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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."
"We must allow this research, I mean some day this could allow Chris Reeve to.. oh.."
"Michael J Fox, you know him right? Well someday.."
I believe they should talk to people about the issues and the benefits instead of the constant name dropping of a few celebrities stem cells and cloning could *magically* heal. And since when is scientific research in line with religious dogma or morality? Science is the terrier that tugs at the great curtain. As we legislate based on dogma, many other countries are passing us by in science and technology.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They want their ideas back.
The question here isn't "Can we do this?" but rather "Should we do this?", and I just don't think we know enough to answer the 2nd question yet. After all, what are we (as a culture, people, race, as well as individuals)going to think if further research reveals that Life begins at conception? Will posterety record us a a generation that created an entire class of people for the sole purpose of scientific experimentation? And philosophical considerations aside, with all the cloning errors with Dolly (dozens of attempts, one "success") and other issues (genetic diseases present in Dolly that weren't present in her "mother") is any research we perform on a human clone going to have any medical validity?
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
Since the religious people began opposing science as it over turned their superstitions and required them to actually examine the nature of their faith only to find out it was a weak substitute for habbit.
If it's going to be a high school popularity contest, they might not be able to find anyone more popular than Jesus, but they've got to find someone who is popular enough that those asembled will at least consider paying attention so reason stands a chance.
This is the harvest of a reduced investment in education.
I'm guessing that their goal is to cull stem cells from the cloned embryos, and use those for disease research, as a team in South Korea did in February.
If they're allowed it could free up stem cell research in general by providing "victimless" stem cells.
With all the talk of "super cures", it's about time somebody got the ball moving.
I think that a British doctor put it best in a recent New York Times article about cloning embryos for stem cell research:
"I don't see a slippery slope," she said, "because the technology to do reproductive cloning in mammals is there, and I don't think that anything we do is going to significantly change the development of that technology. What stops it is that the law says we can't do it, and it's banned."
Preventing cloning of embryos for stem cell research does not in any way help prevent human cloning, it only prevents science and medicine from progressing. The technology is there -- we can't change that -- but what we can do is use it to save lives.
What crap.
:)
There is enough and more space in the world. It's just our cities which are crowded. Next time, take a drive around to the wilderness and outlands a few miles off your city and you'd notice how much free space is out there.
The only thing of worry is the crunch it may have on our natural resources, but I'm sure we'll find a way around it. Afterall, our species has shown the most resilience only when pushed to our limits.
It's going to be a long century, and at the moment, this kind of thing isn't safe either privatized or government regulated.
Yes, that's why they have bureas of ethical issues regulating this stuff. They have not even approved this, and it is not known if they will - this is merely an application seeking permission for _research_.
And read this (emphasis mine) -
Jennings said Harvard had raised "substantial" funds for the experiment from private philanthropies, but declined to name them. "There are a lot of people who have the resources and who are very keen to see this sort of work go ahead," he said in a telephone interview. "This is not commercial research."
It's just research for science's sake. I do not see anything evil in their intent, except for the fact that it may help several people with disabilities lead a normal life.
And besides, the reason I replied to your question - stem cell research is _not_ just to increase your longetivity. It can also help people with severe neurological disabilities. I've a cousin who has not gotten out of her bed ever since she has been of 4 years of age, for the past 18 years. I would do anything to see her walk, so would her parents.
For that reason alone, I would like to see this work progress. Go science!
Why is it that cloning so controversial?
Because of what might happen? Because we've seen some crazy science fiction movies?
It's ridiculous that people who least understand the research hold the strongest opinions about it and try to stop it from happening.
Now why exactly is any research involving embryos controversial? People aren't lining up at abortion clinics to make an easy 50 bucks by donating their unborn babies to research. Is it better to put the embryos in a landfill than to make use out of them?
Politics should not dictate research. It certainly should never prevent research.
The flip side is that people use superman as a political tool on the opposite side. "Let us do research. We'll make superman walk again!" I guess that won't be happening. If only he could have held out 'till election day...
It's quite amazing the hysterical reaction people have to clones when natural clones - also known under the technical term "same-egg twins" - are neither freaky nor the harbingers of a brave new world.
Anyone who is against cloning has to come up with better arguments than "it's unnatural".
Personally, I feel the discussion about cloning is largely provoked by people with political agendas, as are many divisive arguments around the world. People who have true feelings about the value of human life should better try to help the victims of war and famine, man-made disasters that kill millions.
But, I guess one clone is more of a danger to our claims of moral superiority than a million dead Sudanese or Congolese.
Call me a cynic but this debate is full of shit.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
It's a choice we'll have to make at some point of time or the other.
Do we let millions upon millions die _after_ they've matured into full humans, or do we save them by killing millions upon millions before they are anything more than a mass of cells?
Another thing to think about is this - so many millions in this world are killed everyday due to poverty, disease and strife - are we being fair in spending money on this rather than that?
I could go on so forth ad infinitum, but the point remains that this is progress, and if it can save the life of a full grown man at the expense of an embryos, it's a hard but decisive choice.
I'm certain that sooner or later, a way of coming up with stem-cells in ways other than using embroys will come up - but we will not reach that point unless we're willing to give it a shot, and try our hand at it.
Science at the outset often seems unfair, even barbaric. But in the end, the result is often worth it, beautiful even!
Remember, the goal of this is not to clone entire humans (although, someday, who knows what will happen) but instead to perfect genetic engineering.
People will likely look back one day on the movie Gattaca as amazingly prophetic. For those unfamiliar with the film, it did an amazing job portraying what society may be like when genetic engineering becomes perfected. Coming, sooner than many think, are the days when we can engineer the child of two parents; not to be a perfect child, but instead to be the "best" of those parents. The child is more intelligent, stronger, etc. than the average child produced by those parents would be, and will have a much lower likelihood of diseases and other problems. This will be a fantastic thing, but those children born the old-fashioned way are likely going to be disadvantaged. Because we'll be able to weed them out just by plucking a hair and checking their DNA.
Should we forbid someone from taking a certain job based on their genetic makeup? And how long can we breed the "best" children before the best become so far ahead of the worst, that the worst no longer have any "value" to society at all? Those will be the real ethical dilemmas. The so-called ethical dilemmas we're faced with today are just temporary hurdles created by people who are frightened of progress and/or don't understand what the goals are.
Do you actually have a grasp on the subject? They're not cloning humans to create a new master-race of perfect beings (it'd be far cheaper just to educate the ones we do have - but I digress). They wish to create stem cells - that's all. Just cells. You then completely muddy the water with your final point, either deliberately, or because you couldn't be bothered reading/understanding the original article - THEY'RE NOT TRYING TO CREATE CLONED PEOPLE (you got that now?) Secondly, just because something fails doesn't mean we should stop trying. Are you under the impression that all the great advances in the history of mankind just sortof worked first time? NASA just decided to shoot Neil into space on a whim one day and it came off?
Is it, since when did an embryo become a baby?
Most places it's 24 weeks, before that, it's a womens period (menstrual cycles), with the same rights, and in most cases the same viability, without serious medical intervention, and even with that, a low chance of anything resembling a normal worthwhile life.
Before you go moving the 24 week target, have a look at what happens if you go too early, you become the Catholic Church, and then every sperm IS sacred.
I guess what you have to ask yourself, is this.
If doing research on 200 stem cell clones resulted in the cure to aids, which would cure 20 million, would the research be worth it?
Most people would say yes.
If doing research on 200 stem cell clones resulted in the cure to aids, which would cure 2 million, would the research be worth it?
Again, yes.
It's when we get down to
If doing research on 200 stem cell clones resulted in the cure to a disease, which would cure 201 people, would the research be worth it?
Then it's a more difficult question.
In my view, it's still a yes.
However, I'd also want some research done into pain, reaction and the like, of the stem cells, to indeed see if there was any capacity for suffering or any suffering going on.
Other than that, they are just organic matter, same as a menstrual cycles, or sperm, livers, kidneys and hearts.
I'm still amazed that the people arguing against this aren't arguing against heart/liver/kidney transplants as being traumatic to hearts/livers/kidneys.
Bags of several dozen cells (which is what the embryos we're talking about are) aren't life. At best, they are the potential to become life, under the right conditions.
And, before people start shooting from their various moral highgrounds, please realise that none of the embryos that we're talking about have been ripped from anyone's womb without their consent. The few hundred embryos available for research use are the excess produce of IVF programmes, and if they weren't being used to further medical science then they'd be lying frozen in a tube somewhere or destroyed.
So, talk of "killing millions upon millions before they are anything more than a mass of cells" should be saved for the likes of National Enquirer. There aren't millions of millions, and they aren't being killed. But I guess "baby killer" is an easy argument to make for those too afraid to examine the facts properly.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
some people have absofuckinglutely no sense of humor. It's meant to be a joke....laugh, it keeps you young.
Mod me down, and I'll pray to my merciless God to make you age faster.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
> At least we'll all be happy.
No, we wouldn't be happy, as we are the savages, grown up in a totally different society.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Would the world really be better of if we stopped progressing,stopped inventing? Just because these new inventions can be abused by nasty-bad evil people, should we stop advancing?
Maybe we should have stopped when we "invented" fire way back when, because it can be used for detructive purposes, but seriously, what kind of life and society would we have today if we had?
Lets try to learn a lessons from the dark middleages and maybe not fear knowledge, science and progress so much.
My god you read too much science fiction. Let me give you this example, why do we all not have plastic surgery? We could all look "perfect", we dont because that is not important.
.. If you are still alive and not burnt for being a witch.. they will probably say that what is the soul of the donor tried to come back and take over timmy, what if timmy stopped being timmy, what if the donor was still alive in his heart and was unable to enter heaven....... you get the picture.
I am sick and tired of people always assuming that scientists are somewhere beteen Dr Mengele and Dr Frankenstein. Your idea of morality has nothing to do with science.
These people are doing this research to try and save lives and cure diseases. Anyone who says we should not do this is mad. I am an asmatic If I had the choice I would perefer not to be one.
You say "..."perfect" human for soldiers" you seem to forget that you would need to find a mother to carry the child and then raise it for 18 years and then train it! I think the training part would "make" the soldier, not the lab!
Regarding the level of gentic diversity, if we cloned every person on earth we would be left with the same genetic diversity to begin with.
Gentic diversity come from sexual reproduction, take two clones, not including genetic recombination, there are 70368744177664 geneticaly different children they could have.
Do not mistake your morality with objective "reality" a good example is organ transplantation. Go back 200 years and explain to people that because little timmys heart is no good you are going to take the heart from someone else and use it to replace timmy heart. Explain that this is fine and little timmy will be health again.
Some people mention things like bringing Hilter back... well given a different upbringing Hitler clone would probably give Poland a miss, especialy if raised in Harvard. People often forget about upbringing as a crucial factorm, if raised in Boston he might have problems writing Mein Kampf in German!
By "super-humans" I like to think of disease free . I mean we dont all dress the same so why would we all clone the same. You have visons of 6ft tall muscular, blond haired , blue eyed people marching in file.
Personaly I want the best for my children and that is all. For exolition to progress you need "selection". Now we must have selection in a population: If you look at the Dodo it was as good as it needed to be for its island paradise. No predators, no need to fly, just get fat for the lean winter months. Along come humans and rats and bye bye Dodo. The moment we accepted modern medicine we preventeed people from dying who "naturally" would have died. For example a type 1 diabetic, his children now have an increased suceptability. Continue this for 100 genertations and we have a problem. Now we can either solve the problem before it happens or treat the person after the fact. Treament after the fact means that their children will be born with the same mutations, and will require treatment too. Now if we just repair the mutated genes in the embryo then problem solved.
It is a bit like having a well patched system or running virus removal tools once an hour to keep your system virus free.
It's because our current technology can't ensure that the artificially cloned human will be healthy. Would you want to be the scientist responsible for bringing a defective (excuse the term) human being into the world? If that person had to spend their life with terrible illnesses, premature death, or some bizarre mutation? Once our cloning technology has progressed to the point where we will be confident the cloned person will be perfectly unharmed by the procedure, then maybe there will be a case for human reproductive cloning. Until then, it should only be used for creating stem cells, or perhaps even organs or body parts. It would be unconscionable to actually allow a human clone to progress to the point of viability in the near future.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Insightful?
Informative might be a stretch, but I can take it.
But insightful that the mods do not have a sense of humour?
Nothing is funnier than someone cursing the mods to an early death by praying to God in an article on stem-cell research to prolong life.
Hmmm, I'm at a loss for words.
The human copy-constructor.. Neat!
Seriously, the only reasons against cloning are based in religion, so I guess the first order of business would be to rid ourselves of all such manner of superstitions.
And it would be about time too!
they could always go to other countries and do it there.
bamm
http://www.astronomy.com.ph/
Check out that link, Bush is sharing his "wise" perception with us:0 010809-2.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/2
"I also believe human life is a sacred gift from our Creator. I worry about a culture that devalues life, and believe as your President I have an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world. And while we're all hopeful about the potential of this research, no one can be certain that the science will live up to the hope it has generated."
Removed From Article but posted here for SlashDot readers ONLY
: "Unless that life resides in Iraq or another country inside the Axsis of Evil, because MY God said those people don't matter, nor do their children or elderly. "
I love how the people who are the most loyal to "God" are also the ones who create the most pain in this world, actually their loyality has nothing to do with God and everything to do with their "religion" and let me tell you there is a major difference between being loyal to God and to a religion...
-=Linsys=-
http://www.intrusionsec.com
This is simply wrong. Noone sane argues against the fact that single-cell organisms are alive.
The question is whether they are human.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Surely you need to have the capacity to feel pain and fear before you can be tortured?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
But it's one thing to use cells from a dead organism, and a completely DIFFERENT thing to create a living organism and experiment on it.
Why? A bunch of electrochemical impulses do not constitute a person. It's okay to experiment on planets. It's okay (for many people) to experiment on animals. Why not a bunch of human cells? It's not like they are experimenting on fully-developed babies - these are mindless clumps of cells. It's as unethical to experiment on them as it is to experiment on toenail clippings.
This just goes to show that researchers all too often dump all consideration of right and wrong "in the name of science".
No, it just goes to show that some people are perfectly willing to start ranting about how unethical scientists are without even having a basic understanding of what it is they are condemning.
Of course they are life. Whether they are HUMAN life is what the debate is about - they are most certainly life.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Might as well start building the camps now so we have someplace to put all these unfortunate genetic souls who are not good-enough. You'll have to build the ovens large enough for all those millions of people you deem to be inferior, lets make sure I have the list complete:
ignorant
stupid
Religious (wouldn't want to stand in the way of the science)
And why you are at it you might as well get rid of any of those other groups you don't like. Have you ever stopped to think that the geek may not be the top of the food chain?
Oh, I've got a couple more for the list, you will probably come to the same conclusion as the Nazis and you will want to get rid of:
Jews
Blacks
Gays
Communists
Political/ social opponents
I would write more, but how can I make any headway with such a bunch of facists. Most of them hiding as anon cowards.
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
Considering there is already a Constitutional amendment preventing the ownership of human beings, I don't think anyone would have much success trying to patent them.
Then again, I didn't think combovers, algorithms, or using a laser pointer to exercise cats would be patented either.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
With all respect, I think you missed his point. (I used italics because I'm speculating, too.)
He's poking fun at the now-blurry line between church and state in this (U.S.A.) country.
Too, he seems to understand just how intolerant the thumpers can be. "Dang it, the earth is flat. Go make a confession 'else I'll burn you at the stake."
To everyone who feels like freaking out and telling me off, let me save you all some time and lay out my actual positions on this stuff, so you don't waste time calling me a religious maniac or whatnot:
1. Stem cell research: good.
2. Cultivating stem cells acquired from IVF sources: good.
3. As I've heard suggested in the media, cultivating stem cells acquired from aborted embryos, fetuses, whatever: good. DISCLAIMER: DO NOT PANIC. I AM NOT ACCUSING ANYONE OF DOING THIS. IT IS JUST HYPOTHETICAL FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. Sheesh, People around here are too high strung.
4. Cloning stem cells: good.
5. Cloning entire embryos: touchy ground. I think it's different from using already cast-off tissue that would have died anyway. And, the phrase "cloning embryos" is too damn unspecific anyway. Are you talking about actual cloning, or just culturing cells? If cloning, I think it's a bad idea. Which is what this whole stupid argument thread is about.
I see an embryo, and of course a fetus, as an entire unit, a potential person. Therefore, if that potential person is already dead, as with castoff IVF material, or the clinic idea I've heard mentioned in the media, I don't see any harm in it. On the other hand, if you've just created a viable embryo just to disassemble it for the stem cells, that seems kind of ugly. And I do think it would be only a few steps from some much more serious nastiness down the road. I don't trust scientists as far as I can throw them, sorry. I've read too much about what they've done in the past. Like the guy who invented the lobotomy and then proceeded to inflict it on thousands of patients because he thought he was "helping" them.
6. I am not particularly religious, I have no desire to outlaw abortion, IVF, or any other such thing, I'm not an ignorant, evil redneck, and this is all just my opinion anyway.
Slashdot, people, is an OPINION SITE. Not necessarily the news.
Now, THIS is my WHOLE opinion on the subject, everybody relax.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
If you really look into this whole issue of cloning or stem cell research, you obviously see two arguments at work here. The technical and (I believe) moral (non-religious) one that shows the benefits of such research on saving peoples' lives and/or giving them better quality of life as apposed to the non-technical (religious) one in which some book created thousands of years ago can somehow know the future and is able to dictate the decisions in our lives for the present day.
Of course we know that this book makes no mention of stem cells or cloning embryos because it can't. However, sadly enough, certain people use this piece of material as a means to scare and manipulate others into thinking this sort of science somehow equates to the work of the "devil" or some other "fictional" evil character that punishes those who disobey (what essentially is) another man's law.
Now, this line of thinking may have seemed legitimate thousands or even hundreds of years ago where people really believed Chris Columbus and his ships would fall of the edge of the Earth, but today, in a world where we have the capability to send robots 50 million miles away and land on other planets I think it's time that we put all this imaginary, spooky stuff to bed. We're just to intelligent for this.
This is progress folks and we need to move on. At times it seems scary, but that has never stopped us before. Put it this way, when was the last time one scientist beheaded another scientist for disproving his theories? When was the last time a group of engineers at one university jailed and then publicly hanged one of their fellow engineers for spreading an "evil" belief that Linux is a sucky operating system? Think about it and then you may laugh.
Genetic manipulation qualifies as Eugenics. A lot of things do - checking the fetus for defects, and aborting as necessary does. Choosing to abort daughters, because you want a son (used to be common in China, I don't know whether it still is - should produce an interesting society in about 20 years if so) qualifies as "eugenics".
Based on the results of the last bit of eugenics practiced by humanity (Nazi Germany), I expect the gengeneering will produce a very unpleasant war by and by, followed by a general revulsion at the idea of gengeneering. Until they forget just why they were offended, and do it again. Repeat....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
If you are looking for an ethical or metaphysical meaning to take from this, it's that small bundles of cells just aren't important; it is much more important to make sure that babies, children and adults are healthy than to obsess over the welfare of a sub-microgram blastocyst.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Everyone has heard the arguments about how those little embryos are not really little people but just 'embryos.' I'm sure the Romans had really great arguments about why it was fine to kill slaves in their Coliseum in Rome because the slaves were not really people but just 'slaves.' And those many civilizations which practiced human sacrifice in the name of spiritual good for the whole were certainly convinced that they were doing no wrong. But try as we might to obscure the issue, those little embryos of a handful of cells are just as much a human life to be protected as the person sitting next to you...and deep down we all know that. Killing embryos to obtain their stem cells to improve our health is no different than killing prisoners to extract their organs so that others might have better health. It is immoral to improve our own health at the expense of other lives. Stem cells may have therapeutic value but they need to be obtained from methods other than breeding people to obtain them.
I call BS
First of all, even dismissing all religious arguments, there are serious philisophical issues that can be raised with this kind of research. What is the point of learning how to better human life if we place no value on it? If you can't at least aknowledge that there can be a valid discussion then you are probably just afraid to address the issue. Casting the other side as "religious freaks" is just a way to justify your own ignorance.
Second, the idea that religion tries to oppress science is completely false. I'll only speak of Catholicism, because that is what I know, and because you invoked the "Galileo" arguement.
Claiming that religion is against knowledge because a single Pope chose to imprison Galileo is like saying all software is bad because Microsoft writes bad software. Microsoft writes bad software because their goal is market dominance, not good code. In the time of Galileo, the church was also a government. As a government its primary goal was to maintain control, and it was feared that revealing Galileo's discoveries would weaken that control. The documents that we have from that time indicate that it was a political, not a religious decision. There is no evidence that the church rejected the science. I don't defend the action, but I reject it as a mark against religion.
In Catholic theology/philosphy all knowledge is good. There is no reason that we should not understand how orbits, electrons and genetics work. The issue is what we do to obtain the knowledge, and what we do once we have it.
Science without philosopy is useless. From a purely scientific viewpoint it doesn't matter if we cure cancer, blow our world apart, or worship toads. Humans are just chemical reactions that the universe can do with or without. Human life and suffering don't matter a bit.
Of course you don't believe that, but thats because you have placed an arbitrary value on an arbitrary definition of humanity. You probably believe that science should serve humanity, but you define humanity as being exclusive of the unborn. Others define it as including the unborn.
You have called those that disagree with you "a bunch of ignoramuses" so I assume you have some solid scientific basis for your position. Please enlighten me with the science that I am missing. While you are at it, can you explain why genicide, enslavement, murder, theft, and bad manners are wrong?
If we learn anything from history, we should learn that it is far too easy to re-define some group as less than human for selfish gain. You can't prove that slaves should be free, but that doesn't make it less true. We are in big trouble if we only protect that which science can prove is worth protecting.
XML is the best data format; unless your data needs to be read or written by a human or a computer.
Do we start cloning babies to kill them for the cure to AIDS?
I vote we teach people that AIDS is preventable just like pregnancy and drug overdoses. For me it's a no-brainer; farming embroys for stem cells and such is immoral.
Now on the other hand, there are some illnesses which are not preventable. Do I agree with farming of embroys to cure those diseases? Nope. Why kill what could be a perfectly healthy human? Doesn't make sense to me.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.