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.

Comments

Re:Is it just me...?

[Flavianoep]

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

Korral bit it from Lucille and The Comedian

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> factory to clone...humans

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

Re:Korral bit it from Lucille and The Comedian

[alvinrod]

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.

Burying the (non-)lead

[Daetrin]

"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.

Misleading Headline (what's new)

[Frosty Piss]

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.

Re:You were all thinking it

[__aaclcg7560]

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.

Don't muddy the waters

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Don't muddy the waters

[ShanghaiBill]

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.