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."

Comments

Yes, it's legal...

[jtmas83]

...they just can't use federal money to fund it.

Human cloning...

[Justin205]

Human cloning is scary stuff. What happens when we start to clone the "perfect" human for soldiers? Or when we clone too much that it leaves too little genetic diversity? Or worse, combining genetic manipulation with cloning, creating "super-humans", so-to-speak?

Personally I think those are questions best left to speculation, and not ones that should ever have their answers truly known by anyone.

Re:Human cloning...

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

Re:Human cloning...

[mrsev]

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.

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. .. 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.

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.

I'm for it, I guess

[spineboy]

Kinda hard to really think about this. Yeah I guess it could be a life, but then alot of things could be considered that too. I used to work in a lab where we had immortalized cell lines from people to study a heart disease - you take their white cells and mix them with a type of cancer cell which produces a cell that keeps living. - A lot of these people were dead, but I had in my refridgerator a little piece of them still living. It kinda freaked me out for a few days when I realized this, but after a while I realized that it wasn't much diffferent than a piece of hair that had fallen out, or some blood that had leaked out of some cut.

My point is that as long as we keep the clones somewhat small - say less than 1024 cells, I have no moral problem with disposing them - that I'm not killing anything. Yes this has a HUGE grey area, but I think that a reasonable compromise can be reached.

Let the flame/holy wars begin...

Re:I'm for it, I guess

[D-Cypell]

My point is that as long as we keep the clones somewhat small - say less than 1024 cells

Sure, they will be marketed as kilocells but when the marketing folks get their grubby hands on them we will only get 1000!!

Why is cloning controversial?

[Evets]

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...

Clones? They're already all around us...

[ites]

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.

Re:Fortunately...

[Bequita]

No, they even exist on Slashdot. And not as anonymous cowards either.

Speaking as one from inside the scientific community, a lot of researchers have their own "pet" ideas on cures for the disease du jour, and these ideas don't always have the strongest link to reality. When these ideas have made their way into human subject studies, people have died, even though it the concept worked PERFECTLY in mouse and rat models. And that should underline how little we actually understand the big picture of human physiology.

I believe that the goal of medicine should be to preserve human life. This is why I study to be a doctor, this is why my goal is to be a physician scientist. However I do not see how this goal may be adhered to by killing lives in their beginning, or worse, creating lives only to destroy them.

The Nuremberg Code (available here) states that the voluntary consent of the human subject is "absolutely essential". The disregard some scientists have for this, purely in the name of science, disturbs me greatly.