A Giant Step in Cloning

mernil writes "The Independent reports: "A technical breakthrough has enabled scientists to create for the first time dozens of cloned embryos from adult monkeys, raising the prospect of the same procedure being used to make cloned human embryos."

Comments

Hmmm.

[WindBourne]

How soon before we take some of the "icemans" cells and try to clone him? It may be interesting to see what has happened to man over the course of 5000 years. Of course that would require ignoring all ethical issues.

Re:Hmmm.

[Futile Rhetoric]

I'm pretty sure an iceman's DNA wouldn't be salvageable.

Something I've always wondered, what's the huge deal about cloning? It'd be interesting to add a few Einsteins to the world, sure, but apart from that, what are the real advantages? Wouldn't harvesting organs, for instance, be better achieved by using stem cells?

Re:Hmmm.

[WindBourne]

Hint: will they be stronger? Shorter (most likely)? what resistance to what diseases do they have? How fast do the learn? Are their unique biological systems in their bodies that we have lost (for example the appendix originally was thought to be about digestion, but now appears to be a major part of the immune system), etc. etc.
That is life.

The cloning of Mammoths and Dodo are already in the pipeline.

Re:one problem

[vadim_t]

Replacement parts.

Grow a clone without a brain to avoid the ethical implications. Keep it safely stored (frozen in liquid nitrogen?). If you need a transplant of anything you can get a new organ, fully compatible, and even better than before (lungs undamaged by smoke/contamination, etc).

Might work as a way of living longer. Heart is not doing so well when you're 70? Replace it with one from a 20 year old clone.

I could see modified clones being used. A gender swapped clone, a clone with blue eyes, fixed genetics to avoid diseases and cancer, etc. If you could move your brain to a new clone and keep this up long enough I could see people building a "perfect self", by fixing all the defects in each new iteration that they found in the previous body.

Re:one problem

[squiggleslash]

Given the brain manages the body, it seems improbable that you can get away with creating a brainless clone.

(Unless you're talking about creating Republicans! Arf arf!)

No, but seriously I think the technical challenges created by somehow genetically modifying a human to have no brain or a significantly modified zero-consciousness brain are far, far, greater than those that were up against cloning. I suspect that cloning helps us create brainless organ-donors in the same way that the wheel helped us create space rockets.

Re:one problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This is complete nonsense. I have twin identical sons, and they don't think that they're each other. They are simply two different humans who happen to have the same genetic structure.

If you were to give them precisely the same brain set-up in some magical way (ghost an image over?) what you would have is two seperate humans who, just for a moment when they woke up, were thinking identical thoughts. After a few seconds they would be thinking completely different thoughts, but they would never think that they WERE each other.

You've been watching too much Hollywood. A problem with Americans...

Re:hmmmm

[davidsyes]

Really, ethically, I think, these are still beings that should NOT be manufactured for sexual exploitation reasons. In this life, if you can't GET sex (consensually, hopefully), then existentially you probably "unearned" it in this or a previous lifetime.

It's one thing to joke about sex, and another when people get fantastical ideas of having organic clones of humans for sexual gratification. For those wanting human clones for sexual reasons, go get a real doll, or pray for a neural dream-controlling simulator, like in that Wesley Snipes movie.