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First Human Clone Born?
slantyyz writes "A religious cult, the Raelians, has claimed that the birth of first human clone is one of theirs. While this hasn't been corroborated yet, it's making headlines in Canada, where the cult is based. There's supposed to be a press conference on Friday in Hollywood. This story just may have legs."
Saw this earlier today. Probably based on the same news feed, but what the hey. Here you go.
Constitutionally Correct
I wouldn't put too much weight on what they Raelians say, this is a publicity stunt and I wouldn't be surprised if the Scientologists were saying the same. There definition of a cloned human probably follows their guidelines too and not scientifically sound.
In my neighorhood for quite some time the Raelians have been trying to recruit ppl. They drive around in this van with sparkling stickers - kind of like a moving target. I got one of their fliers one day and had quite chuckle. I don't think they are too far off Scientologists either. There is some info on the Raelians here.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Without empirical evidence, this is just fringe cultists making a radical, unsubstantiated claim. I'm frankly surpirised how much attention mainstream news sources have given this. It's a sad state of affairs when anyone can make wild claims and without showing any evidence, they can grab headlines.
By the way, did I mention I performed successful cold fusion experiments?
I'm a friend of a friend of the working class.
Mammalian cloning is not a trivial thing to do -- there are only a handful of labs in the world that can make it work. It requires specialized equipment and cell lines, an excellent tissue culture setup and a tremendous degree of technical skill.
It's not like making beer, where you buy a bunch of things and mix them together in your basement. A Dr. Evil-like figure with tremendous money and resources could pull it off, but it would be prohibitive for some random loon.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Yes, we call it "having sex". It's an amazing cloning technique that nature gave us that allows one to combine traits and create "clones". If you really want purity, incest might be in order: Some sisterly love and you'll have a virtually perfect family clone.
No.
Clones are, by definition, genetic doubles. The whole point is that clones aren't a combination of genes through the fertilization of an egg by sperm. Rather, a clone contains *exactly* the same gene material as its original. Thus, even the offspring of a brother and sister would not be a clone, since it would not have identical DNA to either its mother or father.
Simply by the fact that one pair must have XX (yeah, I'm going to ignore the relatively rare XXY and XXX) genes and the other XY genes in order to mate, it is impossible for the two parents to have identical genese, let alone their offspring.
Even if a pair of male twins were to mate with two female twins, it's more likely than not that their offspring would not have identical genes.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
As a side note, alot of research has been put into why cloned animals have shorter lifespans. What has been found is that there are specific bits of DNA that change over time and act as a kind of life clock... Since the DNA used is from an adult animal, the DNA has already counted upwards from it's start position... (they should have set that variable to zero!)
Learning how to set these markers to their original settings may be the fountain of youth, or not... (that moral quandry is left for the reader to decide...) However, I think that if someone were to try to greatly extend their life, they'd have to start early (mid 20's maybe) though personally, I don't feel 80 years is long enough for me to learn all that I want to learn...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
To put it simply(and maybe inaccurately) Telomeres are strands of "junk" DNA that show the age of an organism. It is also thought that the length of the telomeres act as an aging trigger. As you age your telomere strands get shorter and shorter. During normal reproduction the telomeres are regenerated to full length. Dolly's shorten telomeres have been documented. Now, you could conceivable get around this problem if your donor cell was from a child.
As far as other defects are concerned, you must remember that you are moving delicate strands of DNA from one place and putting it somewhere else. There is no guarantee that the DNA you pinched is viable to begin with, though it may function well enough for that differentiated cell to work properly.
I believe that's been solved.
religious: having to do with religion
religion: A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.
nearly every belief can be categorized as religious...its all about devotion and faith, it doesnt need a divine or supernatural power. its the belief that matters...
id say aliens cloning themselves to create humans is just as powerful a 'belief' as an omnipotent god.
From the articles that I have read on this very suspect claim it hints that they used the same method as was used with Dolly. I did my Senior Thesis on Geron, the company that purchased the rights to the methode that cloned Dolly; therefore, I have a fare understanding of what is involved with Nuclear Transfer. Although I am not an expert and have never attempted the process in a lab, I have read enough to know that it is a terrible idea to try this on humans at this point.
There is a easy to understand FAQ on the Roslin Institute web site written by the people that actually cloned Dolly. Here are some interesting highlights:
Are clone embryos like IVF and normal pregnancies?
Not so far. The scientists at the Roslin Institute, who pioneered this work, have repeatedly found that the clone foetuses grow much larger than normal ones, and there is a much higher chance of the pregnancy failing, of stillbirth, or of forced Caesarean sections. Dolly was the one successful pregnancy of more than 277 embryos.
What do the experts think? "I think you are always going to run the risk of having aging DNA," says Professor Lord Robert Winston, an IVF pioneer. "I would hate to think of a child of mine being cloned because I think it would be very likely he would have an accelerated aging process." Dr Jamie Grifo, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at New York University, says: "Cloning is no better than any of the other treatments that are out there. A biological child is the husband's sperm, the wife's egg. A clone is not a biological child." Dr David Stevens, of the Christian Medical and Dental Society, asks: "Are we really willing to sacrifice hundreds of embryos - developing human beings - to make one baby who may suffer monstrous consequences?"
So, there are two very important points that must be stressed. The first is that there is a high percentage probability of genetic defect supported by further experiments. Think of the threat of genetic abnormalities in a fetus that managed to survive as much higher than if you had children with immediate family members.
The second is that each cell has an "age" that is determined by the number of times that a cell has divided. If you use DNA from adult cells that have divided many times, than all of the cells cloned from that DNA will be older. A cell can only dived around 50 times before it dies at which point you reach the Hayflick Limit. Although there are ways to prolong the life of cell lines similar to the way cancer spreads through a body, I doubt that this group of individuals thought of adding telomeres back to the end of the chromosomes that would be used to clone a human baby.
No, 277 cells of cloned DNA were created; only a small percentage of those split and showed promise of being successful. They impregnated 10 humans -- 5 fetuses (feti?) were "terminated," one baby has (apparantly) been born, and 4 more are due in the next month or so. Side note: some cloning guy on CNN said that cloning success rates in established labs (not with humans, of course) could be as high as 60% relative to the number of impregnations. So this claimed 50% rate doesn't seem too unbelievable.
Here is the news from CNN HOLLYWOOD, Florida (CNN) -- The controversial group Clonaid on Friday said a newborn girl called Eve is a clone.
The group's scientific director said the child was born Thursday in an unnamed country. Clonaid was founded by a religious movement called the Raelians, the doctrine of which believes that life on Earth was created by extraterrestrials.
If the cloning assertion is true, the birth would be the first ever human clone. Brigitte Boisselier, scientific director of Clonaid, made her statement at a news conference and has arranged for a physicist named Michael Guillen, former science correspondent for ABC News, to independently verify the claim.
Boisselier offered no immediate proof of her claim -- or photographs of the baby. She said the baby is healthy, and that the whole family is "very happy." She also said the baby's grandmother thinks she looks just like her mother.
She says the baby will go home in three days, and an independent expert will take DNA samples from the baby to prove she had been cloned. Those results are expected within a week after the testing.
Boisselier had told a congressional committee last year that she believed she had the knowledge to produce a human clone in the near future.
Clonaid, which calls itself the "first human cloning company," was founded in 1997. Boisselier is a bishop in the Raelian movement.
Claude Vorilhon, who founded the Raelians, told CNN in July 2001 that the long-term goal for human cloning is to live forever. Vorilhon says cloning a baby is only the first step: Eventually the group wants to learn how to clone an adult, then "transfer the brain to the clone."
Boisselier says the immediate purpose for cloning is to help infertile couples. Last November, she told CNN she was "indeed doing human cloned embryos and we have many cell divisions," but she wouldn't confirm any pregnancies.
No data released
To make a clone, scientists first take an egg and remove all of its genetic material. Then the nucleus of a cell -- any cell in the body -- is taken from the individual to be cloned and inserted into the hollowed-out egg.
The cell is then given a jolt of electricity or put in a chemical bath to activate cell division -- essentially tricking the cell into doing what a fertilized egg would normally do. Then the embryo is implanted into a woman's uterus to be carried to term.
It is unknown which exact procedure -- if any -- Clonaid used, because it has not published or released any data about its research.
Boisselier has not revealed the location of her current lab, only to say it is no longer in the United States. She used to have a lab in West Virginia, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration visited the lab and shut it down.
Scientists so far have successfully cloned sheep, cows, goats, mice, pigs and a rare wild ox. But human cloning is controversial, because the experience with animal cloning has shown a lot of potential for things to go wrong.
'One shouldn't do this'
Many animal cloners -- including Ian Wilmut, the Scottish researcher who successfully cloned the first animal, Dolly the sheep, in 1997 -- disapprove of human cloning. Wilmut has said it took 276 failed attempts before Dolly was successfully cloned.
"It is not responsible at this stage to even consider the cloning of humans, " said Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist at MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biological Research, which clones mice.
Janeisch said that even if a human clone appears healthy, it may not be once it gets older. Cloning a human at this point, he said, without knowing more about why things go wrong, is "essentially using humans as guinea pigs, and one shouldn't do this."
According to Dr. Jon Hill, a veterinarian who successfully cloned cows at Texas A&M University, even clones who appear normal at birth often develop problems afterward.
"Their livers, their lungs, their heart, their blood vessels are often abnormal after birth," Hill said.
Few legal prohibitions The Raelians are not the only group claiming to actively try to clone a human.
Italian doctor Severino Antinori made several announcements in recent months, claiming that a woman was carrying a human clone that would be born in January 2003. And former University of Kentucky professor Panos Zavos has also announced plans to clone a human, but he told CNN earlier this year he had not successfully created an embryo yet.
Scientists and bioethicists have questioned whether any of these groups have the ability to clone a human. Art Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, has said in the past that "we don't know how" to accomplish human cloning.
Legally, there's very little to stop scientists from cloning. In January, the National Academy of Sciences recommended a ban on human cloning, but only four states -- California, Michigan, Louisiana and Rhode Island -- ban any type of cloning research.
The FDA claims it has jurisdiction over human cloning based on the Public Health Service and Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. It says it would regulate the cloning process like a drug.
What, me Tweet?
Talk about some closed-minded flamebait. There is just as much (or possibly MORE IMO, at least people report seeing UFOs) proof that they are right as Christians. And no, it's not just the cult leaders getting laid, it's more like an orgy. The leaders might get better chicks, but power=perks.
Christianity creates a private reality as well, and anything you said about Raelians applies to them as well (except the free sex thing of course).
My favorite part of your message is the last two sentences... All major religions recruit members, AND put the welfare of the group before individuals. Recruiting children into a religion (before they are even old enough to know better) ranks around the same as enslaving their minds for their whole life. At least there are clinics to help get you off smack. Religious freaks have only Slashdot, and only part of that is nonreligious.
A lot of people who are interested in cults have some heuristics for differentiating cults from "regular" religions.
Question "What's the difference between a cult. . . and my church, my service club, or, say, Alcoholics Anonymous?"
There are lots of differences, but the major difference is that of ultimate goal. Established religions and altruistic movements are focused outward--they attempt to better the lives of members and often, nonmembers. They make altruistic contributions. Cults serve their own purposes, which are the purposes of the cult leader; their energies are focused inward rather than outward (Singer, 1995).
The following website discusses cults, why people join them and stay in them, and the methods used by the leaders of cults to manipulate their members...
http://www.workingpsychology.com/cult.html