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Scientists Move Closer to Human Therapeutic Cloning
"Human therapeutic cloning has moved a step closer after U.S. researchers said they had successfully created embryonic stem cells from monkey embryos. Scientists told a stem cell research conference in Cairns this week that they had successfully created two batches of embryonic stem cells from cloned rhesus monkey embryos."
If you're a Religious Conservative, which is worse:
A) Human stem cells taken from humans
B) Human stem cells taken from cloned monkeys
C) Yes
I'm guessing that they're going to go with C
Mostly because I can't imagine they'll like cloned monkeys
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Rhesus monkey stem cells may not be entirely compatible with human nuclei, so this by no means brings the human stem cell debate closer to an end.
Cell workings differ slightly between species. Different proteins may be present, etc.
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Therapeutic Cloning?
WTF is that supposed to mean?
You're cloning yourself... to feel better?
If you don't feel good, why clone yourself?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
can only be used by Monkey boy Steve Ballmer.
It may one day be possible to do this with human beings. Until then animal testing is in order.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A switch to using polarized light in labwork instead of dye and ultraviolet light traditionally used to identify cell chromosomes may have led to the breakthrough, ...
So for years the scientists have been finding the chromosomes to transplant by:
- Flooding the donor cell with a fluorescent dye that bonds to DNA, then
- Shining ultraviolet light (i.e. ionizing radiation) on the cell, causing the dye to fluoresce (and also dump enough energy into the DNA molecule to break molecular bonds and produce free radicals in the nearby area).
And then they wondered why, after they transplanted this DNA into the denucleated egg, the resulting cell didn't work right.
Good grief!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Right now, Republicans are leary of harvesting human clones for parts, and Democrats are all in favor of it, but just wait until someone makes $1 off of it. Then, the tables will turn.
It's all going to start when someone figures out how to clone men but with giant penises, for easy transplant. Why compete over cars, houses, plots of land and computer upgrades when you can just go buy the real deal? In America, EVERY MAN will be a porn star. There will be billions of dollars made there.
From there, we'll get on to using human skin and hair for clothing, and human bones as a proxy for ivory. At first, it will be a status symbol. You really could have a lampshade made out of human skin, or even a football for junior or a jacket for the mrs. But soon, with enough venture capital, human clones will be mass produced and harvested like so many sheep, and even more billions will be made.
Eventually, there will be, within the USA alone, a 200 billion dollar a year industry dedicated to the production, harvest, and manufacturing goods based on harvested clones. At that point, just as you once saw liberals hail the progress of animal antibiotics and industrial farming and then turn to an imaginary better day of all natural organic everything, you'll see liberals lamenting the devaluation of the human body, whereas, conservatives will merely say they are free and supporting consumer demand. Then liberals will eventually say the masses are stupid for supporting a human cloning industry and demand federal action to slow it down or stop it, write thousands of books decrying it, and support an endlessly array of Democratic candidates that promise to reform it but never really do. In the meantime, conservatives will argue the cloning is natural, its our right to do so, and its part of God's plan anyway, and to support their position, they will dredge up every last salamder that can regrow its own tail, every asexually produced thing in nature, and every supporting phrase in the bible. Oh yes, Jesus was very much in favor of harvesting clones, if you know which 4 passages to read.
This is my sig.
Five minutes of thoughtful searching brought up useful, important information for anybody willing to take these sciences and technologies seriously. The National Institute of Health (NIH) stem cell page has some paper abstracts as well as listed universities with programs in these United States (and some online resources). Useful sources of information at this bibliography re: human reproductive cloning, at Boston University and this one. CiteSeer popped up the paper on nuclear transfer / human cloning. Apparently there's at least one dedicated research foundation out there.
Granted, most of these links are preliminary- check those deep databases, like over at PubMed Central, for those detailed reviews of the state of the art. And just for kicks, one last link which (still) impresses me.
Bush wants you and your people to die without stemcell therapy.
Of course, he'll get any he wants, from some other country if that's necessary.
--
make install -not war
Damn good thing I like bananas, and trees, and Tarzan, and especially Jane!
When the Labcoats attack you, prepare to fling the poo,
Monkey see...Monkey do(doo)!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y-chromosome changed to X
And when it is grown
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.
(Chorus)
Clone, clone of my own,
With your Y-Chromosome changed to X
And when I'm alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex. -Randall Garrett, additional verses by Isaac Asimov
Now can anyone accelerate the aging process? By the time she's 18 I could be dead.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Thing is that, e.g. if you were predisposed to get Diabetes (i.e. to show its symptoms) at the age of 30, you'd have to wait 30 years for your clone to share its misery with you. Jokes aside you might need to wait a couple of year until your clone can share his/her kidney with you. A more useful approach would be to grow organs out of stem cells instead of full human beings which would create a host of new problems, e.g. visual identification in case of a crime committed ("It wasn't me! It was my evil twin - erm.. one of them"). Would give a whole new meaning to the "I am Spartacus!" line too ("Goddammit! All you Spartaci look alike! Who's the real one??"). And then there is always the "corrupt government+mad scientist scenario" that strifes to create the perfect clone army...
I have the feeling though, that there will be no meaningful broad discussion about cloning, eugenics etc. until we see the first liver or kidney farms on TV (or Youtube) at which point it might already be too late.
Real "Therapeutic Cloning" would be cloning Capt. Janeway and Seven Of Nine for me so I could get massages after long days at work.
Now *THAT* would be therapeutic!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Men want huge penises to whack off with -- who cares how the women feel about it?
But seriously, most people are superficial, and once stem cells show the ability outperform Botox, plastic surgery, RetinA, monoxidil, Oil of Olay, l'Oreal cosmetics, Ben Gay, etc, then you won't be able to beat the customers off with a stick. (Or even with a big penis to slap them with)
Women are more insecure about their looks than men. They will kill to get that youthful teenage wrinkle-free skin. They will go to back-alley abortion clinics to harvest embryonic cells from themselves. Adult women will fight to look like teenagers, and teenagers will fight to look like pre-teens.
Guys will go for athletic enhancements. Cartilage repairs for the rich jocks and their cutting-edge sports doctors. Stem cell injections for the joints, the muscles, the tendons.
The elderly baby-boom generation will flock to whatever keeps them alive. Cardiac stem cells, brain stem cells, liver stem cells, you name it and they'll be ordering it.
Whatever people can't get here due to regulation, they'll just go abroad, where the medical services are cheaper anyway.
Let's face it, this is the next big industry to be in. How can an ordinary guy like me get some crash training on this? Is there an MCSE for Molecular Biology?
The recent advance of creating stem cells from skin cells (using embryonic stem cells cultured in the lab from previously collected stem cells) suggests to me that there are a potentially large number of other methods to obtain/generate these cells that does not involve the destruction of viable human embryos.
I have also found it interesting that embryonic stem cells, apparently, can be taken from umbilical cords and placental cells. Why is this ignored in research (or is it a case of a percentage of researchers focusing on it but media coverage not being made)?
Using monkey stem cells, if the potential problems can be resolved relating to genome differences, seems like a good approach.
For those few (one or two if I'm lucky) who are interested in my reasoning:
It's my opinion that treating potential human lives as a commodity leads the human race to a morally incorrect conclusion: sentient life is only as important as it's medical value to any other sentient life who stand to benefit from said medical value.
I do not see the use of monkey embryos as a moral affront when used appropriately because monkeys are not sentient. While I believe all life should be revered to a greater or lesser degree I see this reverence being measured by the potential of the individual. Sentient beings have an infinitely greater potential than non-sentient beings.
My basis for this conclusion/opinion is the universally accepted moral code against the taking of human life. Well universally accepted in non-self destructive cultures.
Lets not base this belief on religious text or arguments as I do not believe such sources lend themselves well to scientific analysis (although they may have their place as historically being the method of enforcement of moral standards in cultures). From a purely evolutionary perspective I think history provides us decent proof that lack of reverence for the rights, specifically the right of life of human/sentient beings is not a constructive cultural tendency.
I'm not going to attempt to detail these tendencies but according to what I've read, effectively, cultures tend to become increasingly flippant regarding life prior to that cultures disintegration.
In fact this can be expanded to include other rights as well. It is my understanding that one of the chief reasons there was not more invention & technological advancement during the golden age of philosophy was the cultural tendency to rely on slaves to perform tasks that required physical labor.
Because of this cultural weakness those who developed hypotheses failed to carry out experiments because hands on physical labor was required, which, culturally, was a slaves job.
So my point is:
Cloning/growing new cells to replace defective, damaged, or missing cells is an excellent end goal. Flippant use of human embryos for this purpose is, in my opinion, a degenerative attitude. Targeted use of human embryos under predefined moral rules for this purpose is acceptable and generation of stem cells from other sources is greatly desirable.
Research seems to be moving away from flippant use and more toward targeted use under predefined moral rules and toward generation of stem cells from other sources.
Therefore I am becoming decreasingly less concerned about stem cell research as an issue.
Some one giving the right to create life for the entire purpose of destroying it.
OR
Some on rejecting the right to create life for the entire purpose of destroying it, and some doctors doing it anyways?
Either way, creating life for the sake of destroying it is not moral, in my opinion. I'm not religious in any case, as I'm not a "believer", but as a father of two boys, and a person with respect to choice as well as life, I couldn't give something like this the go-ahead.
A woman getting pregnant and choosing to not keep the baby is one thing. Being a man I won't ever know what this choice is like, as my body cannot sustain another life inside it.
Doctors cooking up embryos in a lab, just so they can turn around and destroy them, is something on an entirely different path completely.
President Bush has used his veto to kill another bill that would have lifted some of the restrictions on research using human embryonic stem cells.
The news has been greeted with dismay, but not surprise, by the scientific community.
In announcing his use of the veto, Bush told reporters: "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."
Um, hello George...presumably it's OK if it's for oil?
...to clone a rhesus!!
Have you ever gotten sick and taken an antibiotic, required stitches, or maybe have a broken bone in childhood? Then no reproduction for you because you cheated. Those minor health problems today could have killed you if it were not for modern medicine
Did you ever catch the flu? In 1918 you'd be dead.
This is also the attitude that corrupts people in power, they think they are better and know more than everyone else.
"Destroying human life in order to save human lives is immoral," said GWB yesterday. I guess he forgot about the present justification for, you know, war.
How do you ask a blastocyst to be the last one to die for stem cell research? Oh, wait, that's right--they can't hear you. Never mind.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."