trot to push out a new cholesterol lowering drug (for instance) if it caused 149 out of 150 of its users to die, and those that did live experienced arthritis and premature ageing. We would say go back to the drawing board and refine your drug until you get it right!
And that's what I'm saying... we need to get this technology right before we try it out on humans. Just because we CAN do a thing doesn't mean we SHOULD do a thing, especially if its something that hasn't been perfected yet.
My journal has hot
"Like atomic energy, cloning can be used for beneficial purposes - to increase population and to open the window of genetic reprogramming."
I'll leave it to you to comment on that.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
There are religious and ethical people who want to attach full human rights to arbitrarily small clusters of human cells (fertalized eggs, tiny embryo's, etc.).
/., but sometimes they are the correct views.
Where would you draw the line then? When the baby is born? Well, it could survive on it's own much earlier than that. When it's capable of breathing air? Well, there may soon come a technology that would allow that to be done earlier. When the collection of cells looks more "human"? What defines the look of a human? You? I hope not. You end up being in a very hard to defend spot when you say that life is worth saving only when it has progressed to a certain point. The person who makes that decision better have some pretty exacting determining points.
I know "religious" points of view are not popular on
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
This could cause some huge legal problems. Say hypothetically an attractive poor girl decides to sell her genes to a greedy corporation. The corporation then decides to use the DNA to clone her. The clone is raised in a "well adjusted environment," and groomed to be a superstar. The clone now has no rights, since she was purchased, created and programmed (raised) by the company. We now have created exactly what blade runner portrays. How is the creation of slaves any better than all other attempts at slavery throughout the history of humanity?
So two people with the same DNA will obvious not be reproducing in the usual way.
Correct. However imagine getting a clone to puberty and then taking the ova or sperm from both the original and the clone and creating a baby that way. No links handy but I believe that it is possible for two women to concieve through manipulation of the ova) -- would this 2nd-gen clone now be a healthy (in terms of good genes) human? Remember that the telomeres would be the normal length now since you're using the sex cells to procreate instead of normal, mature cells.
Once the technique is perfected, we'll have a supermarket of acceptable clone sources. Which person do you wish to clone? The smart one or the dumb one? The beautiful one or the plain one? The white one or the black one?
What's wrong with raising the bar of civilization? If done correctly, nothing. I'm not talking about Gattaca references here, I'm serious. Would you not want the best for your children? Wouldn't everybody? If you could screen your zygote and elimiate or drastically reduce the heart disease that runs rampant in your family, or the higher risk of cancer, or the anything, wouldn't you do it? If there weren't any drawbacks to giving your child beter memory or reflexes or learning ability, wouldn't you do it? If that choice were available for my children, I sure would have.
Yes, it can be abused. And yes, it can cater to the wealthy. These things have to be worked around so that we don't create a Brave New World or Gattaca society but the idea about making the human race as a whole healthier is not something to scoff at.
"Is the sex of a human baby determined partially by temperature, like in chickens? Could I technically have a female clone?"
Uh, no. What determines the sex of a baby is whether daddy kicks in a Y-chromosome (boy) or an X-chromosome (girl).
Of course a clone doesn't have a daddy, so somebody might imagine doing a little test-tube magic to change the gender of a clone. In fact, a couple of obscure SF writers (Randall Garrett and Isaac Asimov) did just this. They even wrote a song about it. Get out your guitar and sing along with me now, it sounds a little bit like "Home on the Range"
Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y-chromosome changed to X
And when it is grown
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.
Chorus: Clone, clone of my own,
With your Y-Chromosome changed to X
And when I'm alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.
Oh, give me a clone
Hear my sorrowful moan
A clone that is wholly my own.
And if she's an X
Of the feminine sex
Oh, what fun we will have when we're prone.
(Chorus)
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.
(Chorus)
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.
(Chorus)
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 ravage her by and by.
(Chorus)
(Chorus)
.siggy
Technology by itself is not bad.
Yes, because Science and Ethics are two separate domains. One is about Truth, the other about Good. (And art is the third: Beauty).
There are religious and ethical people who want to attach full human rights to arbitrarily small clusters of human cells (fertalized eggs, tiny embryo's, etc.). From a scientific point of view this is of course complete nonsense.
And as all you can do with Science is just count, you cannot get Science to tell you what is better or worse. A big number is not better than a small number. They're all just numbers. 'Better' and 'worse' are value judgements. Science has no business making value judgements. That's the domain of Ethics. Science is a separate domain. So please don't mix arguments about scientific numbers with arguments about ethical value judgements.
I agree with you that we have the ethical problem of at what point an embryo is a 'person'. But being an ethical problem, we can't just count cells -- otherwise we could just compare counts of a cow and a human's cells, and figure that it's better to eat people than it is to eat cows.
So drawing the line, ethically, at a few cells, is not necessarally stupid just because small numbers are 'inferior'. Ethically we're trying to figure out what is Good, and whether at this point in our development, with free markets, universities, tv, wars, the internet, famines, nuclear power, comfortable lifestyles for some, B.F. bombs, diseases, dodgy education, Atheists, Fundamentalists, a youth who don't see any meaning in life, a youth who are drafted to kamikaze missions, globalisation, red China, global warming, medical treatments for many ailments (but not available to all), McDonalds, wind power, etc. etc. etc. -- whether given, basically, the state of the world, good and bad, it is good for humanity to have more technology in this area, or whether, given our track record in other things, we should wait, or proceed with a different focus.
Now I don't suppose the Catholics look at it this way. Their religion says that bunch of cells has a soul. Something which by definition we can't check scientifically. When a person experiences their Soul, an inner illumination or a vision, the only thing science can say is that you brain waves have changes, or that your heart rate has changed. For all you can tell from your instruments, the person could just have food poisoning. Spirituality is simply not accessible to objective measurement. It may exist, it may not... but you can't tell with instruments. But that's another problem -- Science has totally trashed Christianity. Beaten it to a pulp. And while Science was correct to do so in the areas where the Church had said all sorts of nonsence about the age of the Earth, etc. etc., we need to recognise that at a certain point in people's lives, they need something to believe in. At least as a basic moral guide. So we have to be careful not to totally destroy Religion. It helps to hold societies together. The common Myth. A basic bond.
Of course, when you no longer need the Myth, then you should be free to forget it. But just remember that Science cannot tell you what is Good. And to live only by science is to live in a world devoid of values. I could rob and kill you and say it's survival of the fittest etc.
So we can ask questions about Values -- do we value having more technology, or do we value more stability in human affairs? If stability is more valuable right now, can we forsee how cloning may alter things... will it prevent diseases, reducing medical bills, and be used throughout the world? Or will it have negative side effects that destabilise our country? Can we even answer these questions? Are these questions important? Or do we value getting results as quickly as possible, and say, "whatever, just keep doing the science, and we'll probably be ok?"
So the problem isn't that some religious zealots are making ethical complaints -- it's that not enough intelligent and talented thinkers are botherting to make ethical considerations! Including the scientists!
We've generally gone beyond religious dogma, and science has given us many answers. But that doesn't mean science can give all the answers. We've forgotten Ethics because it used to be associated with religion, and also because it doesn't show up on an oscilloscope.
Um, this post is way to long. :(
But what does this have to do with the article?
Offtopic for you.
I do not know, but I assume test tube babies did not have the high risk of deformities that clones currently do. It is much safer to mix than to splice.
Their belief system espouses that humans are in the right to take life from those other "non-humans" in order to survive. ... Of course, I don't agree.
Unless you eat rocks or are capable of photosynthesis, you are a hypocrite.
Up until now they were able to hide behind the illusion that humans are somehow different from animals (which from a biological point of view is nonsense, it's just another mammal).
:) Most religions that I know of will concede that humans are biologically animals. They also believe that humans are more than that on other levels.
When another animal invents bubble gum, I will consider your view.
I, for instance, would love to have a clone of my heart available when my own one needs replacement in a couple of decades (not entirely unlikely given the number of heart deseases in my family). Of course I wouldn't want to kill a full grown living and breading clone of me to obtain that heart but that may very well be unnecessary.
I agree with this. I have no problem with a clone of a piece of tissue. Killing another human just to get that piece is unacceptable.
There are religious and ethical people who want to attach full human rights to arbitrarily small clusters of human cells (fertalized eggs, tiny embryo's, etc.). From a scientific point of view this is of course complete nonsense.
I have seen articles were they said they have proven that at least fetuses are more aware than previously thought. They do feel pain. When studies were performed on aborted fetuses, they found high levels of chemicals that would be present in a "born" person that had sufferred pain.
However, often the same people eat meat (requires killing of much larger clusters of non human cells) and have no problems with getting rid of annoying insects, which is very inconsistent to say the least.
Killing another species is not the same as killing your own species.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
David Brin is another author whose work has several times dealt with societies where cloning of some sort is the norm. He explores many of the possible consequences for the structure of the societies involved. He is way smart, and a lot of the ideas he envisions are startling but plausible. He also spins a good tale.
His book Glory Season shows a world where about 80% of the people are (female) clones. In this world, cloning is just as easy or hard as getting pregnant the normal way, and whether you have a clone or a mixed-gene child mostly depends on the season. The story revolves around a young mixed-gene child trying to make a place in the world, and a visitor from a more normal human world, whose arrival sets the whole social order boiling. You can find an excerpt from the book at Brin's website here
His most recent book, Kiln People deals with a society where you can create disposable mental clones. How convenient! Make a copy of your mind, load it in a blank, and have it study calculus while you're on a date. At the end of the day you download the new memories, the "clone" degrades, and you have essentially been in two places at once.
Of course, sometimes the copies of you don't want to degrade, or be the one who is stuck studying calculus. Lots of ethical questions explored here, within the framework of a murder-mystery.
So, in not-very short, if you're interested in exploring possible societal effects of cloning, read these books!
--payslee "fangirl"
Doing my part to piss off the religious right.
The problem is that there is good scientific reasoning to show that a cloned mammal will not be a normal, identical copy of the original -- reasoning that thus far has at least preliminary support from the sheep experiment.
It's not just simply fear of the unknown -- it's fear that something will occur that we have reason to suspect will occur.
DNA does not copy with perfect fidelity. There are a number controls that limit transcription errors, the ulitmate limitation being protein complexes called telomeres on the end of chromosones which, in effect, prevent a chromosone from being replicated more than a fixed number of times. One way of assesing biological age is by how close one's chromosones are to this limit. An infant clone from a 30 year old man will, in one sense, be a 30 year and nine month old baby. This is apart from the issue of mutations that will inevitably occured to the 30 year old's DNA.
This guy is monkeying with a very complex system which nobody fully understands at this point. Normally this would not be a problem, but there s a human life that will be greatly affected by these uncertainties. Is he fully prepared to take responsibility for the results of his actions? I doubt it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Didn't Ridley Scott present this concept to us twenty years ago?
::Colz Grigor
If we've never empathized for Roy Batty and always rooted for Rick Deckard, maybe we ought to turn that around?
(Note: I've read Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Scott did far better at presenting this particular facet of replicants than did Dick.)
Er, no.
Greater than 99.99 percent of random mutations either have no effect (a mutation on one of the many "garbage" sections of our DNA), or result in a cell that is not viable. A mutation in protein production will kill off a cell pretty quick, for example.
Of the rest, some may result in a viable cell. However, the immune system tags it as a foreign cell and kills it.
Some may result in cancer.
And some small, small percent may result in a mutation that still leaves a viable cell that won't be destroyed by the immune system.
But for the most part, you have the same genetic material you started with.
There are many other factors (like the in-vitro environment) that have a significant effect upon development.
mod up the parent!
Morally speaking, why? How is killing any other living creature different from killing a human being. Simply because it's "different from us"? Well, let's try a thought experiment. Suppose, some day, we travel to the stars and run across a new, sentient species. Is it okay for us to kill them?
Human cloning where clones are carried to term is illegal in the US and all European countries, due to the dangers for the cloned infant. The only countries in which this is not illegal are Third World countries where the ppl (and more importantly the government) will do anything to feed themselves.
So he's getting round the laws in all the First World countries by using test subjects from Third World countries - up to this point, he's used 5000 women to get one impregnation. That's 4999 women miscarrying. That's ethical for sure. Suppose you had a vaccine which you thought might be dangerous - would it be right to go to Ethiopia and hand out $10 to everyone who'll try it for you? bcos that's exactly what he's doing. I'll grant you it's not illegal in that country, but there's plenty of places where murder, rape and torture are not illegal - it doesn't mean that we should go there to try them out!
Mengele conducted experiments on humans to find out what would happen, without consideration of the fate of those humans. Antinori is doing exactly the same. In labs, most cloned embryos are miscarried; of the ones that are carried to term, many are stillborn, or are deformed and must be destroyed. The only clone of a largish mammal, Dolly the sheep, is suffering from premature aging and no-one yet knows whether this is just a coincidence or whether it's a fundamental issue with cloning. And with this total lack of information, Antinori is cloning a human to see what will happen. The only certainty is that 4999 women have suffered the pain first of the operation and then of the miscarriage; whether further pain is in store for the child is as yet unknown, since no research anywhere has proved it safe for lab rats, never mind humans. Does this sound like a valid scientific position to you?
There's nothing wrong with wanting your name in the papers. But if he's prepared to instigate the successor to thalidomide by taking a chance on producing many deformed children in his quest for fame and fortune (and more likely the latter), then I think he's seriously screwed up.
I've no doubt the scientific community will learn a lot from what he's doing. Mengele and his friends taught us just about everything we know today about the body's reaction to freezing to death - but at a tremendous cost. And they too thought they were doing a great job in advancing the cause of science. The point of the laws against carrying clones to term is to prevent another Mengele going for scientific knowledge at the cost of human life.
Grab.
The only 'ethical' problem I have with it is how said cloned human is treated once conception occurs.
As long as the person is treated normally, as any other child would be, I have no problem with it.
The *REAL* danger is when we start viewing clones as sub-human.
Yes, it is an experiment. And when this child is born, and grows up, he must be free to not participate.
During WWII the Nazis did a grand experiment of sorts. After measuring, probing, researching and prodding hundreds (if not thousands) of "Aryan" soldiers, they were sent to breeding houses. There they'd get it on with hand-picked Fraulines that met the criteria. AFAIK this continued for a few years and the results should be documented somewhere.
What I wonder is, has there been any studies done that correlates post-WWII germany to this 'ubermensch' they were working towards? Was there any broad stroke of improvement, or any measurable good from this experiment? It'd be very interesting to find anything on this subject.
lets just hope its not a clone of mouselinni (sp) or some other super villain.
no off to read the article!
True. Nature has always supported killing to sustain life. Vegetarians spouting dogma like 'meat is murder' don't realize that they kill vegetables to eat. Broccoli is murder. It's just a fact of life and it always will be, until the time that we eat lab-grown food comes around. Even then you're cutting off the life of the lab-grown meat slab and sticking a fork in it. Death begets life, get over it.
In the Bible, God says "Go forth and multiply." He doesn't specify HOW.
We would say go back to the drawing board and refine your drug until you get it right!
And how do you suppose medical refinements come about? Educated guesses? Computer simulations? Nope. Testing on animals and humans is the only valid research methodology for some things, cloning included. So you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet...that's how it goes. I'd be really excited about human cloning if they removed the genes for the head and brains. What's the debate there? A body to be harvested for organs, etc. with no identity, no conciousness. Whether or not this 'thing' has a soul is a mystery.
Of course, man! Haven't you seen any sci-fi movies? Aliens? HELLooo?
Literally.
The most popular method (Dollys mehod) for integrating alien nuclear material in a host egg cell is to electro-shock it. Other methods use chemicals. The underlying reason for why an electrical or chemical shock works is not yet understood.
Morally speaking, why? How is killing any other living creature different from killing a human being. Simply because it's "different from us"?
:)
Sentience is a big factor. Food is another. A creature being different is not a factor. I can eat fish. Dogs are different than humans, but I do not want to eat dogs. They are too smart for me to eat.
No! That does not mean that they are able to get away from me.
Well, let's try a thought experiment. Suppose, some day, we travel to the stars and run across a new, sentient species. Is it okay for us to kill them?
I would not feel comfortable killing a sentient species except to defend and even then I would still not like it.
Disclaimer: I agree with your point (or at least one of then): there is no *need* for anyone to reproduce, and adoption is an excellent option for many, many people.
Why don't these infertile people consider the fact that, right or wrong, justly or unjustly, they're not meant to conceive on their own?
Because such a view implies an acceptance of an intentionally designed world. An atheistic would-be parent, for example, would not necessarily accept that they were *meant* to not have children. If one views the world as the product of fluke instead of fancy, then there is nothing is either allowed or prohibited. Nothing "meant" for anything to even exist - and thus, there is no problem with a cloned child.
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Such research often borders on medical research which arguably is beneficial to a lot of people.
You've just thrown out what little point you had. Now you're defending research based on the fact it has some benefit "to a lot of people". The question then becomes is cloning beneficial to "a lot of people."
Maybe it is and maybe it isn't but it isn't an ethically neutral question, as you suggested in your original post when you said, "Cloning is just another technology."
You must also be a nature over nurture kind of person. Personally, I think that if we cloned Einstien and set the clone loose in a family where neither they nor he knew whose DNA was involved, we would not have another great physicist.
It's not that you are illegal, or that you could be deformed, mentally incapacitated, or worse.
What if you are just one of a string of successful clones, all from the same genetic source?
One of the givens of being human, that we are all unique, will not apply to you; instead, the inverse, that you're a copy of a copy of a copy, and that you are somehow connected with a bunch of strangers who share your exact genetic makeup, your genetic twins.
Not to mention that, depending on the country, you may be alive simply as a tissue harvesting candidate for the original genetic donor.
Freaky.
Human rights will have to apply.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
named "BSOD"
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Don't forget that we have "Alan Cox on a Chip", so there is no need to worry about losing our operating system developers! And now that the FDA Approves Implantable Microchips, how long must we wait before we can all have Alan Cox chip implants?
cpeterso
Suppose, some day, we travel to the stars and run across a new, sentient species. Is it okay for us to kill them?
turn the question around. Is it ok for the sentient alien species to kill/eat/clone US??
cpeterso
Testing on animals and humans is the only valid
research methodology for some things, cloning included.
Exactly. Get the technology as close to perfection as possible on *animals* as possible, which is what I said.
And like I said, no one would even sponsor a drug for testing on humans if 149 out of 150 animals that it was tested on died as a result, and the ones that lived suffered from premature ageing and arthritis. It would be unimaginable.
In most countries, you have to prove that a drug will work on animals, or at least in some other way prove that it will work on humans without harming them before you can go around drug testing on humans. The same would hold true for any medical technology, including cloning.
My journal has hot
Do you REALLY want an army of Bill Gateseses rampaging across the world? Say no to cloning!!! Clone Linus instead! Open source clones for all!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
It just gives further example...that just because there is legistlation stating that something shouldn't be done here in the US, it doesn't stop it from actually happening somewhere in the world...even in the US. Take for example RIAA/MPAA attack on MP3s/DivX...It's still going to happen whether it's legal or not.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
A lot of people who are against cloning feel that way due to moral beliefs. They may say it's because of concern for the newly created human being but it's really that they don't like man playing God.
Personally, I don't know where the science will lead us and maybe it's worth investigating. I don't like the idea of creating human beings just for the sake of doing it. We don't have a shortage of people on Earth.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
This is called justification by trivialization. The all too common "It's Just Science" statement is easily just as narrow minded as many of the religious people getting all worked up just because they don't understand something.
There are religious and ethical people who want to attach full human rights to arbitrarily small clusters of human cells (fertalized eggs, tiny embryo's, etc.). From a scientific point of view this is of course complete nonsense.
The problem with your logic is that it leads to all sorts of interesting debates. Such as, using inmates for all sorts of life threatening medical experiments (such as injecting a disease and studying the effects of an experimental drug). We attach full human rights to a human, not a small cluster of human cells. A cloned person is, in fact, a person, and they do have rights.
However, often the same people eat meat (requires killing of much larger clusters of non human cells) and have no problems with getting rid of annoying insects, which is very inconsistent to say the least.
This is not inconsistent at all if you believe that humans are above all other organisms. If you don't believe that, fine, but then you have to logically accept my example about inmates. What's inconsistent is people saying, "humans are just another mammal" but then give special rights to humans.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Star Trek the Next Generation had an episode featuring a society of clones. They use DNA from Riker and Pulaski to create clones of them. Riker feels violated and kills the clones while they're still developing.
It was an abortion rights metaphor originally but now, it's becoming a frightening take on an actual issue.
If you are talking to most Americans, then no, they haven't seen Ariel Sharon for what he is, the latest Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Slobodan Milosevic, or Saddam Hussein.
Sharon is guilty of mass genocide. Outside of the USA, where the media and government aren't so heavily Israeli biased, Sharon is known as the butcher of Beirut - because back in 1982 he had 1000s of innocent civilian women and chilren rounded up into a camp and brutally killed. Not only that, but international committees have recognized that Sharon has committed crimes against humantiy... however, for some reason, Israel is above the law... Sharon is never going to appear in a War Crimes Tribunal, even though he should. Not only that, but Israel has continued to neglect to respect a decades old UN ruling that it must allow the Palestinians to return to their homes. What is a people supposed to do when the legal avenues are all blocked?
Need I remind you what "sparked" this latest conflict? You can even found this out on CNN, a very biased news source in this entire conflict. It started when Sharon visited a Muslim holy place. Again, in case you don't get it, this would be the equivalent of Hitler visiting the wailing wall.
And all the while, this Israel v Palestine conflict is shown on TV (in my home, the USA)... Arafat is the bad guy and Sharon is the good guy. Black, white. My side, your side. Alpha, Omega. True, False. Tit, tat. Eye for an eye. Life for a life. War for peace?
He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.
The next logical step would be to run around having gay anal sex! After that, it would be with animals! And of course, this is all a gateway into hardcore drug abuse of crack-cocaine. Oh, what about the children, the poor children?
Seriously for a second, if anything is going to go wrong with society, with regards to cloning, it will be all of these weirdo anti-cloning people who will not treat clones as real humans with the same rights of sperms.
obscure SF writers (Randall Garrett and Isaac Asimov)
Obscure?!? Asimov is one of the most famous science fiction writers of all time!! Unless of course SF reffered to Self Fondling writers, in that case I would have to agree that I hadn't heard of either of them referred to in that context before!
I stole this Sig
Great, this is just what we need. I'm a proponent of cloning. I say if you can do with with the same or lower error rate as naturual reproduction, great. But as far as I know, we can't (am I wrong). There are a lot of bugs to be worked out before we should be trying this on humans.
This girl is going to be fucked up, no doubt about it, and it's going to set back the feild of cloning by decades. (maybe that was his plan all a long?)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
While it may or may not be true that the Arab press has a bad reputation, is this kind of statement any better than "jews can't be trusted with money" or "christians are all prosletyzers" crap?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I believe I dealt with this in my original post, however, the point I made was that I don't think (modulo the age of the genetic material that is causing dolly the sheep to be having old age problems before her time) that there's any logical reason to believe that the result of taking two ova from two clones (or one from a clone and one from an 'original') is going to be significantly different than the result of taking two ova from one person.
*shrug* IANARG (I am not a research geneticist)
It may be "common knowledge", but it's knowledge that no biology teacher of mine ever let slip, nor does it seem to be obviously available on the web (I did look). Not only that, but I know that the egg industry destroys (for animal feed, etc) around half the baby chicks they get because they are male (and thus don't lay eggs). Since they already incubate the eggs in incubators (the term you want) it would seem trivial to, if the temperature really could be adjusted to ensure the sex of the chicks, adjust the temperature appropriately and stop losing money on about half their chicks.
;) )
Do you have any references? Or is this just an urban (rural?) legend?
(if not, I know something you could patent and sell to the egg industry
neat! I didn't know that!
(actually, I think I did and forgot, but..)