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Scientists To Open Mass-Cloning Factory in China This Year To Clone Cows, Pets, Humans (express.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists in China are planning to open a mass-cloning factory by the end of the year. The ambitious and futuristic facility hopes to be mass-producing one million cows every 12 months by 2020. Not only will it clone cattle, but the factory, which will be located in the northern Chinese port of Tianjin, will also cater to more specific needs by genetically engineering police dogs and thoroughbred race horses. It is part of a $21m plan which is backed by the Boyalife group in collaboration with South Korean company Sooam Biotech Research Foundation.

31 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Signed by messymerry · · Score: 2

    ...and this post was signed by me and me and me and me

    --
    Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
  2. April fools... by skaralic · · Score: 3, Informative

    April fools was 4 days ago guys...

    1. Re:April fools... by Aighearach · · Score: 3, Informative

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Be more credulous about what China is willing to do, medically.

      This is not some joke or corporate PR to gain attention just for cloned pets. This is about food production. And they will also be doing pets for rich people to fund it. And human tests. They don't have the same ethical restrictions. If they think it will help good people, then whatever harm or sacrifice is required from others is also seen as good.

      They're executing Falun Gong practitioners on demand to provide organs. Human cloning for organ harvest isn't even going to be controversial in China.

  3. Re:Is it just me...? by Flavianoep · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's just you. The world is not completely natural any more and we have been practicing artificial selection for ages.

    --
    Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
  4. Korral bit it from Lucille and The Comedian by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 4, Funny

    > factory to clone...humans

    Because if there's one thing the Chinese are bad at, it's producing more humans.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    1. Re:Korral bit it from Lucille and The Comedian by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 2

      Misleading as hell. Here's a less yellow news source. They do not plan on cloning humans.

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
    2. Re:Korral bit it from Lucille and The Comedian by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      Where did you hear this?

      Are you not familiar with Chinese society?

      China's preference for sons stretches back for centuries. Infanticide, the abandonment of girl babies and favourable treatment of boys in terms of food and health has long produced a surplus of men. In the past two decades, the gap at birth has soared: the advent of ultrasound scans has allowed people to abort female foetuses, even though sex-selective abortion is illegal.

      http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/02/chinas-great-gender-crisis/

    3. Re:Korral bit it from Lucille and The Comedian by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Which seems rather scary in the long run. I recall once reading something where the author speculated that one of the largest reasons for the disproportionate amount of violence in the Middle East was due to the cultural and religious customs allowing men to have multiple wives. Since almost every country has a roughly even infant sex ratio this means that there were a large number of young men who had no prospect of finding a mate which contributed to the willingness to commit violence or engage in suicide bombings.

      China might not experience the same problems or those problems in exactly the same way due to other aspects of their culture, but having a large part of the population being potentially unable to satisfy some of their most basic human desires seems like a recipe for problems down the road.

  5. Burying the (non-)lead by Daetrin · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Not only will it clone cattle, but the factory, which will be located in the northern Chinese port of Tianjin, will also cater to more specific needs by genetically engineering police dogs and thoroughbred race horses."

    It gets a brief mention in the title and then the body focuses on cows, dogs, and horses rather than the part about cloning humans???

    Actually checking TFA, it says:

    "There are currently no plans in the pipeline to clone and produce humans in a bid to eradicate disease, but Xiaochun has said that this can change if people become more open to the idea of it."

    So it sounds like the cloning humans is just a "hey, we could do this at some point" thing, and not part of the initial plan of operation?

    In any case, i'm not sure why this is a good solution to a demand for more meat. In the long run (and possibly even the short run) doing a little more research and building a cultured meat factory would probably be a lot more cost effective than cloning the entire cow.

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    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
    1. Re:Burying the (non-)lead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm still going to start collecting locks of supermodel hair from e-bay, because I can see which way the wind is blowing.

  6. Misleading Headline (what's new) by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are currently no plans in the pipeline to clone and produce humans in a bid to eradicate disease, but Xiaochun has said that this can change if people become more open to the idea of it.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
  7. Re:You were all thinking it by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Funny

    How can we tell they're clones?

    You ask about their mother. If they promise to tell you about their mother and pull out a shotgun, it's a clone.

  8. Re:they saved hitler's brain by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 2

    Perhaps the "Angry Samoans" can answer this:

    They saved Hitler's cock, They hid it under a rock.
    discovered it, last night. I couldn't even, believe my eyes.

    If Hitler's cock could start to talk, it would say: To kill today.
    If Hitler's cock could choose it's mate, it would ask, for Sharon Tate!

    They saved Hitler's cock. They stuffed it in Mengele's sock.
    They saved Hitler's cock, and now it wants to talk.

    Now it's starting to get hard, I found it in my backyard.
    Every night it kills a dog, and now it wants, some night and fog
    Hitler's cock is on the move, and now I'm scared of what it's gonna do!

    Although, I guess Trump would prefer a song centered around the word, "Schlong".

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  9. Re:Is it just me...? by NotInHere · · Score: 2

    We've started interfering with natural selection since when we didn't leave the sick and weak be torn apart by the wolves, but when we invented medicine and helped people to survive despite of their sickness. With all the methods medicine has, we've stopped natural selection. This is nothing bad though, as evolution is a very cruel process. We've gained humanity, and more diversity. And from an evolutionary standpoint that's in fact even better, as a more diverse population can adapt to problems much better and faster.

  10. Re:GMO Everything by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    On there other hand it does't matter if we die more often if we just resume living from our Gold Cross backup clone.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  11. Just one question: why? by whitroth · · Score: 3, Informative

    Is a specific cow, or pet that special? And if so, why on *earth* would you think a cloned one would act the same?

    And people... there are these people called "twins", or "triplets", etc, and they all turn out differently. What would you expect to get by cloning someone?

    And it's a long term thing, if you're cloning your favorite movie star, or politician...

                    mark

    1. Re:Just one question: why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Think about fruit trees. Just about any fruit you buy at a grocery store will have come from clonally propagated (grafted) tree. Every Fuji apple comes from a clone of the original Fuji tree and so on.

      Suppose that a specific cow has beautifully marbled meat or really high milk production. You could breed that cow, and hope that its offspring has the same trait, or you can clone that cow and virtually guarantee it.

      Twin studies don't disprove the importance of genetics when it comes to outcomes, they prove it. Plus, a factory farm raised animal is not going to have nearly the environmental variation as a human or a pet.

  12. Don't muddy the waters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Selective breeding is analogous to using mother nature's tools, within mother nature's workshop, to guide the otherwise natural course of evolution. That's precisely why human beings have been able to do it for ages: because it relies on nothing more than mother nature.

    Genetic engineering is something entirely different. Clearly, genetic engineering does NOT use mother nature's tools, but rather a toolkit which isn't found anywhere in nature. And clearly, genetic engineering does NOT work within the rules of mother nature's workshop, but rather outside of them completely. This is precisely why human beings have not been able to do this until very recently in the course of our technical evolution: because it requires much more than mother nature's toolkit and workshop.

    The two procedures aren't even remotely comparable, even if they do attempt to achieve a similar goal. Note that I haven't actually spoken out against genetic engineering here. I've only laid out a common-sense argument why genetic engineering isn't comparable to selective breeding.

    1. Re:Don't muddy the waters by Flavianoep · · Score: 2

      Selective breeding is artificial selection nonetheless; it favors features desired by humans and sometimes even renders the race or variety created incapable of naturally reproducing (see the giant-breasted turkeys).

      --
      Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
    2. Re:Don't muddy the waters by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Selective breeding is analogous to using mother nature's tools

      The tools of genetic engineering, such as CRISPR/CAS, come from bacteria, which are also part of "Mother Nature".

      Genetic engineering is something entirely different.

      No it isn't. It is just another point on a continuum.

    3. Re:Don't muddy the waters by Gr8Apes · · Score: 2

      Genetic Engineering is to selective breeding like the Golden Gate Bridge is to stacking selected rocks.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    4. Re:Don't muddy the waters by SumDog · · Score: 2

      Mother nature is a socially constructed concept:

      http://www.abstrusegoose.com/215

      We have been slowly altering our world for centuries. We've bread sweeter fruits, starchier corn, turkeys that cannot reproduce on their own, cows with unregulated muscle growth, white tigers (not a species, a trait sought after so most of them are inbred), etc. The rice we eat today has been entirely cultivated and most likely would not survive on its own in the wild without modern agriculture.

    5. Re: Don't muddy the waters by cfalcon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I mean, yes, but that's a definition of "natural order" that really just means "whatever the limits of physics are".

      Thus far, our actions work on a pretty damned small scale. A maniac in a story who wants to "destroy the universe" usually does so with some power that has no real world equivalent- magic, a dark god, etc. More realistic stories that still feature cartoon villains who want to "destroy the Earth" usually do so with something that could, in theory, be a risk- nuclear technology being heavily abused, a self replicating agent (gray goo, virus, bacteria, fungus), or something that could realistically exist.

      This is because our experiences show that stuff that happens on the human scale mostly stays on the human scale, and we are worried it can hit the planetary scale accidentally. We can wipe out all the bugs and mice in our house (and we want to!), but probably not the world (and we don't want to!). But we have NO reasons to believe that this observation, which has been true until this point, is actually real in the general case. The truth is, we don't know how easy it would be to "destroy the universe", and we don't understand a hell of a lot of low level physics that could point in that direction. Our best reasoning for it not being easy is that it hasn't happened yet, but this would be a much more potent observation if we could observe hundreds of hyper-advanced civilizations, all standing tribute to it being difficult to accidentally (or on purpose) blow up everything.

      Anyway, just because we are at no risk of that RIGHT NOW doesn't mean that we should continue making that assumption going forward. Existential risk from our own actions will not always be benign.

    6. Re: Don't muddy the waters by Altrag · · Score: 2

      Even destroying all life on Earth would be a monumentally difficult challenge. Destroying all of a specific species (possibly our own) would be more realistic and we've done that many times over in the course of the past 10-20 thousand years..

      But destroying "all" life would require damaging the Earth so badly that even viruses and bacteria can't adapt fast enough to survive. And they have mutation rates on the scale of hours. Tremendously challenging.. would require something along the line of pushing the Earth outside of the Goldilocks zone.. and even then we have no idea how far out you'd have to go to effectively destroy all microbial life.

      And of course if the bacteria survive, its almost assured that a few billion years from now we'll start seeing critters swimming in the oceans again. Well OK, we won't be cause we'll be long dead. But some outside observer would.

      Destroying the universe is well.. almost literally impossible. We simply don't have the energy scale available to us to affect something as large as the universe. Even if the LHC managed to produce a strangelet bomb or an Earth-eating black hole as the paranoid keep suggesting, it would be a localized effect and probably wouldn't even significantly change the orbit of the moon never mind anything else (the LHC isn't creating mass or energy -- only converting between the two -- so its not possible for our overall gravitational influence to change significantly no matter what we do to the planet, including compressing the whole thing into a black hole.)

    7. Re:Don't muddy the waters by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

      "Genetic engineering is something entirely different. Clearly, genetic engineering does NOT use mother nature's tools, but rather a toolkit which isn't found anywhere in nature. "

      Oh look, another one who hasn't heard that transgenic processes have now been found in nature.
      http://arstechnica.com/science...

    8. Re:Don't muddy the waters by OzoneLad · · Score: 2

      Many humans are tools alright.

    9. Re:Don't muddy the waters by Bender0x7D1 · · Score: 2

      I can cross-breed a goat and a spider?

      Really? Because that would be cool as hell.

      --
      Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
    10. Re:Don't muddy the waters by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 2

      I can cross-breed a goat and a spider?

      First of all, even in that example they didn't cross breed anything. That's a lateral gene transfer, something that viruses have done practically forever. The human placenta is the result of one such gene transfer.

      Second of all, yes, given time and resources (in this case, lots of it) you could pull that off with selective selection.

  13. Re:Is it just me...? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There were no potatoes in Ireland prior to 1589, yet there were plenty of Irish.

    Nope. Ireland was sparsely populated prior to the introduction of potatoes. Staple crops like wheat grow poorly in their cold wet climate. Potatoes had a huge effect on European history, enabling northern lands to increase in population, devote fewer workers to growing food, and invest more in commerce and military force. Power shifted from the Mediterranean to Germany, Britain, Sweden and Russia. The Reformation likely would have failed without this power shift. Nothing did more to destroy the Spanish Empire than that sack of potatoes that they brought back from Peru.

  14. Chinese knock-offs by zerofoo · · Score: 2

    The Chinese really do copy everything don't they?

  15. Re:Cloning Pets by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The pet's personality is based on how it is treated when it is raised. simply repeat the same treatment and you will get pretty close to the same thing. I had a full breed collie for 14 years, she died of old age and we got a fresh puppy to replace her. now at a year old there are a LOT of identical behaviors in the new puppy as I am raising it the same way I raised the other. You train in the desired traits, and train out the undesired ones. It's all just dog training, you just need to be consistent.

    Now natural breeding adds in randomness. I am sure there is genetic memory that is passed down, as well as training the pup gets from it's mother for the first 10 weeks that you can not influence.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.