Slashdot Mirror
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."
Don't bother, they're already here....
Hopefully the clone will have legs too!
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.
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
Just what we need, a bunch of cloned Canadiens... Why didn't they choose to clone some Swedish chicks?
Why is any religion not of Christian origin called a "cult"?
After all, Christianity itself is merely one of the few socially acceptible cults.
That being said, I wonder how they managed to cull the genetic goofs that cloning invariably leads to? After all, how many sheep were born warped before Dolly existed? And even she wasn't perfect.
"I've missed a period" - girl ... are you sure?" - cult leader ... this could be bad. Uh... I know! We'll send you away for a while!" - cult leader
"Shit!
"Well, yes, dammit. I told you to use protection! What do you care, you've gotten half the women in this cult pregnant." - girl
"Yeah, but they're not 15
"What about the kid? What do we do when he comes back?" - girl
"We'll put out a press release saying he's really a clone, we'll even post it on slashdot! I'm sure everyone will believe us!" - cult leader
Yes, but how many?
A woman gives birth to an exact clone of herself. A couple years down the road, the child learns to speak and its first word is a cuss word. It turns out that the child is an EXACT replica of the mother except for the fact that it can only speak swear words. This drives the mother crazy and eventually she drives to a large canyon and pushes the child in. When she returns home, the police arrest her...
For making obscene clone falls! Ba dum ching!
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.
Cloning has the potential to really help some couples with fertility issues
Adoption also has the potential to really help some couples with fertility issues. Granted, it doesn't carry the same pride of ownership, but it's still a proven alternative. After all, modern medical science has pretty much got the entire adoption procedure down. Rarely, if ever, do adoptions produce the kinds of defects seen in animal cloning and feared possible in human cloning.
Still, I suppose we have to try and slow down some of these changes to the human race. The nuclear bomb came before we were ready for it, and we are still struggling to catch up to it politically and morally. Cloning has the potential to change the world even more, so the more lead time we have for legislators and philosophers to work on this, the better.
But I will be shocked if the first legal and widely advertised cloning clinic is not openned in 2003 or 2004.
I'd heard that a disproportionate number of Ralians come from the exotic-dance community.
Hey, we want these people to clone themselves!
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
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.
Most cloning experiments done to date have resulted in abnormalities that manifested themselves later in the cloned animals life. Well, an animal can be put down pretty quickly, and the ethics behind doing so are mostly cut and dried. Not so with a human life, cloned or otherwise. If there is a life threatening condition down the road, the cloned person may have to endure a lot of pain and suffering that would have been avoided had they been a normal conception and birth. Bottom line, there is too much we don't know about cloning to rush to create a cloned human for the purposes of prestige only. This is not responsible or ethical science.
Merrian-Webster defines a cult as a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious. I think that a majority of us can agree that the idea that we were cloned from aliens is unorthodox.
I had no idea not having a soul could lead to arthritis.
1. Found obscure cult involving aliens.
2. Ask "tithes" for support and basic nescecities. (6 acres of land, 4 million USD villa, heated swimming pool, turkish sauna, botanic garden, 4 wives, 4^n children, 3 Mercedes', 2 BMWs, 2 Cessnas, 1 Learjet, 1 converted Boeing 727 and a division of lawyers to keep the 4 wives from running away with all aforementioned "nescecities".)
3. Profit!
Hate me!
> The Canadians are gonna invade with there army of clones. Let's nuke'm
Jeez, don't you know *anything* about military stuff? When your going to get invaded by an army of clones, you send out your Jedi. *Everybody* knows that...
Chris Mattern
I'm sure as hell this post will be "cloned" quite soon, too.
Why is any religion not of Christian origin called a "cult"?
This is simply incorrect. Major world religions with some history behind them are not called cults while many sects that have their roots in Christianity are considered cults.
That being said, I wonder how they managed to cull the genetic goofs that cloning invariably leads to?
I would imagine their story would be that the aliens taught them how to goof-proof the process.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
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.
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.
1) Their leader is French.
2) He calls himself "Rael," moved to Canada, and started a cult.
3) This cult believes that aliens created humans from DNA they brought to Earth.
4) The cult's headquarters is called "UFO Land."
5) They claim to have cloned a human.
Now, why the hell should I believe 5 if 1-4 serve to discredit any idea that intelligence and legitimacy may be present here?
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.
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."]
Your goals are too modest--I think the deep thought, humane empathy, and tolerance expressed by this AC deserve not only to be imitated in the US but all over the globe.
In fact, I think in a lot of places they already are quite standard.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
I guess it mainly depends on who's doing the talking... anything can be called a "cult", if you like. But here's one variant of the generally accepted indicators that a community is a cult. These signs can be applied to Christianity, too, and often rightly so. But when you compare the mainstream religions to the "cult" religions, the difference between the two is extreme. E.g., my parents are Christians--have been all their lives--but they've never exhibited any of the signs of a cult.
Well, maybe the "if you leave the church, you're wrong" sign, but that can be said about any standard: If you cross on a red light, you're wrong; that doesn't mean that traffic laws are a cult, though. Certainly I've never seen Christians, or Buddhists, or Neopagans punish their ex-members the way the Scientoligists or the Jehova's Witnesses do.
I don't know if the Raelians meet the more technical definition of a "cult", or if they're simply being discrimintated against because they're non-Christian. I suspect it's a little bit of both, though. Since they're refusing to publish their methodology, open their experimental process up to peer review, offer any sort of supporting evidence, or allow for independent corroboration of their claims, I'm content to let the media put them in the "cult" bucket pending clarification of the matter.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
As seen on a /. sig...
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Cult: A religion with no supreme being. Read your dictionary.
What dictionary are you reading? Did you even look it up yourself before posting? The absence of a supreme being is not the litmus test for cult status, although it is a common characteristic of cults.
More properly, it is simply the unorthodox nature of its religious system that determines its "cult" status. Of course, orthodoxy is in the eye of the beholder. For example, the term is often used in Christian circles to refer to highly unorthodox forms of Christianity such as the one practiced by David Koresh and his followers. Some refer to the LDS (Mormon) church or the Jehovah's Witness faith as cults for the same reason. An atheist, on the other hand, might refer to any belief of a supreme being as cultic.
Not that it's the final authority or anything, but here's what Merriam-Webster has to say. Note that the absence of a supreme being appears nowhere in this list. Definitions #2 and #3 are the relevant ones here.
1 : formal religious veneration : WORSHIP
2 : a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents
3 : a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents
4 : a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator
5 a : great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad b : a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion