Reprogrammed Skin Cells Turned Into Baby Mice

InfiniteZero writes "According to this WSJ story, 'Two teams of Chinese researchers working separately have reprogrammed mature skin cells of mice to an embryonic-like state and used the resulting cells to create live mouse offspring. The reprogramming may bring scientists one step closer to creating medically useful stem-cell lines for treating human disease without having to resort to controversial laboratory techniques. However, the advance poses fresh ethical challenges because the results could make it easier to create human clones and babies with specific genetic traits.'"

Comments

Re:others trying to force their morales on us

[timmarhy]

"i'm pretty sure punishing people for killing other innocent people (even to save another) is not considered shoving morals down throats"

but that's got nothing to do with stem cell research - you can kill other people to harvest their organs right now. and it does happen. so that's adding nothing to the discussion.

the point is, we should be given the freedom to get to the point where we need to answer such moral questions like "when is an cloned organ donor human?" for ourselfs, and not have that taken away by the moralist right.

Re:Controversial?

[nawcom]

The problem is some spirituals, such as Christians, believe cloning is like playing God, and should be eschewed by all means.

In that sense, we are in fact playing a role of their "God". Why don't they pray to their god and tell him to finally show himself in a physical sense and then we can discuss what his little rules are regarding this. This reminds me of that quote, "God did not create man in his own image, rather, man created God in his own image." Science is becoming God.

Drawing the line

[TheLink]

> Where do we draw the line?

I'm sure most of us agree we'll have to draw the line somewhere.

The first problem as you say is "Where?".

Whatever we choose will seem rather arbitrary, stupid and unsatisfactory to most people, but it's going to be even more stupid to not draw a line. Or worse- to draw many lines on a case to case basis.

Analogy: when you invent cakes, sooner or later someone has to draw the line and decide what can legally be considered a cake. It be seem silly, and the line may be redrawn later, but it will still have to be drawn. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Cake_or_biscuit.3F

Once we give ourselves a "power", it becomes our responsibility.

Which brings us to the next big problem. To me it seems like the scientists etc are merrily giving us "powers" way before we are ready.

To me, certain areas of research should be postponed till we are ready to draw the relevant lines.

Right now scientists and many other people keep saying stuff like "do it because we can", "don't stop progress", "don't be a luddite".

BUT this is NOT the same as being luddites or sticking our heads in the sand, this is in fact the opposite. This is seeing a potential issue in the horizon, and choosing to not charge at it, until we have a more well thought out plan of what to do when we get there.

The power to make "Jaffa Cakes" and biscuits is not a real biggie, but what should we do with human/animal/machine hybrids?

What makes you legally human? Killing a stray aka "free" dog and unplugging a brain dead human are considered different things legally.

At what points do we consider something human? Be very careful where and how the line is drawn, or many of us may end up not being legally considered human. If we draw the line another way, we might have to stop eating pigs, dogs, etc. The pigs might be happier (or not - since pig farmers will just close down their pig farms and leave them to fend for themselves aka die). It is no trivial matter. We already have enough problems convincing people what can and cannot be done with human embryos, imagine the problems with hybrid human-animal embryos.

If we are not prepared to draw certain lines yet, "don't go there yet" then. If we charge into things, the judges may not have enough understanding when they draw the first line, could then be a long and troubled wait till it is next redrawn.

There are plenty of other areas to do research in first (and limited resources anyway). Areas without such problems.

Lastly, even if a human embryo isn't much in the early months (or weeks), for symbolic reasons we could draw a more cautious (early) line. After all we for various reasons have chosen to elevate humans and human life above all other creatures. If we are going to value humans so highly, giving special value to a near brainless human embryo doesn't seem that stupid to me.

Plus if we don't, it might be harder to convince the future AIs or advanced hybrids to value humans and their embryos as highly ;).

Re:Drawing the line

[fractoid]

At what points do we consider something human? Be very careful where and how the line is drawn, or many of us may end up not being legally considered human. If we draw the line another way, we might have to stop eating pigs, dogs, etc.

This is the fundamental problem of performance-based definitions of sentience. You're never going to find a set of purely performance-based criteria that simultaneously allows all genetic humans, and disqualifies all non-genetic humans, and let us be perfectly clear - what we're trying to do is find a functional excuse for 'speciesism' that lets us justify treating some animals as livestock while retaining the concept that other animals are special.

It will be a long hard fight for equality when we finally do meet or engineer sentient life from non-human stock. And of course, we'll then have to face the moral question of what rights are 'inalienable' to humans, and what rights should be granted to subhuman but still sentient creatures. Sooner or later we're going to have to face and deal with the fact that *not* all men (of whatever gender and species) are created equal. It's going to be interesting watch people try to decide whether they are all created with equal basic rights to life, liberty etc.