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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."
the first human clone has probably already been walking around for a while. I have a hard time believing that the experts would sit by not doing it because people are afraid. As many people as are looking at cloning, surely someone had already done it before this.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
Let's assume this is just PR by a cult sect. But still, it is worrying - that here we have people who are willing to perform what amounts to human experimentation *despite* the defects shown in many of the cloned animals. Doing this to a human being is in my eyes not any better than the medical experiments conducted by the Nazis.
We need to regulate this type of research and deal with rogue 'scientists' and 'doctors' who are willing to do such acts. Please note that I think an outright ban on human cloning is not a good idea, there is too much promise in the technology - just, we need to be very, very careful what we're doing with it.
Some basic exposition is missing from this story. We get the words "religious cult" and then no explanation other than that they want to clone people.
So, um, what about this "cult" is "religious"? You read a story like that, and the labels get used, but what exactly are the "religious" aspects of the cultism, here? 'Cause I'm kinda curious.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
This is incredibly hard to prove, because of "ethical" and "privacy" reasons there is going to be no way to prove this. We don't know where the baby is born, there's no picture, there's no video tape or any other details.
So now, the cloners are allowing a freelance journalist to get together a group of scientists and they're going to take samples of DNA from the mother and the child and send them back. How much do you want to bet that they won't let the scientists take the actual samples?
For example, I could give you two samples of my own DNA and tell you I have a clone. The microchondial DNA would of course be identical.
There's going to be more to this story once these journalists and scientists get to the location.
Natural parthenogenesis in mammalian species is considerably more common than most people think, and is considered normal in certain breeds of mice, cattle, and camels, occuring as a result of defective egg cells. In the vast majority of cases, mammalian parthenogenesis fails to produce offspring and results in noncancerous ovarian tumors.
However, such parthenogenic ova can produce clones of their mother when (A) they are simultaniously ovulated into a receptive womb, e.g., shortly after an ordinary egg which became fertilized, and (B) contain a diploid nucleus. Although ova are supposed to be haploid some human haploid cells are naturally diploid. Presumably this is an ordinary kind of haploid mutation.
Although it is difficult to estimate the rate of occurance of natural human parthenogenic offspring, it is probably more common than one in a billion over the course of a modern human female lifespan, meaning that there are probably already a handful of clones on the planet. ["Wow, you really do look like your mother."]
Actually, according to their web site (of course, had to see the Google cache of it cause it's already thoroughly slasdotted!) they believe that: "The Raelian Movement also claims that Jesus was resurrected through an advanced cloning technique performed by the Elohim"
So, therefore, they can probably be a sort of Christian cult! Of course, they call themselves "the Raelian Movement, an international religious organization" because it's not really possible for people in a cult (because of their point of view of being inside the cult) to believe they ARE in a cult.
You have GOT to check out the google cache of their site! They are making a business with Millions of potential wacko customers of the human cloning! This business is, of course, run by a member of the cult leadership! Ya see, this is why religion and business should never mix... this technology (if it's not a load of B.S.) will undoubtedly only be marketable to Military or Fanatical religious organizations trying to create armies of martyrs and other even more appealing thoughts... an army of missionaries!
If those kinds of obvious underlying intentions don't scare the living hell out of all of us that aren't part of the cult I don't know what will!
Oh, by the way, they claim that the "Elohim" are a: "... human extraterrestrial race whose name, Elohim, is found in the Hebrew Bible and was mistranslated by the word 'God'."
I'm just glad I believe I'm a Human Terrestrial!
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr