Cloned Organs Demoed in Laboratory

texchanchan writes "Yahoo reports (warning: picture of cow fetus in bottle) that scientists have grown functioning, 'kidney-like' organs from cloned tissue, and put them back in the progenitor where they do their kidneyish job quite well. The scientists cloned embryos, from which kidney cells were extracted, and 'seeded [this] kidney tissue onto artificial structures that they hoped would grow into kidneys when transplanted back into the steer they were cloned from. ... By themselves, the kidney cells formed a small, kidney-like organ.' Regeneration here we come... especially if somebody learns how to do just the desired organ, not a whole new you with its potential for human rights, etc. To be published in June's Nature Biotechnology (costly registration required)."

Comments

Cloning is bad

[ObviousGuy]

We'll end up with a group of soldiers who couldn't hit the side of a Jawa transport if their blasters were pressed to its side.

Best bounty hunter in the galaxy, my ass.

Re:Cow fetus? Nope. Unrelated creature.

[texchanchan]

You're absolutely right. It is the Tasmanian tiger fetus. Why it's appearing on a cow organ story is a mystery except that both stories contain the word "cloned".

Re:Beyond the moral implications.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

If you expect to live, say, 500 years, then you probably won't have children as fast ... Any society which has life-extension technology generally available will also be one in which birth control is even more available, and will probably have an educated enough populace to use it.

And if for some reason I'm wrong, well, there are always war, famine, and plague to keep us in line.

Definitions unclear

[maddogsparky]

Using clear terminology, like "growing" instead of "cloning" when talking about a single organ could help discussions on the cloning debate.

It appears the the article's author is decidedly pro-cloning. They go on to state that the supposition that cloning won't result in viable, transplantable organ is a main reason people are against cloning.

I don't think that most people are against growing organs; even the pope thinks that therepudic research using non-embrionic stem cells is ok. This article seems to indicate that the author thinks people are against it because it can't be done, but since it can, it should be. In my experience, far more people have ethical problems with removing cells from an embrio, regardless of how the embrio is produced, with the intention of discarding the embrio after using some of its cells than with achieving similar results (growing a new organ) by techniques that do not involve the destruction of an embrio.

The important question should always be "should something be accomplished?", not "can something be accomplished?" When these questions are reversed, medical science could progress at a higher rate by using condemned criminals or other undesireables as research subjects.

I applaud advances in growing organs using non-embrionic stem cells; I pray for the day when using embrios for research is as universally seen as a morally repugnant.

Re:Definitions unclear

[maddogsparky]

The correct scientific terminology is cloning since the nuclear DNA from a donor cell was used to make the new organ. "Growing" is extremely imprecise and doesn't convey what was actually done.

I use www.dictionary.com. Most of the definitions for clone state an exact genetic copy, so any "cloning" techniques that only replace the nuclear DNA (not the mitochondrial DNA) aren't true clones (as mentioned in the article). However, by this definition, identical twins, triplets, etc. would be clones.

However, I concede that English is an imprecise language. I prefer the term "grow", since it is used to describe the process of cultivating an organism or tissue; I believe it applies in this case as well.

Regarding use of non-embryonic stem cells to create organs, there's no indication this will be workable for things like kidneys, so why not explore all avenues until more data is available?

I already addressed this; we do not condone the use of undesireables such as criminals for scientific experimentation, even though it is probably true that the rest of us would benefit. Creating organisms that have the potential to become human beings raises serious ethical questions that can't be easily discarded.

Just to be clear, it is true that embryonic stem cells hold a lot of promise, but so do stem cells in general. At least one Canadian researcher has had results in changing skin cells to stem cells and those stem cells into other types of tissue.

As long as other avenues of research remain that are less contentious, shouldn't we concentrate on those areas first? A moratorium on human embryo experiments does not mean that there will be less research, only that it will be in a different area (such as non-embryonic stem cell research). I do not believe any serious scientist worth their salt will give up research if one particular avenue in their field is closed to them.

Re:Definitions unclear

[mi]

Creating organisms that have the potential to become human beings raises serious ethical questions that can't be easily discarded.

Yes it can and should be discarded. Just as easily as a used condom -- full of what was pretty close to becoming the organism(s) with the potential you mention.

Stop foggying your eyes with the concerns for the unborn and think about the already born humans, whose lives can be both improved and prolonged by this highly promising research.

Just in time

[Hard_Code]

Well, I hope this technology arrives in time for the Slashdot crowd and all its free beer.

And, to quote Bowie Poag: "Cloning is bad. It will only produce more clowns and lawyers" :p

couldn't find that pic though...

Re:Beyond the moral implications.

[chriz_tofur]

Maybe we'll just kill off all the short-sighted people and use their land.

Even more to the point

[Spamalamadingdong]

The populations which are wealthy enough to afford to use this technology are the ones which have already controlled their birthrate to below replacement levels. It's the nations which can't produce much more than babies which are doing what they can.

this tech is only half the battle for some of us

[StandardDeviant]

I've got this genetic disorder called Alport's Syndrome. It sucks. Macular degeneration, inner ear nerve cell degeneration, and kidney degeneration... (As I recall it's becuase my body doesn't make a particular protein correctly that is found in the support matrices of the three tissues listed.) Anyway, as you can imagine I've been looking at the whole grow-a-new-organ technology with considerable interest. I have a kidney transplant now, which is the most wonderful, selfless, live-giving thing anyone has ever done for me, but the drugs you have to take to keep transplanted tissue vital are a Real Bummer (expensive, bad side effects, or both). So the possibility of having organs tailor grown to fit me, eliminating the need for immunosupressive therapy, is incredibly exciting... The problem is, if organs were grown from my DNA, they'd be defective also (still, it'd probably take 20+ years for them to fail ;) my natural born kidneys made it about 21, and a lot can happen in 20 years...) So, I think this is a neccessary and vital first step. The next revolution will be using genetic modification techniques to tweak the grown organs in such a way to fix the underlying flaw (or even add new features? ;) how'd you like to be able to see into the near infrared? have an extra couple of kHz at teh top of your hearing range? have a different eye color? jeez, and we thought case modding is getting wacky... (of course I imagine that organs with major nerve bundles will take longer to perfect))

Isn't technology/science cool? I mean, damn... Imagine the radiant smile of a little kid seeing a rainbow for the first time or that of somebody being freed from dialysis or... Makes perl seem almost sorta lame by comparison... ;)

legal system doesn't solve ethical questions

[maddogsparky]

Although I do not condone killing the (willfully) ignorant, I understand the motivation for killing abortion abortion clinic personal as "killing the killers".

At what point does a human embryo become a person with rights (legal and otherwise)? Keep in mind that:

1. Abortion is legal up until birth,

2. Neo-natal care has enabled children born at 25 weeks to survive,

3. Many legal cases exist that charge a person with attempted murder, murder or child abuse of the fetus within a pregnant woman,

4. Human babies are pretty much helpless the first few months after birth and that they show less intelligence than similarly aged animals of other species.

5. Children are the property of their parents until they are 18 or legally emancipated.

6. Some scientists have stated the goal of completely creating a human being outside the natural womb (making the term "birth" unapplicable)

My personal views aside, this is not a consistant set of legal positions. The abortion issue is no more solved than the slavery issues was in the late 18th and early 19th century. Cloning and other related issues will be no better.

If governments keep banning this and banning that in regards to embrionic and cloning research, all that is accomplished is the nightmare of an underground science community, "evil" doctors.

Does this mean that since slavery was pushed underground and into countries with poor human rights policies after it was outlawed in most of the world that it should have been kept legal and in the open? Should the other countries of the world give up on reducing global emissions because the US governement has pooh-poohed the issue? Enforcement issues should not be used as an excuse to ignore morality. Even if research would continues in other countries, we have the moral obligation to do what is right, regardless of what anyone else is doing.