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Harvard to Clone Human Embryos?
Lifix writes ""Harvard University scientists have asked the university's ethical review board for permission to produce cloned human embryos for disease research, potentially becoming the first researchers in the nation to wade into a divisive area of study that has become a presidential campaign issue."
...they just can't use federal money to fund it.
If you've read the article, you'd have seen this -
None of the proposed experiments involves attempts to produce a cloned person.
So, no. They're not going to have clones, atleat not yet.
Goodluck on your search, though.
Here're the Yahoo! blurb and the NZ Herald stories.
When asked why he has chosen himself as the seed of all future Harvard clones, Professor Dershowitz responded, "Cloning is evil. Someone must stop others from cloning themselves and the answer is a worldwide army of Alan Dershowitz's working together to stop this scourge in its tracks."
A greatful world thanks Professor Dershowitz for choosing himself to shoulder this heavy burden, as only he can.
Seastead this.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is the Bush administration's policy.
...
I'll quote from the NZ Herald article -
Current law prohibits the use of federal funds to make human embryonic stem cells, and in August 2001 President George W Bush said scientists could work only on a few already existing cell lines, using federal funds.
The Bush Administration argues that people who oppose experimenting on human embryos should not have their tax dollars used in such research, but it is silent on what privately funded groups can do.
I guess they had to satisfy their right-wing supporters without openly cutting off research - that would have brought up serious opposition.
"My mother is a testtube and my father a knife"
l ltext.html
:)
(couldn't find this searching the book at Amazon, it might have been part of a preface, introduction or similar)
The full book legally readable for free here:
http://somaweb.org/w/sub/Brave%20New%20World%20fu
Enjoy!
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
First, let me start saying I believe life begins at the moment of conception, so i don't take *embryonic* stem cell research lightly. What bothers me is that people talk as if there's only one way to produce stem cells, through embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro.
Why other ways of producing stem cells are not beeing actively pursued, researched and advocated?
For instance, there is other kind of stem cells: adult stem cells. These are "found among differentiated cells in a tissue or organ" Of course adult stem cells are rare and embryonic stem cells are a lot easier to grow in culture than adult stem cells since "methods for expanding their numbers in cell culture have not yet been worked out", but both have advantages and disadvantages worth considering.
>Do we start cloning babies to kill them for the cure to AIDS? I
No. We start cloning stem cells. As far as I am concerned a stem cell is not a baby. The people dying of AIDS, are, however people.
FWIW, I'm pro theraputic cloning (as you have probably deduced) and anti the creation to to-term human clones.
This is ridiculous. Such a new jerk reaction.
You need cloned stem cells for the whole stem cell 'curing disease' thing to work. Let's say I have a bad heart, and some doctor / scientist types take some stems cells and grow me a new heart. Chances are that my body will reject said heart because it has a different repertoire of antibodies. However, if I had a line of stem cells specificially cloned from genetic makeup. They could grow a new heart for me, which look to the body just like the old heart.
Professor Melton, the person asking Harvard's permission to make embryonic stem cells, is not trying to clone humans. His research is focused on curing juvenile diabetes.
Previous research in his lab has demonstrated conclusively that there are no adult (by which I mean post-embryonic) stem cells in the pancreas which can be used to make replacement beta cells (the cells in the pancreas which produce insulin). Therefore the notion of using the approved stem cell lines to cure juvenile diabetes is a non-starter. During a talk during this year's Whitehead Symposium Melton suggested the Bush administration's policy on stem cell research would have him work using stem cells that do not exist.
Because Melton is a HHMI Investigator, he is able to do some embryonic stem cell research using entirely private funds in a lab separate from Harvard, if I remember correctly. I assume that this recent request is an attempt to expand this existing research.
Lest anyone question Melton's motives in this research, he has at least one child with juvenile diabetes, which is the reason he switched his lab's focus from straight embyonic development research to finding specific cures for juvenile diabetes.
Your understanding of evolution is flawed. Evolution is a description of changes over generations. We are a part of the natural process. We cannot hinder natural selection. Whatever happens is natural selection.
It is not that we are weakening the genetic pool when some people survive who would not have lived in the past. Evolution is based on survival. The survival of such people reflects a basic concept of evolution. The world and its selective pressures are in flux. From an evolutionary standpoint, having the ability to do something is worthless if it does not lead to increased reproductive success. If a particular condition no longer hinders reproduction because some technological advance has overcome it, that condition is no longer subject to much evolutionary pressure. We evolve based on the real world with real evolutionary pressures, not some imaginary world based on ideas of strength and weakness.
What are these dangerous genes? Do you know anything about population genetics? Look up Hardy-Weinburg. Although it is just a simple mathematical model, it provides a good argument against the rapid spread of a particular gene outside exceptional circumstances such as a genetic bottleneck.