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Glen Curry - 04:19pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3400 of 3409)

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity. You don't realise how irritating it was 'til it's gone.

Bob Janitor 2/17/98 1:23pm you say "Nope. Just homo sapiens."

Actually, to be 100% accurate, we are Homo sapien sapien. This is to distinguish us from the homo sapien neandtaleness since we now know that the neanderthals died off and we were actually part of a different branch.

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Glen Curry - 04:38pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3401 of 3409)

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity. You don't realise how irritating it was 'til it's gone.

godless clif 2/18/98 11:02pm you say "Swiss scientist claim artificial inteligence will replace the human race in a generation."

And we know how far ahead the Swiss are in computer technology.

"if two Deep Blues"

Here's an example, arguably the fastest proccessing capability (Cray/ SGI, Thinking Machine ...). it was just able to beat a human in one task. It didn;t have to arrange for transportation, deal with meals or lodging and taxes, muchless walk into the room and get interviewed. If these tasks were added, I doubt it could move off the home row. Way far away from a true nueral net.

"If we don't allow cloning and other genetic research our own machines will outdistance our inteligence to the point of making us pointless."

Perhaps genetics, but I don't see how cloning would make a difference, we would just be copying the current state of mental capabilities.

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Glen Curry - 04:43pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3402 of 3409)

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity. You don't realise how irritating it was 'til it's gone.

Cliff Beall 2/19/98 2:29am you say "Unfortunately, there will never be another Carl Sagan."

If you are a Sagan fan (as I am) you wouldn't say that. In "Demon Haunted World" he said (I paraphrase as i do not have the book handy) regarding Infinity, that there will be an infinite number of things happening, an infinite number of times. And that therefore we would live our lives and every possible variation of them an infinite number of times.

So there will be an infinite number of Sagans.

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Noel Yap - 06:01pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3403 of 3409)

Cliff mailed me babel's posts. I would normally have not responded, but I feel I must correct an attrocious misinformation he posted. Here it is:

babel dispersus: You are into computer science aren't you? Why do you think it is impossible to make a computer pick a random number?

It's not impossible. It's called quantum devices. Please read Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier.

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Noel Yap - 06:02pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3404 of 3409)

Bob Janitor: You don't get "freaks" with inbreeding. You get an increased risk of disease and recessive genes being switched on.

Shouldn't you also get an increased chance of switching on "good" genes?

Bob Janitor: Then why do people always see nature as "absolutely correct" and "beautiful"?

One more time: Nature is not an engineer nor an architect. It doesn't gauge designs by their elegance. IOW, there're other ways to gauge beauty than through the engineer's eyes.

Noel Yap: It seemed to me that one possible conclusion was that the mind is a separate entity from the brain.

Bob Janitor: No, you're missing the point of it all.

Please explain how this experiment proves otherwise.

Noel Yap: I seem to recall an article describing neural ganglia around the guts.

Bob Janitor: Do you have any more info on this, such as a link or where you saw it?

It was in a Science Times article about a year back.

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Noel Yap - 06:02pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3405 of 3409)

Bob Janitor: And the "amphibian DNA to fill in the missing spots" premise is flawed. That's like saying your copy of MS Word, winword.exe is corrupt, so you'll just replace all the bad sectors wit with data from Paintbrush (pbrush.exe).

But genetic code is much different from computer code. Most of genetic code isn't used. Most of computer code is used -- at least for my code, I can't say the same for Microsoft ;) Since this is the case mutations in genetic code could be harmless, but mutations in computer code would almost always be fatal.

Cliff Beall: When science can modify aggressive tendencies genetically, society will indeed become more "cohesive."

But this might lead to other problems (although I can't think of any reason to keep aggression within a civilised society -- assertiveness, maybe, but not aggressiveness.)

Tom Anderson: It doesn't. Nothing has to do with scale except our perception, which is irrelevant to reality.

But one could argue (and one has) that our concept of free will exists only through our perceptions. In this case, scale does matter.

Tom Anderson: Of course not... half of my molecules have been replaced ;o)

Ahhh, caught me on this one :) -- Is a river the same river as the one the day before?

Noel Yap: So perhaps we should slowly spread information to the masses so they can gradually ease into knowledge?

Tom Anderson: Science should not be hindered by the ignorance of the masses.

My statement doesn't contradict yours. Just as the Church and governments have held back information to "protect" the masses, should Scientists do the same?

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Noel Yap - 06:03pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3406 of 3409)

Tom Anderson: We should simply wait to tell the masses after the fact.

This is what I was alluding to.

Tom Anderson: That way they can't say it will or won't work, because it already has.

I agree. Although I would say that the information should be available for those that try to get it. My guess is that these people (ie researchers) are more ready for the information 'cos they actual ly know what they're looking for. For example, there wouldn't be any cloning debate had researchers kept the knowledge to themselves. I doubt the Pope would've gone looking for such information.

Tom Anderson: Human cloning should proceed scientifically, and then inform the public afterwards. Then they will accept it.

'sounds like Science is replacing Religion and governments in terms of leadership.

Noel Yap: "The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so they will share death and share life, without fear of danger" -- Sun Tzu

Tom Anderson: In other words, take advantage of the ignorance, and trick them into agreeing with you. I would rather educate everyone.

But how will you educate everyone. Your previous posts could be taken as tricks to lure the masses "forward."

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Noel Yap - 06:04pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3407 of 3409)

Keith Fosberg: Does seem to be a quandry regarding ballencing progress against the public's ability to absorb it.

Yup, the underlying reason is that growth that's too slow and growth that's too fast are both dangerous.

Keith Fosberg: They will probably not only ban a discrete procedure but throw a blanket restriction that will effect many potential procedures.

This is one likely scenario of how too fast a growth can lead to death.

godless clif: Swiss scientist claim artificial inteligence will replace the human race in a generation.

Many scientists have been saying this for many decades. Computers are good at many things. But, since they have no emotion, they will never replace humans.

godless clif: If two Deep Blues are talking over a high speed link and a human asks what they are talking about they could only answer "Many Things" or produce a mile long list to long to read.

Yeah, all about chess ;)

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Bob Janitor - 07:12pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3408 of 3409)

Shouldn't you also get an increased chance of switching on "good" genes?

Yup. Good or bad-- if it's recessive, it might just get switched on.

Please explain how this experiment proves otherwise.

Dr. Pietsch's research has centered around proving his holographic analogy of the brain. Basically, the brain stores information, like a hologram. And, like a hologram, the brain is three dimensional and even if mutilated can still function, whereas a 2D picture's information would be lost.

I'm not sure if a hologram is an entirely correct analogy, but it's better than any other that I've heard.

Most of genetic code isn't used.

But placement and order is critical.

"protect" the masses

Ignorance only hurts in the long run.

This is one likely scenario of how too fast a growth can lead to death.

Phht. It's more likely a scenario of ignorant people forcing their will on others.

The more differetntiated a cell becomes the more difficult it is to clone.

I don't suppose you've ever heard of dedifferentiation? Regeneration perhaps? A blastema?

But, since they have no emotion, they will never replace humans.

Emotion is a function of a neural network. It provides a generalized way to guide the organism's behavior (these rocks taste like crap! hitting the wall hurts! sex feels good! etc). But, emotion is just sensory (and memory) input affecting the outcome of the neural network's decision in predefined ways-- and computers can incorporate that too.

I think the current computer CPU technology is a useful tool, but let's face it: nothing beats a neural net for intelligence.

'sounds like Science is replacing Religion and governments in terms of leadership.

No... religion is a myth created to explain things, and science is the actual pursuit of the truth. Government will bend to facts establish by science but for anything that isn't explained they haul out the Bible.

Dawn Willis:

Remember back in 1995 whe

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Bob Janitor - 07:13pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3409 of 3409)

(con't)

n scientists cloned a 30,000 year old bacteria trapped in amber?

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Cliff Beall - 10:26pm Feb 19, 1998 ET (#3410 of 3410)

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

Maybe. Sagan said a lot of things and he wasn't always right. For example, in Contact (the book) he thought people would still be working with mainframe computers, but then, he didn't know what Gates would do. And he thought Soviet Union and the cold war would still be going strong, but then, he didn't know what Reagan would do. Heck, he thought the oil field fires in Kuwait would be an ecological disaster for years to come, and he was wrong. It might very well be that he was wrong about the "Nuclear Winter" also, although, hopefully, we will never know for sure. He really wasn't a great scientist. Obviously, he was not an Einstein. So why was he special?

I think he was special, mainly, because he understood so well. Others have understood, but Sagan seemed to understood better. In Cosmos, he educated a generation about science because he understood how to simplify without losing the meaning, because he understood and had a deep love and respect for humanity and because he went to the trouble to do it well, better than anyone else has ever done. Other scientists have attempted to communicate the findings of science to the common man, and some have done it well, but Sagan did it better. In addition, in Contact (the book), we get a glimpse of the man that we could never have seen in Cosmos. Reading Contact was, to me, something of religious experience. Sagan was deep, and he understood that there could be truth in religion. I wish Sagan had stayed around to give us his insight into this cloning thing. He died much too soon.

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Tom Anderson - 04:48am Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3411 of 3421)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

To date there has never been a cloning of any amphibian bird reptile or mammal from a terminally differentiated cell.

You are making two irrational assumptions. First, you are summarily dismissing Dolly. Second, you are assuming against all evidence that cells differentiate terminally. This is precisely what Wilmut was attempting to determine, and yet you claim to know absolultely without any experimental evidence, or even a half-decent theory, to back you up.

Glenn,

Actually, to be 100% accurate, we are Homo sapien sapien. This is to distinguish us from the homo sapien neandtaleness since we now know that the neanderthals died off and we were actually part of a different branch.

I don't think that has been determined to be true. It is only a hypothesis. The cited evidence in favor of that theory is a skull which appears to be different than human, and mitochondrial DNA that appears to be different. The first is phenotypical, and certainly not a good indication. The second is based on a rough assumption of the rate of change of DNA, but cannot be sure because of thousands of factors that could have effected it.

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Tom Anderson - 04:48am Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3412 of 3421)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Noel,

babel dispersus: You are into computer science aren't you? Why do you think it is impossible to make a computer pick a random number?

It's not impossible. It's called quantum devices. Please read Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier.

I think babel was referring to the impossibility to code a random number generation algorithm. Also, please explain how a "quantum device" can randomize.

But genetic code is much different from computer code. Most of genetic code isn't used. Most of computer code is used

You mean most macro-code is used. When compiled, at least thirty percent of the code is never used, or used so infrequently as to cause no immediate problems. That is why I get file size changes all the time in Windows, and only rarely does it corrupt the file or cause anomalous behavior. Genetic code is similar; most of the genes are used, but not most of the base pair sequences.

But one could argue (and one has) that our concept of free will exists only through our perceptions. In this case, scale does matter.

No, it doesn't. Our concept of reality has no bearing on actual reality.

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Tom Anderson - 04:49am Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3413 of 3421)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

My statement doesn't contradict yours.

I see that now. Yes, we should feed info to the masses only very slowly. Let them use the technology derived from the science first so that they get used to it, and then tell them how it was done later. It is like giving someone some yummy sausages, and only showing them the pile of guts that it came from long after they've already enjoyed it.

Although I would say that the information should be available for those that try to get it.

Yeah, but the only problem is that pesky freedom of the press thing. Those darned reporters will do anything to scare up some controversy. Cloning would have stayed buried in science publications if not for the major newspapers putting it on the front page. In fact, the original paper said nothing at all of cloning (not in those words)... that is something that the newspapers inferred. Of course, I am in no way proposing to do away with this essential right, but some subtlety by way of the reporters might be appropriate in these circumstances that induce mass hysteria over nothing.

But how will you educate everyone.

I never claimed to have a method, only a preference. Priests have been taking advantage of ignorance (and promoting it for that reason) for far too long. I would prefer that everyone understand the issues rather than following blindly one way or the other. But if I have to, I will try to lead them my way ;o)

But, since they have no emotion, they will never replace humans.

How is emotion beneficial? How does it increase survival?

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Tom Anderson - 04:50am Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3414 of 3421)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Bob,

Ignorance only hurts in the long run.

It hurts in the short run too. After all, curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat.

Emotion is a function of a neural network.

Well, not entirely. Hormones sure do help.

I think the current computer CPU technology is a useful tool, but let's face it: nothing beats a neural net for intelligence.

How so? A neural net is good for pattern recognition, but our run-of-the-mill flip-flop switched serial computers are far better at doing the things we usually associate with intelligence -- large data storage with quick and flawless recall. However, neural nets are much better at those qualities that complement intelligence -- creativity, analogy, and innovation. Those two things in one package would be the ideal, and could very well be done with computers. Our problem is that we largely lack the former... memory is sketchy and recall can be tedious to impossible at times. People can be incredibly stupid and still be very creative, but even the most intelligent people can't come close to the type of intelligence you've got in a pentium computer with ample ram and harddrive. Name one person who can cite even one article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica let alone do keyword searches on the entire thing. But combining the computer and the brain, you have all you need (though keyboard and mouse is a lacking interface).

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Tom Anderson - 04:56am Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3415 of 3421)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Cliff,

[Sagan] really wasn't a great scientist. Obviously, he was not an Einstein. So why was he special?

I cannot believe you just said that! I'm not talking to you anymore...

All,

My FAQ is coming along; it should be ready sometime next week. I'm treating each question very fairly (that is, far beyond my own opinion... I've even got religious considerations in there -- imagine that!) and I'm wording it for the most basic of educations. I look forward to all of your complaints :oP

P.S. Just kidding, Cliff, calm down.

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Keith Fosberg - 08:42am Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3416 of 3421)

It's not just a life, Its an adventure!

Tom Anderson,

Thanks for expending the effort to create an FAQ!

I think it may be a little early to start a debate about what quantum devices can and can't do. If a quantum device can actually sample "vacume chaos" then it could generate a random number. I am not convinced that this capability will be realized (but would be overjoyed to end up with egg on my face!)

Of course people can't generate random numbers either.

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Glen Curry - 12:17pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3417 of 3421)

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity. You don't realise how irritating it was 'til it's gone.

Noel Yap 2/19/98 6:02pm you say "Cliff Beall: When science can modify aggressive tendencies genetically, society will indeed become more "cohesive."

But this might lead to other problems (although I can't think of any reason to keep aggression within a civilised society -- assertiveness, maybe, but not aggressiveness.)"

It would depend on the definitions you assign to aggressive and assertive. They could mean the same thing. When I did a look up at WWWEbster for "assertive" I got "synonym see AGGRESSIVE". When I looked up "aggressive", besides getting "assertive as a synonym, it said a : marked by obtrusive energy b : marked by driving forceful energy or initiative : ENTERPRISING I find this to be a worthy tenet.

Perhaps "aggressive" is a little stronger and potentially physical than "assertive". But I do feel that "aggressive" is a benefitial tenet at times, But I doubt that suprises anyone here :-)

"Ahhh, caught me on this one :) -- Is a river the same river as the one the day before?"

Only in "bed" ;-)

"Just as the Church and governments have held back information to "protect" the masses, should Scientists do the same?"

I can't decide which fallacy is more appropriate here. You either used Argumentum ad antiquitatem, that since (holding back info) has always been used it is correct or Argumentum ad verecundiam, since you are trying to assert that because someone/ thing as Authoritative as churches and govs do it, it is correct. Probably some combo of both, Either way, it is a fallacy. Just because bovs and churches NEED to withhold info to keep the masses stupid, does not mean it is benefitial or correct.

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Glen Curry - 12:31pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3418 of 3421)

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity. You don't realise how irritating it was 'til it's gone.

Cliff Beall 2/19/98 10:26pm you say " Sagan said a lot of things and he wasn't always right. For example, in Contact (the book) he thought people would still be working with mainframe computers, but then, he didn't know what Gates would do. And he thought Soviet Union and the cold war..."

A) Contact was FICTION, a NOVEL. He was setting up a story

B) We still DO use mainframes. C) Sagan was a Cosmologist, not a Political Scientist. Any opinions he would offer outside of his recognized field of extpertise is just that, personal opinion. Using his "opinions" on other areas would be the fallacy of Argumentum ad verecundiam. D) But his concept of INFINITY esp in cosmology WOULD be appropriate, because that IS a field in which he was one of the MAIN recognized experts.

"So why was he special?"

Because, unlike a lot of his contemporaries, he was personable. He could bring advanced scientific principles down to "common" level of understanding, such as his explaination of INFINITY.

"Sagan was deep, and he understood that there could be truth in religion."

From my readings of Sagan, esp "Demon Haunted World", the only way he would even get CLOSE to implying that would be "by accident". ie that religion could have truths in it only by coincidence.

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Glen Curry - 12:38pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3419 of 3421)

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity. You don't realise how irritating it was 'til it's gone.

Tom Anderson 2/20/98 4:48am I said"Actually, to be 100% accurate, we are Homo sapien sapien. This is to distinguish us from the homo sapien neandtaleness"

To which you reply " The cited evidence in favor of that theory is a skull which appears to be different than human, and mitochondrial DNA that appears to be different."

It goes WAY beyond one skull. It includes eatting patterns, living patterns, complete body (height and posture were extremely different...) as well as skull. And the mitochondrial is very telling. Becuase unlike all other dna structure, it is pasted by female ancestry only and does not get altered at each generation. Thus the CONCEPT of a mitochondrial (or African) EVE.

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Glen Curry - 12:42pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3420 of 3421)

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity. You don't realise how irritating it was 'til it's gone.

Tom Anderson 2/20/98 4:48am yu say "Our concept of reality has no bearing on actual reality."

It sure does. It is well known that an observer effects the observed. It is impossible to observe without affecting the observed. And an observer would base their observational process on their concept of reality.

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Bob Janitor - 01:18pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3421 of 3421)

Well, not entirely. Hormones sure do help.

Hormones influence the outcome of the neural network's decision. Sorry I didn't include every possible contingency in my original post, but I try to be effecient.

Only in "bed" ;-)

That's a bad one.

B) We still DO use mainframes

Unfortunately true, but they are a dying breed. Obviously we still use them-- heck, there are Commodore PETs still in use, but the point was Sagan didn't realize the power of the PC.

And it wasn't just Gates. Without Gates, we would've done fine. So what if we all be running DR-DOS, GEOS or Linux? Or using Macs? Microsoft didn't even develop DOS-- they bought it, then called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operation System, a CP/M derivative), off a Seattle developer for $10,000.00. And PCs were popular long before everyone ran Word under Windows.

PCs have gotten powerful because of Intel. Cyrix and AMD have played catch-up, but Digital's Alpha chip and Motorola's PowerPC aren't too shabby either. But would they have been developed without Intel and the PC's success?

Don't forget, Gorden Moore formulated Moore's Law in what, '78? And it's still held true to this day.

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Frank Joyce - 03:59pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3422 of 3430)

Tom Anderson:

It is well known that the younger in development a nuclei is the better chances it has for cloning.

In drosophila the egg developes first as a Syncitium. many nuclei divide and a few keep their chromosomes tightly bound as heterochromatin. when the cell actually divides the cells containing these "protected" heterochromatin containing nuclei become the germ cells. other cells are less protected as they differentiate.

A few things you need to note about cells as they differentiate. they do not lose genetic material. That's what john gurdon origionally set out to prove. Thus all cells ( with a few exceptions) have a full deck of chromosomes. Cells cannot use heterochromatin to protect their DNA as they continue to differentiate. They must now protect with DNA repair enzymes. DNA repair enzymes have been couple with both Replication and Transcription. This makes stem cells the best adult cell to work with since they are still dividing. Thus spending more energy on repairing the whole genome. However the more a cell differentiates the less energy it spends repairing non transcriptionally active genes. SO no genes are lossed in the process of differentiation but teh cell does not waste energy repairing what it doesn't need. This is why the further a cell has differentiated the more difficult it is to clone.

Of course other cells such as B-lymphocytes would never be a good source to clone especially if they have undergone Isotype switching.

I hope you see from this his experiment may have just been an efficient way of selecting for the youngest nuclei. in this case fetal cells. He can only prove otherwise by repeating his experiment.

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Cliff Beall - 04:25pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3423 of 3430)

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

You may have a point. We will have to wait and see. (But even if Dolly turns out to be bogus, those calves--using a different and "improved" method of cloning--are coming along.)

But it is probably true. Would you say 99.44% sure?

Okay, I'll admit it. I threw out some red meat on purpose with the Gates thing, the Reagan thing and the Contact as a "religious experience." I'm not much good at it, but I was bored and looking to stir up something. I did the best I could. But I do have to admit I was floored by what you chose to be upset about. With respect to that, I thought I was just stating the obvious.

Well, I'm still upset you didn't go after the Contact as a "religious experience" and Sagan's recognition of "truth in religion." It was intended for you, specifically. However, not all is lost. I see that Glen took up the slack.

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Cliff Beall - 04:28pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3424 of 3430)

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

No, I am not surprised, Glen(n) (used to be two n's?). Actually, I was referring to tendencies toward excessively aggressive behavior generally considered unsociable such as rape, murder, assault, armed robbery and such like. But I think you knew that, and was being "picky." But no problem. I do it myself when given the opportunity. It is part of the fun of this forum.

My point precisely. And, in my opinion, he did it better than anybody else had ever done it. He would have been immensely helpful in this debate. It would have been his meat.

It's like this, Glen. I consider Contact (the book) to contain great truth. How do you feel about Contact as a religious book. Basically all that is needed is a population that would believe it to be infallible, perhaps word-for-word. Would the truths it teaches be any less profound merely because of this?

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Bob Janitor - 05:41pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3425 of 3430)

It is well known that the younger in development a nuclei is the better chances it has for cloning.

Well known? How is it well known, being that there's only been one controversial mammalian cloning experiment? How does it make any difference?

In drosophila the egg developes first as a Syncitium. many nuclei divide and a

What does a fly have to do with the current dicussion?

A few things you need to note about cells as they differentiate. they do not lose genetic information

When did anyone say that they did?

heterochromatin to protect their DNA as they continue to differentiate. They

I fail to see where condensed chromosones in interphase and late replication are less vulnerable to transcription errors, teratogens and radiation.

adult cell to work with since they are still dividing. Thus spending more energy

How does their division affect their ability to be dedifferentiated? In animals with regneration, any cell with a nucleus can dedifferentiate.

lossed in the process of differentiation but teh cell does not waste energy repairing what it doesn't need. This is why the further a cell has differentiated the more difficult it is to clone.

And somehow the repair enzymes can selectively pick what they do and don't need? I don't think so. I just don't follow your logic here of bad assumptions and irrelevent information.

Of course other cells such as B-lymphocytes would never be a good source to clone

They're probably produced from stem cells for a reason.

I hope you see from this his experiment may have just been an efficient way of selecting for the youngest nuclei. in this case fetal cells. He can only prove otherwise by repeating his experiment.

You attacks on his experiment are baseless. There is an extremely small probability that the fetal cells were used. But we shall see.

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Noel Yap - 05:42pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3426 of 3430)

Bob Janitor: Yup. Good or bad-- if it's recessive, it might just get switched on.

So why is inbreeding necessarily bad? Is it 'cos the bad stuff is a lot worse than the good stuff is good? I find this hard to believe considering evolution seems to work.

Noel Yap: This is one likely scenario of how too fast a growth can lead to death.

Bob Janitor: Phht. It's more likely a scenario of ignorant people forcing their will on others.

Never-the-less, ignorant people abound. I would think the intelligent would take this fact into consideration.

Bob Janitor: Emotion is a function of a neural network.

I don't think so. It's more a function of hormones. The examples you sited (ie sex feels good, ...) are generalisations learned by a neural net. Examples of emotions I'm talking about are: I feel good today, I'm depressed, I'm in love, ... Unless things like these can be duplicated in-silica, computers will never replace humans.

Bob Janitor: I think the current computer CPU technology is a useful tool, but let's face it: nothing beats a neural net for intelligence.

I agree. They perform completely different tasks and should be judged on those basis. Of course, neural nets have been implemented in-silica. I wonder if it's just a matter of more complexity before they do compete with us on the basis of intelligence, creativity, ...

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Noel Yap - 05:43pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3427 of 3430)

Bob Janitor: No... religion is a myth created to explain things, and science is the actual pursuit of the truth.

Science, although far from a myth (maybe), also tries to explain things.

Tom Anderson: I think babel was referring to the impossibility to code a random number generation algorithm.

He was comparing the determinism of a computer with the "determinism" of the brain and discounting any effects quantum mechanics have on determinism.

Tom Anderson: Also, please explain how a "quantum device" can randomize.

Quantum devices measure quantum states. Since these states are random, you can get random numbers (actually bits) out of them. There are minor problems (ie 1's come up 55% of the time) but they can be worked around (ie use the XOR of two or more consecutive readings.) These devices exist (ie they are not just theoretical) and are actually being used.

Tom Anderson: That is why I get file size changes all the time in Windows, and only rarely does it corrupt the file or cause anomalous behavior.

Like I said, "I can't vouch for Microsoft."

Tom Anderson: Genetic code is similar; most of the genes are used, but not most of the base pair sequences.

Genetic code is messy while computer code is parsimonious 'cos it's made to be that way. I would compare genetic code to computer code that deliberately set the program counter or stack (without saving any states) as its normal part of operations. Whenever this happens in my code (aside from jumps) it's caused by an accidental memory overwrite.

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Noel Yap - 05:43pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3428 of 3430)

Tom Anderson: I would prefer that everyone understand the issues rather than following blindly one way or the other.

Yes, but some level of blind faith must occur if they are to try the sausages without knowing what they're made of.

Tom Anderson: But if I have to, I will try to lead them my way ;o)

So long as force is not involved (not that I think you would ever resort to such means.)

Tom Anderson: How is emotion beneficial? How does it increase survival?

Here's an example. I make more money than Bill Gates. I'm late for a meeting. My driver sees an elderly woman in a wheelchair crossing the street. Without emotions, running over the woman can easily be justified (in terms of benefitting myself.) At this point, society will have no foundations. So, in the long-run, it helps survival.

Tom Anderson: But combining the computer and the brain, you have all you need (though keyboard and mouse is a lacking interface).

I agree.

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Frank Joyce - 06:36pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3429 of 3430)

Bob Janitor:

by Mentioning Drosophila and other animals I am returning to the experiments that were done previously that led to the first cloning experiments. basically why they were done and what questions they were answering!!! Drosophila is also a classic developmental model.

One belief prior to cloning experiments was that differentiation occurred through the loss of genetic material. Thus cells became specified by losing genes. thus the only genes needed for their cellular identity were present. This was the hypothesis that was provwen wrong by cloning. Cloning suggested that all cells contain the complete gentic make-up. This was proven by John Gurdon and the classic frog Cloning Experiments.

Drosophila came into play in both conclusions because it gave evidence that nuclei of cells destined to be non germ line cells contained chromosomes that were not as stable as ones destined to be germ line cells.

It IS KNOWN that earlier in development cells are the easier they are to clone. These experiments have been previously done as well. As of yet nobody has cloned cells that are not giving rise to daughter cells that are more differentiated (terminally differetiated cells).

Other research has demonstrated that DNA repair mechanisms are coupled with replication.!!!!! thus repair happens. Do you know what DNA repair enzymes are? do you know how they function? Thus cells that are continuosly dividing are more likely to be repaired than those that aren't. Some DNA repair enzymes are transcription factors as well and thus couple transcription with repair. Thus cells actively repair genes that are actively transcribed!!!!!

This is the current thought on why older cells are more difficult to clone. Their are other ideas why trying to explain experimental results show why younger cells clone better as well. I just listed these in hopes that maybe you do understand some biology.

I mentioned B lymphocytes to get a feel for how much biology you are fam

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Frank Joyce - 06:59pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3430 of 3430)

Conclusion_

-familiar with. B lymphocytes undergg VDJ recombination. Thus not good cloning candidates. Maybe you can tell me why that would be?

It's not that damged chromosomes dedifferentiate less well, it's that they may be to genetically damaged too continue on and redifferentiate. thus making it increasingly more difficult to get them to produce a whole adult. All you need to do is knock out one developmentally important gene adn you don't get a normal adult.

germ cells are protected cells. Ever hear of teh Blood testis barrier? every wonder why skin cells are more often affected by radiation than cells that are not found on teh surface. germ cells contain material that maintain a species and are subject to better protection.

However since you are trying to claim to be the expert here, maybe you can tell us a bit about how animals go from a zygote to a complete adult and explain the genetic models.

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Kristine Reardon - 07:41pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3431 of 3433)

Tom Anderson: How is emotion beneficial? How does it increase survival? I would like to add that "fear" is an emotion and I think it has greatly increased human survival. Sensing danger, understanding your fear has made generations of people stop what they were doing. This has also caused problems because I think the average person tends to fear too much. A lot of opinion about cloning is coming straight from ignorance and fear. Cloning, as with any other scientific method or discovery, can be a very positive thing. Cloning is something that will be done, it won't be stopped. I see the potential for disease research, and organ development, and I get excited. I say good luck. As for the moral or religious aspect of it, to me it doesn't exist. Religion was invented from fear and a lack of knowledge. A scared generation searching for answers that eventually science would give us. Cloning is just another stepping stone to an endless possibility of answers to questions. Even some questions we have not yet asked.

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Frank Joyce - 09:02pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3432 of 3433)

Bob janitor:

maybe if you take time to think about how Plant tissue culture is used to develope clones you might also have more insight. Basically you should be able to take any plant cell and place it on culture medium and get it to regenerate a whole cell. However when you use any cell other than its apical meristem what you end up with is a whole lot of "Somatic variants". Tell me why you think this is and maybe you'll start understanding that there is whole lot more going on here than you realize. Even in plants some genetic material is Protected.

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Glen Curry - 11:52pm Feb 20, 1998 ET (#3433 of 3433)

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity. You don't realise how irritating it was 'til it's gone.

Cliff Beall 2/20/98 4:28pm you say "No, I am not surprised, Glen(n) (used to be two n's?)."

I hesitate saying anything, they'll find me out. My GlenN account was censored by the powers here. Can't post under it.

"How do you feel about Contact as a religious book."

I think Sagan would find it an insult. But it would be an improvement over any of the current options. Though the Urantia book is quit interesting.

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Tom Anderson - 12:58am Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3434 of 3439)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Glenn,

It includes eatting patterns, living patterns, complete body...

I've heard all of the arguments. I don't see any of them, nor any combination, decisive. I consider the question to still be "in the air" until some concrete evidence is found one way or the other. Eating patterns, living patterns, physical attributes, et cetera, really tell nothing -- consider for instance the difference between a Scandinavian, a Tanzanian, a Mayan, a Japanese, an Italian, and an Indian. By the evidence we have about Neandertals, all of these people would be seperate species.

It is well known that an observer effects the observed.

I meant reality in general, not specific events. Our measuring of universal constants do not change those constants.

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Tom Anderson - 12:58am Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3435 of 3439)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

This is why the further a cell has differentiated the more difficult it is to clone.

Well thanks for stating the obvious. The reason Wilmut performed the experiment was to determine whether or not it is possible to reset the genes of a differentiated cell. Assuming Dolly is the result of an adult cell nuclear transfer, then it is possible. Assuming Dolly was mistakenly transferred from a fetal cell, then it is still possible, since fetal cells are differentiated, but not as spectacular than if the cell were from an adult. Either way the experiment can conclude that gene differentiation is not permanent.

You should also note that the experiment included different stages of differentiation -- embryo, fetal fibroblast, and supposedly adult. This was done to gauge the relative difficulty between different stages of differentiation. Dolly was the only clone derived from an adult (or possibly so). Whether or not she was actually the result of a mammary epithelial cell or a fetal cell is not relevant except in the impact of the experiment, not in the conclusion. BTW, there is a 90% chance that the cell used was from fully differentiated mammary epithelium, a 9% chance that the cell was from fully differentiated myoepithilium, and only a 1% chance that it was from a relatively undifferentiated stem cell or a fetal cell.

But, do you see the error in your statements? The point of the experiment was to determine the relative difficulty. If Dolly was not from an adult cell, then we are simply no closer to knowing that... it is not a proof that it is difficult or not.

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Tom Anderson - 01:01am Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3436 of 3439)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Cliff,

Well, I'm still upset you didn't go after the Contact as a "religious experience" and Sagan's recognition of "truth in religion." It was intended for you, specifically. However, not all is lost. I see that Glen took up the slack.

I thought about it, but I figured the part I quoted basically summed up your entire shpeal and climaxed the stirring of emotions. But, seriously, you can't mean what you've said.

Would the truths it teaches be any less profound merely because of this?

Though the facts of the book are based largely on science, the method you propose is entirely unscientific. In addition, it cannot be a religious book since it does not attribute any occurances as being caused by a supernatural being. It might teach truths, but you would be left wanting if not able to correctly analyze how they relate to each other or to reality. Your proposal is, all in all, ludicrous.

Noel,

So why is inbreeding necessarily bad?

Inbreeding increases the frequency of homozygous gene pairs. Since recessive alleles require homozygousness in order to be expressed, the frequency of recessive traits is increased as well. Recessive alleles tend to be neutral, harmful or deleterious... most of the population would already express them were they beneficial. In the case of hair and eye color, some populations already do express recessive traits in abundance. But, they were selected for over many thousands of years, and that is the only reason they are expressed so often. Harmful traits are necessarily buried in our genome, not to surface except through the occasional crossing of people with one or two of the same recessive traits. But with inbreeding, there is the potential to unleash almost all of the recessive traits since they are shared between both parents.

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Tom Anderson - 01:03am Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3437 of 3439)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Unless things like these can be duplicated in-silica, computers will never replace humans.

Again I ask: what is so beneficial about emotions? It seems to me that a lack of emotions, or maybe better control, would be far more beneficial to an intelligent creature. Emotions are basically only good for unanalytical creatures, in which case fear keeps them alive and lust helps them procreate, et cetera. However, reason is a much better tool.

discounting any effects quantum mechanics have on determinism

Just exactly what effects are you speaking of? And please don't start rambling about different interpretations... just the facts please.

Quantum devices measure quantum states. Since these states are random, you can get random numbers (actually bits) out of them.

They are not random, they just appear to be random to us because we cannot predict it. Don't start with this scale thing again. In actuality, the events depend on other events, no matter what we percieve. Also, altering the results with exclusive or gates or anything else is just another algorithm to induce the perception of randomness. If in fact 1 comes up an average of 55% of the time, then we might as well just not use it at all, because it is clearly not random. I would suggest simply flipping a coin, but if you give the coin to a machine which flips it in the exact same manner every time and keep the contraption in a closed environment, then the coin flip is not random either.

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Tom Anderson - 01:05am Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3438 of 3439)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Whenever this happens in my code (aside from jumps) it's caused by an accidental memory overwrite.

On the surface maybe, but once you compile it, there are huge strings of code that are never even used. It is like the difference between DNA and cDNA. How much of the code that you write do you think the processor actually sees? There are a multitude of redundancies and irrelevancies.

Yes, but some level of blind faith must occur if they are to try the sausages without knowing what they're made of.

Well that was my response to tricking the ignorant into agreeing with you, as you suggested. But its not quite so bad as flat-out deception. First you get them to try it, and when they find they like it, then you tell them how it is done. It is actually a deception of the ignorance, and the emotions which are based on misinformation, not a deception of the ignorant per se. Hate the ignorance, love the ignorant ;o)

Here's an example... Without emotions, running over the woman can easily be justified...

Emotions would cause the driver to hit the woman, not prevent. Reason would prevent it by showing it to be unethical and ultimately against society. Emotions would say, "get the hell out of my way, old biatch!" I maintain that emotions are not beneficial to the survival of intelligent creatures... it only serves to undermine logic. Man, am I a Vulcan or what?

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Tom Anderson - 01:07am Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3439 of 3439)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Kristine,

"fear" is an emotion and I think it has greatly increased human survival

Only unintelligent human survival. A logical examining of any situation is preferable to simply running away because you don't understand it.

Religion was invented from fear and a lack of knowledge. A scared generation searching for answers that eventually science would give us.

Oh, so you agree? Then what was that first statement about?

Frank,

However when you use any cell other than its apical meristem what you end up with is a whole lot of "Somatic variants".

That would likely be the case in animals as well if the cell were not first induced to quiesance through serum starvation and then implanted in the cytoplasm of an oocyte. I postulate that if you were to take the nucleus from a leaf cell and implant it in a meristem cell, it would divide and differentiate accordingly. BTW, I doubt that lateral maristems don't regenerate an entire plant as well as apical meristems. A fault in your analogy to animals is that plant parenchyma can differentiate into an entire organism, but I would like to see you clone an animal simply from its mesenchyme alone.

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Carl Nicolai - 04:42am Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3440 of 3443)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Tom Anderson: #3437 discounting any effects quantum mechanics have on determinism

Just exactly what effects are you speaking of? And please don't start rambling about different interpretations... just the facts please.

Quantum devices measure quantum states. Since these states are random, you can get random numbers (actually bits) out of them.

Oh goody I finally get to talk about somethin I know about.

Among the modern useses of "randomness" are cryptography. While it's true that purely deterministic algorythms can never produce true randomness, modern cryptographers design processes that you can not prove are not random by examining their output over many millions of bits. (pick a number). Some people refer to this as their break length.

Also many systems proprogate and spread "errors". That is to say that if a little true ramdomness is added will before the "break" length, all of the subsiquent output will be altered in a way than can not be shown to be non random.

This combination of deterministic and random elements is contained within the human brain.

Since true randomness is going to effect the development of any human (fingerprints etc.) clones will rapidly began to be different even if they started out to be exactly the same. (which I'm sure never hapens)

One of the most interesting things to study regarding clones is the "nature or nurture" argument. The concept of how true and even pseudo randomness effects development will be much inhanced by studing any type of clone.

Since humans can talk to us about themselves and therby convey more knowledge than other animals the opponents of cloning are preventing the development of humanity itself.

This hindering of the apotheosis will utimately become indefenceable but, it seems, not until after a long struggle.

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Bob Janitor - 07:57am Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3441 of 3443)

maybe if you take time to think about how Plant tissue

Once again, a pointless and both technically and grammatically flawed post with no relevence.

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Keith Fosberg - 08:04am Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3442 of 3443)

It's not just a life, Its an adventure!

I hope CNN can see where this is going (I wouldn't want to have to change my name to Keit) <grin>

The three recent sub-topics, randomness, religion/emotion, and the reproducability of Dolly are very interesting! I will leave the Dolly debate to those with a greater knowledge of genetics.

Preservation is perhaps our most basic emotional response, it is expressed through fear and aggression. I vote with Tom on this one; Our analitical capabilities provide a much more effective system of estimating and responding to threat than the "fight or flight" mechanism.

Does randomness exist? We don't know. The basic determination is at the "bleeding edge" of our knowledge. Is the vacuum the base-line for reality or is the vacuum driven by "super-strings?" Also, are both of these theories essentially incorrect?

At the level of structure and complexity where we opperate I think randomness is meaningless. Chaos is a better frame of referrence. We express creativity. This could be seen as free will, or simply as a level of synthethis that is sufficiently complex to elude predictability. I am not convinced that the distinction is meaningfull except as a philosophical exercise.

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Keith Fosberg - 08:11am Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3443 of 3443)

It's not just a life, Its an adventure!

The one thing I would like to address in regards to the reproducibility of Dolly is the allegation that Dolly (as an experimental result) is a fake.

This allegation is unjust and libeles. If Dolly is not, in fact, a clone from a "terminally diferentiated" adult cell then we have a case of a procedural error that invalidates the results of a specific experiment.

Charges of fraud are unwarrented and bring no credit to the accuser.

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jessica tan - 02:30pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3444 of 3445)

keith fosberg: because the issue of cloning and its outcome will affect everyone of us, we cannot allow it to be discussed and be debated over only by the experts of genetic knowledge. today science and technology seemed to have don the mantles of authority, thus all us have to be involved in the type of science and technolgy that we produce in our society, i believe that in the case of genetics, an open forum is vital, especially since there is a thin line between genetics and eugenics. many people today, for example, are unaware of the human genome project and the actual mechanisms and repercussions of the project. this is truly sad because when and if this project is completed , it might just be too late to say that we do not want it.

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Cliff Beall - 04:28pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3445 of 3445)

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

Tom, you're being entirely too emotional and illogical. Your insistence that Sagan was a "great" scientist is nothing but emotionalism. Sagan was a good scientist, a competent scientist, who made contributions to an understanding of the greenhouse effect and the origin of organic matter on earth, but he made no major, fundamental contribution to science that might cause us to consider him a great scientist: nothing comparable to Einstein's equivalence principle, or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle or Hubble's discovery of the expansion of the universe. He was, without a doubt, the most famous scientist of our generation, and his fame as a popularizer of science was more than justified. It can easily be said that he was truly a great man. But to insist he was a "great scientist" is bordering on the religious.

Tom, you have repeated this misinformation that religion depends on the concept of a supernatural being over and over, and it is time to stop. It simply is not true. Religion can take the form of ancestor worship, sun worship, moon worship, earth worship. It does not require belief in a supernatural being. One of the points that the reviewer of the movie Contact made, to which you provided a link, was in regards to the statement in the movie that 95% of the people in the world believes in a supreme being of one kind or another. I quote from the review: "And, of course, the 95% figure quoted is absurd, considering how many hundreds of millions of Buddhists and Taoists (among others--a "Supreme Being" they do not have) there are."

Would you please stop repeating this nonsense?

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Keith Fosberg - 05:18pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3446 of 3446)

It's not just a life, Its an adventure!

Good catch on the supreme being thing Cliff!

Jessica Tan,

I am currious why you chose to address your post to me. Other than the multiple philosophical and mechanical digressions that we indulge ourselves with on this board, I have been maintaining, for some time now, that we should not push for realization of the more controversial aspects of cloning so that we can preserve the significant medicinal potential of cloning in research.

I think you may have mistaken me for Tom, who advocates persuing all aspects of cloning and just not advertising the more controversial areas.

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Frank Joyce - 06:47pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3447 of 3451)

Bob Janitor:

I'm sorry to see that you have an incredible lack of knowledge the subject matter at hand.

I bring up plant cells and cloning because it represents the problem of transposable elements in somatic cells. Transposable elements get turned on and "jump around" as Barbara McClintock would say! You do know who she is right? Any way that's why you get somatic variants. Do these exist in animals. yes they do! studies on drosophila and P-element show that germ line cells are less apt to have transposition events! transposable elements exist in mammals including people as well. Again it is the older cells that have these transposable elements Jumping Around. Please look up Barbara McClintock and find out why she got the Nobel Prize for making this discovery.

Sorry about grammatical errors but only a very ignorant person would argue that a hypothesis is incorrect because it has grammatical errors.

Eventually I hope you do get some more knowledge in the field of developmental biology and Cloning. it is obvious to me that you're not familiar with the subject or it's published research.

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Bob Janitor - 06:48pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3448 of 3451)

Jessica Tan:

There is nothing wrong with eugenics. Modern medicine and technology, and the fact more intelligent people have less reproductive success are all weakening the gene pool.

If technology is weakening the gene pool artificially, we'd at least better use it to improve the gene pool artficially.

It's not like "normals" would have any less rights. Read the laws. There are no eugenic clauses!

Don't base your opinion on a lack of knowledge and "scare" literature.

As for an open forum... the ignorant, mindless masses don't deserve an open forum. If they'd had an "open forum", we'd still all be serfs in mideval europe.

Ignorance, religion, and the "popular opinion" are the enemies of progress!

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Frank Joyce - 06:59pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3449 of 3451)

Tom Anderson:

Very good points about meristems. I was trying to get at the published data about transposable elements being activated in other plant tissues do the plant culture medium itself. How regulation of transposition events is regulated differently in germ tissue than in more differentiated tissues and what the effects on cloning would be. And ultimately why their are a multitude of reasons why nuclei from younger less differentiated tissues is more likely to be cloned.

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Frank Joyce - 07:32pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3450 of 3451)

Tom Anderson:

It's not a proof of how dificult it is to clone. It's simply a matter of using the "clonability" of a nucleus to select it from a sample of isolated nuclei. If there was a chance that it was in there and that other stem cells were in that mix as well, then they would be more likely to be the ones producing the clone. It's like saying there was a 0.1% chance that a bacteria having resistance to ampicillin was present in a mixture of bacteria beleived to be non resistant. then exposing them to media containing ampicillin and trying to claim that a spontaneous mutation explains all of the resistant bacteria that survive.

Fetal cells do have an advantage so do stem cells. Thus you end up with a method that selects for them.

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Cliff Beall - 07:53pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3451 of 3451)

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

I am beginning to wonder. If Wilmut's objective was to clone a sheep from an adult somatic cell, why would he use cells from a pregnant sheep. I am not surprised that non-specialists such as Tom and Bob might miss the significance, but I note that Dawn saw it immediately. And the more I think about it, the more I tend to wonder how a specialist like Wilmut could miss it. That other scientists have been unable to duplicate his results, using his method, is probably an indication that Dolly was not a clone from adult cells. If Wilmut was not the first to clone a mammal from an adult cell, he should not have credit for it.

However, Frank's arguments appear rather beside the point in view of the news from Wisconsin and Massachusetts. For interesting links concerning these developments, click the following addresses:

<A HREF="http://www.sciam.com/explorations/090297clone/beardsley.html"> http://www.sciam.com/explorations/090297clone/beardsley.html </A>

<A HREF="http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/97/Aug/08/national/BULL08.htm"> http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/97/Aug/08/national/BULL08.htm </A>

For a general discussion of the differing techniques used to clone fetal and adult cells by the different researchers, click the following address:

<A HREF="http://www.usatoday.com/life/science/genetics/lsg001.htm"> http://www.usatoday.com/life/science/genetics/lsg001.htm </A>

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Carl Nicolai - 08:44pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3452 of 3458)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Frank Joyce #3447 Transposable elements get turned on and "jump around" as Barbara McClintock would say! You do know who she is right? ...... Again it is the older cells that have these transposable elements Jumping Around. Please look up Barbara McClintock and find out why she got the Nobel Prize for making this discovery.

I'm glad someone brought up Barbara. Her life reprsents the truth about science. Set upon and lambasted by the establishment scientists, she found a way to continue her work in spite of the fact that virtually all "right thinking people" thought her work bordered on the insane. Peer Review? As near as I can tell there was not one of the government financed scientists or labs that would give her the time of day. Barbara McClintock is exactly the kind of person I wish were doing human cloning research.

I'd like to hear what She thinks about a "ban" on human cloning research.

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Cliff Beall - 09:20pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3453 of 3458)

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

Okay, I did. And all I can say is: "wow." Off hand, I would have to say she fits the description of a "great scientist."

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Frank Joyce - 09:20pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3454 of 3458)

Cliff Beal:

I read all of the sites you posted here. Only one case claims to have cloned from adult cells and not fetal cells. Let them publish the data if it's true. the rest deal with cloning fetal cells. this is old technology and has been done by many groups. It does provide a method for stable insertion of genes and their expression in whole adults, thus giving rise to Biochemical farming. The Idea of using adult cells to clone is that we can then clone those that are phenotypically good milk producers. We can't observe such phenotypes in fetuses. Thus my argument still stands. Until someone reproduces the results and has the data to prove it , we are still just cloning fetal cells.

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Carl Nicolai - 10:31pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3455 of 3458)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Frank! Wait a sec. Why not just take some fetal cells from every new cross you want to test? Then if they turn out to have the qualities you want you all ready have cells that can produce clones with your "old technology".

The dedifferentiation that occurs with aging would seem to be a usefull field of study since it is all ready responceble for redentition(read cloning)in older people.

Of cource it is disturbing that the lab that cloned Dolly was not more carefull. In the long run cloning from adult cells is a done deal, so all the questions concerning the various aspects of human cloning are revelent to this discussion.

Another thought is that my wife is getting to the age where if we decide to have another child the risk/benefit ratio would indicate a amino senthesis (sp) or maybe sniping off some fetal cells for study.

If this happens maybe we should have some of them frozen for later use. Hmmmm... does this act constitute a violation on the ban on human cloning. No wait I've got it. A conspirecy to possably violate a proposed ban on human cloning. Ya! Dats the tickit.

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Frank Joyce - 10:47pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3456 of 3458)

Let me also state that these other researchers (ones cited in the links) are only getting transient pregnancies with implanted embryos from adult cells.

here are some things to consider about that. When I mentioned plant cell cloning. Plants can undergo a lot of genetic loss and still clone. they can deal with variations in ploidy number and even lacking chromosomes and ultimately produce a whole plant. This is not the case in animals. In animals there ARE cases of extra or deleted chromosomes Such as down syndrome, but it is most often the case that when there are genetic problems such as trisomies and/or lots of damged to DNA that the embryo is aborted.

I hope your starting to see my point about Dolly and what the difficulties in cloning adult cells are.

I do think someone is going to get a good clone soon, Its a matter of finding the best types of adult cells to use and sifting through them to find the most stable nuclei. eventually one will work.

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Frank Joyce - 10:54pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3457 of 3458)

Carl Nicolai:

Very good points you've made!!! Store frozen fetal cells then grow the offspring and use frozen fetal cells later to clone the one you want. But how many years would that take to do considering the life span of the animal?

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Cliff Beall - 11:30pm Feb 21, 1998 ET (#3458 of 3458)

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

Frank, I am sorry. In reading through the articles to which I provided links, I failed to see a statement I had expected. I did another search and found an article that contained it: "Stice and Robl also reported that two of their cows are well into pregnancies carrying fetuses that are cloned from adults."

<A HREF="http://www.kentuckyconnect.com/heraldleader/news/012198/ff9clone.html"> http://www.kentuckyconnect.com/heraldleader/news/012198/ff9clone.html </A>

Your point is well taken, I think, and I agree that if cloning from adult somatic cells did not happen with Dolly, it has not yet happened, but it appears to me that it will happen soon, probably as soon as one of those cows drops a calf. In any case, I agree with you that: "eventually one will work."

For the record, I would note also that you appear to have overlooked one of the two references to cloning of adult cells in the links I provided previously:

"But Bishop said that his company had done the Dolly thing too, by impregnating cows with clones made from adult cells. "We've been able to generate cell lines and initiate pregnancies with them, so we'll see how far they go," Bishop said."

And also:

"Separately, Neal First of the University of Wisconsin at Madison has established, at least transiently, pregnancies in five different species using cloned adult cells. First says he has developed a "universal cloning system" based on cow egg cells that he has used to impregnate cows, sheep, rats, pigs and monkeys."

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Cliff Beall - 01:28am Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3459 of 3459)

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

Jessica, you may be correct that many people are unaware of the Human Genome Project and would object if they knew. I don't know about that. But I would argue that whether they want it or not, we need it. In his State of the Union Address, the President was able to say: "In the 1980s, scientists identified the gene causing cystic fibrosis -- it took nine years. Last year, scientists located the gene that causes Parkinson's Disease -- in only nine days. Within a decade, "gene chips" will offer a road map for prevention of illnesses throughout a lifetime."

The President's ability to make the above statement was a direct result of the Human Genome Project. It is, in my view, a noble undertaking. It deserves our support.

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Carl Nicolai - 04:59am Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3460 of 3463)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref. Frank Joyce #3457 It would take the same time to find out weither the cows produced what you wanted irrespective of weither you had fetal cells or not.

I can invision a single animal raised to produce dozens of pharm. chemicals at the same time. Maybe hundreds.

Ref. Cliff Beal #3458. Good work on finding that info. I had never thought of raising an amimal specificly to provide egg cells for many species. It would seem possable not only to use one breed of animal to carry zygotes across international borders (like they use rabits to carry beef embyros accross the Canidian border to not have to go through quarinteen) but to also use one type of animal to bear the ofspring of another. Could you engineer and elephant to bear say 30 sheep offspring at a time?

Ref. human fetal tissue. The more I think about it the more I think that if I have another child I will have some fetal tissue carefully frozen. Not to create another copy but just in case.

I can see the tecno parent of the future. "Well here is the car I promised you if you graduated from college. And a few bucks to get you started. And here is the access code to the cell bank where your fetal cells are stored. Sure hope you dont need them, but it is insurance."

Ref. The Human Genome Project. IMHO the most important general purpose study of humans ever conducted. If it wasnt being done it would have to be done. In studying the molecular design of humans we are truely intigrating ourselves, through our viewpoints, into the very fabric of all living things and are indeed becomming children of the Universe.

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jessica tan - 06:02am Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3461 of 3463)

bob janitor: I may not be a geneticist or a scientist but i strongly believe that even i have a right to give my opinions on eugenics and the human genome project. 1) yes, the human genome project(hgp)has many benefits. to date over 400 genetic markers indicating predisposition to hereditary diseases have been identified, some of which included cyctic fibrosis, Hungtington's disease, parkinson's deisease etc. the immediate benefit of the hgp is the ability to conduct predictive genetic tests. BUT...to date , genetic tests and info can only offer predictions in the diagnosis of hereditary/genetic diseases. Gene thearpy has , insofar worked only for a minority. Thus , psychologically, presymptomatic testing may have significant dangers for an individual cuz the lag between testing capabilty and treatment capabilty may mean many years of anxiety and frustration. 2)there are many repercussions of the hgp, eg, genetic discrimination against people who are predisposed to develop a genetic disease sometime in their life and discrimination against even the unborn(which have resultantly led to many abortions..) 3)there is something wrong with eugenics!!!and the vestige of eugenics does loom over the potentialities of the hgp. CUZ "who decides/defines what is normal"? 4)genetics research has now become big business. a gene patenting race has been set forth....but who has the right to own the human genome????? open forum is neccessary bob, cuz are we only gonna let scientists and business mechanisms decide what is best for society? -it is appraent that the hgp has broght human civilzation to a crossroad in its evolution, a watershed that may virtually bring human evolution into research labs. personally, i am not denying the benefits of the hgp, but i do anticipate with anxiety what our lives will be like in the post hgp era. the hgp may provide the blueprint of man in the future, but i think that such a 'progress' necessitates society to be equipped with some level

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deleted Bob Janitor - 06:37am Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3462 of 3463)

Frank Joyce:

MY lack of knowledge and published research? You're the one that has attacked Dolly even though the experiment had been reproduced elsewhere, saying that "it looks like Dolly is a fake now".

Not only is that conclusion erraneous if you actually used all of your "knowledge" that you aren't cutting and pasting from a biology CD-ROM to look at what happened with Dolly, let alone corrected your grammatical errors.

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Bob Janitor - 06:43am Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3463 of 3463)62

psychologically, presymptomatic testing may have significant dangers for an individual

Ignorance is NOT bliss.

genetic discrimination

There's an entirely different forum for debating this. Anyway, genetic discrimination happens every day already. Whether it's done based on genetic tests or not is just semantics.

there is something wrong with eugenics

Namely...???

human evolution into research labs

Good! Because right now evolution isn't occuring, and the gene pool is being weakened by the minute. Either get rid of all technology, implement eugenics, or have a very ugly situation down the road.

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Cliff Beall - 10:10am Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3464 of 3464)63

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

Bob, if the experiment has been "reproduced" elsewhere, I am not aware of it. According to the CNN report (link above), "No other scientists have been able to duplicate Wilmut's procedure, which has created doubt within the scientific community." Also, Robl and Stice, the American scientists who have developed a different technique they call "fibroblast cells that are rapidly dividing - the opposite of quiescence," report that, "We did try after Dolly to go back and try cloning with quiescent cells, but it did not work well for us."

The normal way to make sure a procedure is viable is to duplicate it. As I understand it, the reports from other labs is that "quiescent" cells do not work. I would suspect, therefore, that Frank's suggestion that, "But when you isolate a bunch of nuclei that are contaminated with fetal nuclei, what you get when you implant these nuclei in to enucleated egg cells, is an easy system to find the fetal cells," is very likely right on the mark.

Hum. Just a comment, Bob, but if I were to decide to comment on somebody else's grammar, I think I would check mine very carefully.

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Cliff Beall - 12:07pm Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3465 of 3466)64

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

You and me both, Jessica.

True. But hereditary/genetic diseases do exist. To find treatments, the causes must first be identified. The alternative is to continue "live" with these devastating ailments. I think a concept of the greater good will force us to the conclusion that it is better to proceed ahead with the project. Can you agree with that, Jessica?

Obviously, there are problems that must be guarded against. For example, we certainly do not want a Nazi-type "solution." We don't need to enter into the coming age blindfolded, and we certainly have a right to question any aspect of the implementation of this technology.

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Cliff Beall - 12:12pm Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3466 of 3466)65

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

Jessica, I think that one of the major motivating factors for scientists is recognition by their peers. Discovery of significant treatments for diseases results in this recognition. The single most important motivating factor for businessmen is profits. Providing an effective treatment for a disease is an obvious way to make a profit. I think we can have some confidence that scientist and businessmen will act in their own best interest. Where their best interests coincides with that of the public, it is useful. This is the usual case.

I agree. Sometimes "fear" is justified. We need to be on guard. However, I believe we should continue with the project full steam ahead. The sooner it is completed, the sooner we will start to reap the full benefits.

Do you agree with this, Jessica?

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Carl Nicolai - 01:17pm Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3467 of 3468)66

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref. Jessica and Cliff.

The last I heard was that the Patent Office specificly excluded human genes from patentable technology.

Has something changed?

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deleted Frank Joyce - 01:52pm Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3468 of 3468)

Bob Janitor:

I think your comments speak for themselves. they say quite loudly that you have only a basic knowledge of biology (probably high school bio). I laugh everytime you post because you are quite uninformed.

Once again it takes an extremely ignorant person to argue that someone's grammar makes their viewpoint wrong. I guess by your own arguments that you shouldn't be arguing Eugenics because the ignorant masses shouldn't have an open forum of their own.

Go back and study all the molecular development and cloning papers previous to Dolly and maybe you might finally get a clue! If Molecualr genetics is not your area of specialty then don't comment on it.

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Frank Joyce - 02:40pm Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3469 of 3471)67

Carl Nicolai:

Actually it would take much longer. In the first model (cloning from adult cells) You simply take cells from the adult that is producing the most milk and begin cloning. in the fetal model you do a breeding and select fetal cells from all offspring. you then let these offspring grow to sexual maturity and get them pregnant and see which produces the most milk. Then you can begin cloning the fetal cells. In the process you lose Quite a few years waiting for your calves to reach maturity. But if it were something done routinely I'm sure it wouldn't be a big deal.

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deleted Bob Janitor - 02:45pm Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3470 of 3471)

Frank,

I do not appreciate your personal attacks, nor your lack of a good response to any of my arguments.

You argue that differentiation makes adult cells impossible to clone because they can not dedifferentiate.

Yet not only do most scientists not question Wilmut's published findings, cells already have have been dedifferentiating for a long time now! From redentiation to animals that can regenerate an entire limb, dedifferentiation has been successfully occuring for a long time now.

Granted, that is not quiescence, but the point being, cells already dedifferentiate.

The fibroblast technique uses chemicals instead of quiescence. That's why although it's a different technique it's still still relevent because it too uses dedifferentiation.

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Cliff Beall - 02:59pm Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3471 of 3471)68

Certainty: most of the time it ain't...

I think that one passed right over my head. There has been no change that I know of. I do know that according to the reports, both Bishop and Stice/Robl have applied for patents for their individual methods of cloning animals. I assume that means they could prevent someone from applying those particular methods to human cloning as well as animal cloning. But I don't know. Maybe I don't know what "excluding human genes from patentable technology" means.

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deleted Frank Joyce - 04:28pm Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3472 of 3473)

Bob Janitor:

Are you incapable of reading as well. I have never argued that adult cels cannot dedifferentiate.

I have stated the purpose of cloning experiments and how they relate to answering the fundamental questions about the process of differentiation.

I have explained why adult cells are more difficult to clone do to having less genetic protection than do earlier cells. and stated the evidence for that.

It is easy to get adult cells to dedifferentiate!! it's difficult to get them to produce a whole organism!

Why is it tough to do? Because of the damage that is known to occur in adult cells. We know that DNA repair is linked to transcription and thus only active genes are repaired. we know that Tranposition occurs far more frequently in adult cells. We know that in animals, embryos with lots of genetic damage usually get ABORTED, thus the frequent miscarriages in the Cow experiments.

As far as making personal attacks look at your own comments.

Now show us how well you know the material and tell us what types of errors you would expect to see when trying to clone a B-lymphocytes.

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Carl Nicolai - 05:06pm Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3473 of 3473)69

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref. Frank Joyce #3469. I guess my point is that all breeders and people planning to become parents should be saving fetal cells now in the event they want to use them in the future.

I understand there is a slight risk of problems when harvesting them but the potential benefits could be great.

It may be a large number of years before differentiated cell cloning becomes as realiable as using fetal cells.

In spite of all the facination with cloning it seem to me that the real science comes with understanding cellular differentation, dedifferentation, and redifferentation. This is all the more true because this process can occur naturaly.

Also I beleive since you are not necessaraly going to clone a complete human with the fetal cells, any law that will be enacted will be moot.(At least the proposed laws that are beleived to have the higest chance of passage.)

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Frank Joyce - 11:24pm Feb 22, 1998 ET (#3470 of 3470)

Carl Nicolai:

I'm not sure why people would want to Freeze and store human fetal cells. currently people can do invitro ferilizations and save the ebryos. that way you don't have to have a clone of one of the children you gave birth too. I'm not sure if fertilization companies are doing embryo splitting and freezing, but I do know that it has been done with other animals to basically bypass any nuclear transfer.

I'm not sure if Using other animals for eggs is a good Idea. Keep in mind that the ealriest proteins that guide developement are translated from stored maternal RNA's Many of these are transcriptions factors and tend to be somewhat species specific. In order to produce such an animal you'd have to identify all of the Maternal RNA's stored in the egg and clone their genes into the organism you intend to be the egg donor. Quite a lot of work to do for an animal that can produce eggs with the appropriate stored maternal RNA's. It seems much easier to just harvest them from many females of the same species.

An interesting Idea on this line is that the Japanese are trying to Clone a wooly mammoth By using the enucleated eggs of a modern elephant. Looks to me like a ton of places were things could go wrong. I wouldn't want to be the ones to have to continually try to get that project done.

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jessica tan - 01:12am Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3471 of 3498)

cliff beall: i do agree with the points that u've highlighted. personally, i do not deny that the hgp has its benefits...BUT if we go ahead, full steam with the project, without simlutaneously increasing the level of awareness of the hgp among the public... our society may not actually be prepared for such a genetic revolution....? do u agree????

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Tom Anderson - 03:52am Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3472 of 3498)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Carl,

While it's true that purely deterministic algorythms can never produce true randomness, modern cryptographers design processes that you can not prove are not random by examining their output over many millions of bits.

So you agree that we percieve randomness when in fact there is none. I argue that, given a very sophisticated technique, obviously linked to the original encoding algorithm, a computer could actually determine that an output is not random. Furthermore, given absolute knowledge about all processes, it could determine that nothing is random. Of course, that is only theory since such a condition could not concievably exist.

Also many systems proprogate and spread "errors". That is to say that if a little true ramdomness is added will before the "break" length, all of the subsiquent output will be altered in a way than can not be shown to be non random.

But, from where does this "true randomness" originate?

This combination of deterministic and random elements is contained within the human brain.

Again, same question.

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Tom Anderson - 03:53am Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3473 of 3498)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Keith,

Chaos is a better frame of referrence. We express creativity. This could be seen as free will, or simply as a level of synthethis that is sufficiently complex to elude predictability.

Excellent! Exactly what I have come to understand.

I am not convinced that the distinction is meaningfull except as a philosophical exercise.

With so many arguments (cloning very much included) based on philosophical arguments, this is an exceedingly important distinction to make. The definition of a person, of intelligence, of consciousness, of individuality, of gods, and even of the meaning of life are all tightly wound around the idea of non-determinism and free will.

Jessica,

we cannot allow it to be discussed and be debated over only by the experts of genetic knowledge ... when and if this project is completed , it might just be too late to say that we do not want it.

You must be sufficiently knowledgeable about a subject before you can credibly object to it.

Cliff,

I admire your persistance, but I never "insisted" anything, and there never was any emotionality beyond my jest in response to your comments. Nice try though. Sagan was a great man and contributed much to humanity; just because he did not formulate a lasting mathematical description of reality does not lessen his worth. We should honor his memory and heed his lessons.

Would you please stop repeating this nonsense?

Buddism is not a religion. Religion is the worship of a supernatural being whether it be represented by the moon, the sun, a tree, a rock, or any other natural phenomena. Any naturalistic philosophies, whether worshipful or not, are not religions.

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Tom Anderson - 03:55am Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3474 of 3498)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

I was trying to get at the published data about transposable elements being activated in other plant tissues do the plant culture medium itself.

I don't think that "transposable" elements have been distinguished from a function of methylation. Whether repressors are the transposable elements or the code itself is a very difficult distinction to make. In the case that it is methylation, chances are that the code is stripped of this during serum starvation and/or implantation into the oocyte. If the DNA code does actually move on the chromosome, then there still is not a problem so long as it remains intact somewhere on the chromosome; this way it can still be transcribed, and possibly even transposed back to its original location. Barbara McClintock's experiments with Indian corn show this in particular -- you can grow a plant from a seed of one type and still end up with a plant of the other. It would seem to follow then that a clone of a cell with transposed genes would still produce a completely normal organism, only possibly with a few different traits than its donor (in which case it would be a little less like a twin and a little more like a recombinant).

Also, this does not lead to discredit Wilmut's work. In addition, showing that more differentiated cells are more difficult to clone does not inhibit the ability to clone adults since adults have plenty of stem cells from which to choose.

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Tom Anderson - 03:56am Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3475 of 3498)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

If there was a chance that it was in there and that other stem cells were in that mix as well, then they would be more likely to be the ones producing the clone.

That is not true. From what I understand from the article, a random sample of cells was taken from the udder. In this case, the probability of selecting one type of cell over another is dependent only on the relative proportions of these cells in the udder.

In any case, the only way to truly know Dolly's parent would be to perform electrophoresis on Dolly, the suspected donor, and the suspected donor's offspring which was a fetus at the time. However, it is my understanding that the donor has since died.

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Tom Anderson - 03:57am Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3476 of 3498)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Cliff,

If Wilmut's objective was to clone a sheep from an adult somatic cell, why would he use cells from a pregnant sheep.

You misunderstand the objective. And please do not condescend me, even if from another's point of view.

Carl,

Why not just take some fetal cells from every new cross you want to test? Then if they turn out to have the qualities you want you all ready have cells that can produce clones with your "old technology".

This is what is being done with embryo cloning research.

Jessica,

"who decides/defines what is normal"?

In this country we have determined that all people are entitled to equal rights independent of their genetics (ie race & sex). Nothing will change that to the backward way it was before.

our society may not actually be prepared for such a genetic revolution....? do u agree????

The general public is not prepared for any technology. But, once you get a technophobe to understand the technology, then it becomes indispensible.

Fear is not a legitimate objection; it is a demonstration of ignorance.

Also, please use paragraphs -- it is very hard to read otherwise.

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Tom Anderson - 03:58am Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3477 of 3498)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

In the first model (cloning from adult cells) You simply take cells from the adult that is producing the most milk and begin cloning. in the fetal model you do a breeding and select fetal cells from all offspring.

The point was that breeders already cross livestock for the best offspring anyway, so why not just keep a few fetal cells from each one. Then the spectacular results can simply be reproduced so that there will be a larger population of spectacular livestock to both mate again and to use as production animals.

By way of medical research, this is done already to select the best test animals... the embryo is allowed to grow into like eight cells at which point it is separated into seperate embryos (cloned) and allowed to grow again.

Cliff,

Owning a set of genes and owning a method of reproduction are two seperate things. I sure hope someone doesn't patent sex! But whoever does will be very rich ;o)

Carl,

In spite of all the facination with cloning it seem to me that the real science comes with understanding cellular differentation, dedifferentation, and redifferentation.

That was Wilmut's intention.

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Carl Nicolai - 05:16am Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3478 of 3498)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref. Jessica Tan #3471: There is no question about the desireability of educating the public. It seems however that most peoople would rather watch a football game than a program on science. My fear is that people who wish to remain uninformed about a complex field may panic over some TV super hype and cause the politicians to enact a bunch of seriously stupid laws.

Ref Frank Joyce #3470:It's not that I,m interested in cloning anyone. I just think that having fetal cells is a good idea. Partially differented cells are more malleable then fully differented ones, and this is liable to remain true for some years. Also they have been through fewer divisions and so have a longer (maybe 50 divisions) life outside the body. Lets put it it this way, if you were going to save some cells of an animal to be used for possable later repair which ones would you save? (One of each type maybe?)

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jessica tan - 07:34am Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3479 of 3498)

tom, sure everyone is entitled to equal rights. but guaranteeing these equal rights in reality is another thing altogether. the field of human cloning, genetics or eugenics is not a playground to show how fearless one is.Besides, I am not fearful of the genetic revolution, i'm just wary of its development and its implications in the social context.There is a distinction between being fearful and and being wary.This distinction is important. genetic developments have brought 'progress' but there is always a trade-off , something which may not have been fully discovered yet.

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Keith Fosberg - 08:20am Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3480 of 3498)

It's not just a life, Its an adventure!

Tom,

I suppose the relevance of "free-will" depends heavily on how we are defining it.

If we are considering whether or not we can "create" new concepts that are not derivitive of past experiance as opposed to meerly synthethising existing information in new combinations then we have run into the limit at wich both you and I have stalled, being unwilling to fully conceed babel's argument.

If by "free-will" we mean that we are not controlled by some outer intelligence then I would state, most emphatically, that we have free-will.

The religious implication of free-will depends on the religion. Western religions seem to say; Play by the rules and you will get a reward later. There is also an implied focus that assumes that the only point to this life is to "grab the brass ring" and earn the next life.

This is why many (but not all) devoutly religious people tend to oppose change. There is a fear that changes to this life may "change the rules" and leave people in this life without a "guide book" to earn the next.

Personally, I feel that if there is indeed a huge, omnipotent, intelligence who is responsible for the creation and meaning of all of the universe, he might just have better things to do than play silly little games with humanity. If we were created by such an entity, then surely its was for a purpose, and the fulfillment of that purpose will require the use of all of the tools in our possesion.

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Frank Joyce - 01:06pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3481 of 3498)

Tom Anderson: You sate "That is not true. From what I understand from the article, a random sample of cells was taken from the udder. In this case, the probability of selecting one type of cell over another is dependent only on the relative proportions of these cells in the udder. "

Your right about one thing. a DNA test would verify it. even if the donor is now dead you can still get DNA. The fetal cells in a random population are still more Clonable than adult cells and this is the basis for selection. Again it is similar to a 0.1% chance of a resistant bacteria in a population of non resistant bacteria. When you plate them on antibiotics you select out the resistant ones. Wilmut found a method for selecting the most clonable cells from a random sample which may have included fetal cells. These are known to be the most cloneable.

As far as Transposeable elements being involved with methylation only, That's wrong too. Methylation is just one method of regulating their transposition. Look up P-element in Drosophila as well. There are many other types of elemets including retrotransposons etc. that exist in mammals. a book on Viruses and their evolution will also discuss different types of elements and transposons as well

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Frank Joyce - 01:19pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3482 of 3498)

Tom Anderson:

Do you think the udder bled at all when they excised the tissue? Or did they get Udder tissue that had no vascular connections whatsoever and thus no blood in it. If that were true I don't think wilmut would have come out at all and said that there might have been fetal cells present in the bloodstream.

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Frank Joyce - 01:30pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3483 of 3498)

Tom Anderson:

I forgot to mention Transposon tagging as a method used to clone genes. This involves inducing transpositon in cells that have Transposable elements and using this as a random mutagenisis. If it inserts into a gene of interest you then knock out that genes function. Since you know the code for the transposon you can clone out the gene that it has inserted into. This has been a common practice for quite some time now. you can look it up to verify. the reason I mention it is because it demonstrates that simply because a gene moves in a chromosome doesn't mean it doesn't do any damage. If that were true, people would have been incapable of using transposon tagging as a method of Gene Cloning.

I hope your starting to figure this whole thing out. I'm currently finishing my PhD in molecular genetics so I do know what I'm talking about.

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Tom Anderson - 04:31pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3484 of 3498)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Jessica,

guaranteeing these equal rights in reality is another thing altogether

Nothing in life is guaranteed. All we can do is make laws and try to enforce them. This is not specific to cloning, but true of everyone. We try to enforce equal rights as it is, and cannot always be done. But this is not an argument against cloning.

Keith,

If we are considering whether or not we can "create" new concepts that are not derivitive of past experiance as opposed to meerly synthethising existing information in new combinations then we have run into the limit at wich both you and I have stalled, being unwilling to fully conceed babel's argument.

I think I am so willing now; I have found no evidence that there is free will and all evidence we have seems to suggest determinism.

Frank,

The fetal cells in a random population are still more Clonable than adult cells and this is the basis for selection.

Read the article again, because I found no mention of any selection among the sample of cells. He simply grabbed one, from a group he thought belonged only to the adult ewe, and performed nuclear transfer. So far as I can see, it was only one cell, and from a random population of the distribution I provided before.

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Tom Anderson - 04:32pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3485 of 3498)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

[Fetal cells] are known to be the most cloneable.

You are assuming something that has not been experimentally proven -- this is precisely what Wilmut was attempting to determine. Since his results are in question, then you cannot possibly back up your statement.

Methylation is just one method of regulating their transposition.

That was just an example to show that perhaps the code is fixed and outside elements are responsible for the apparent transposition. But whether the code is fixed or not, it is irrelevant to whether such a cell could be cloned.

Do you think the udder bled at all when they excised the tissue?

I don't know the procedure used. I doubt it bled if they used a syringe. There are not many blood vessels on the udder which would not be visible since it is only a very thin membrane -- so I'm sure they could avoid them. In any case, what percent of the blood do you suppose has fetal cells in it? 0.00001?

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Tom Anderson - 04:33pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3486 of 3498)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

the reason I mention it is because it demonstrates that simply because a gene moves in a chromosome doesn't mean it doesn't do any damage

You are assuming that the transposable elements are not returned to their original position at some point in the process. For instance, the oocyte transcriptase might do this. The only way to know is to clone several animals and look for genetic and phenotypic differences that would only be explained by transposed genes. If a vital protein were inhibited due to transposition, then the embryo would likely never grow in the first place. It seems, however, that if the Dolly experiment is in fact the result of adult cell nuclear transfer, then the genome is actually reset to a state at which differentiation can begin anew.

I hope your starting to figure this whole thing out. I'm currently finishing my PhD in molecular genetics so I do know what I'm talking about.

I've always had it figured out. And I never asked for your credentials; if you know what you are talking about, then you can demonstrate it in an intelligent discussion. A person's aquired degrees tell nothing of their relative knowledge or critical thinking skills.

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Noel Yap - 04:46pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3487 of 3498)

Keith Fosberg: If a quantum device can actually sample "vacume chaos" then it could generate a random number.

Quantum devices don't read "vacuum chaos." They read something more tangible, like the state of an electron.

Keith Fosberg: Of course people can't generate random numbers either.

All I gotta do is roll dice or flip coins.

Glen Curry: Just because bovs and churches NEED to withhold info to keep the masses stupid, does not mean it is benefitial or correct.

It might if the masses are kept stable enough to have a civilised society. IOW, if these "controls" weren't used, society might decline so much that no progress is possible.

Glen Curry: It is well known that an observer effects the observed.

Both observer and observed are part of the same system.

Glen Curry: B) We still DO use mainframes

Bob Janitor: Unfortunately true, but they are a dying breed.

Mainframes fulfill a niche. They are great with massive data and batch processing. That's why we still use them for data warehouses.

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Noel Yap - 04:47pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3488 of 3498)

Bob Janitor: PCs have gotten powerful because of Intel. Cyrix and AMD have played catch-up, but Digital's Alpha chip and Motorola's PowerPC aren't too shabby either.

Aren't too shabby? They're actually faster than Intel. The Microsoft/Intel monopoly has stagnated progress.

Bob Janitor: Gorden Moore formulated Moore's Law in what, '78? And it's still held true to this day.

Actually, I think we're progressing faster than what Moore had proposed.

Kristine Reardon: As for the moral or religious aspect of it, to me it doesn't exist.

But it does exist for many people. This aspect of cloning cannot be ignored.

Tom Anderson: it cannot be a religious book since it does not attribute any occurances as being caused by a supernatural being.

I still contend that supernatural beings aren't necessary for religion. IOW, there's polytheism (NG > 1), montheism (NG == 1), and atheism (NG == 0) where NG represents the number of gods. I wonder what you'd have if NG < 0 or NG were complex? :)

Tom Anderson: Recessive alleles tend to be neutral, harmful or deleterious... most of the population would already express them were they beneficial.

If this is true, it would explain why inbreeding is detrimental, but I still don't see how "bad" genes become recessive and "good" genes become dominant.

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Noel Yap - 04:48pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3489 of 3498)

Tom Anderson: Emotions are basically only good for unanalytical creatures, in which case fear keeps them alive and lust helps them procreate, et cetera. However, reason is a much better tool.

I wouldn't label it better or worse. They balance each other. Here's another (more practical) example:

My program isn't working right!!! G*d d@mn !t, I'm so tired that I really should sleep, but I can't until I figure out what's causing the problem.

Here, emotion and reason work hand in hand to solve the problem.

Noel Yap: discounting any effects quantum mechanics have on determinism

Tom Anderson: Just exactly what effects are you speaking of? And please don't start rambling about different interpretations... just the facts please.

Well, from what we've observed, quantum mechanics is completely non-deterministic (ie there are no known variables affecting the change of state of an electron in a deterministic way; everything is probabilistic.)

Tom Anderson: They are not random, they just appear to be random to us because we cannot predict it.

If this is so, I don't see how you can keep asserting the possibility of free will. You might as well go asserting the possibility of the existence of God.

Tom Anderson: altering the results with exclusive or gates or anything else is just another algorithm to induce the perception of randomness.

No, it's not. It's an algorithm to make the probabilities of 0's and 1's closer to 50-50.

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Noel Yap - 04:49pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3490 of 3498)

Tom Anderson: If in fact 1 comes up an average of 55% of the time, then we might as well just not use it at all, because it is clearly not random.

It's random. It's just not uniformly random. As I've explained before (and you would know if you picked up a cryptography book,) there are algorithms to make it more uniformly distributed.

Tom Anderson: I would suggest simply flipping a coin, but if you give the coin to a machine which flips it in the exact same manner every time and keep the contraption in a closed environment, then the coin flip is not random either.

The only closed environment is the universe (ie even Vega's gravity will affect the outcome to an extent.) Unless you assume the universe is open. In this case, new information would be coming in all the time. Again, this sounds supernatural.

Tom Anderson: Only unintelligent human survival. A logical examining of any situation is preferable to simply running away because you don't understand it.

I disagree. I've been in situations in which taking time to analyse would've endangered me more.

Someone: Religion was invented from fear and a lack of knowledge. A scared generation searching for answers that eventually science would give us.

Tom Anderson: Oh, so you agree? Then what was that first statement about?

I don't think I wrote this (for one thing, it's got a sentence fragment.) Anyway, perhaps we are moving towards a more Vulcan state, but we're not there, yet. Furthermore, there's no guarantees that we would stay there. For all we know, theists millenia from now could be saying, "Gee, our ancestors were so primitive that they believed in Science."

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Noel Yap - 04:50pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3491 of 3498)

Keith Fosberg: I vote with Tom on this one; Our analitical capabilities provide a much more effective system of estimating and responding to threat than the "fight or flight" mechanism.

Only in certain situations. Also, we've lost most of our instinctual behaviour that could actually help us. For example, certain animals know when natural disasters are about to occur. We could have this, too, but since we've been pampered by technology, we've lost it. Again, I've personally been in a situation where the only explanation I could find for my behaviour was instinct.

Cliff Beall: If Wilmut's objective was to clone a sheep from an adult somatic cell, why would he use cells from a pregnant sheep.

Perhaps, the "normal" sheep provides for a control subject.

Carl Nicolai: Her life reprsents the truth about science. Set upon and lambasted by the establishment scientists, she found a way to continue her work in spite of the fact that virtually all "right thinking people" thought her work bordered on the insane. Peer Review? As near as I can tell there was not one of the government financed scientists or labs that would give her the time of day.

I agree. Rather than promoting progress, peer reviews tend to do the opposite. They've adopted the same hierarchical beaurocracies that Western religions have and, along with it, the same problems.

I'm also glad someone reminded me of her. She's probably the reason I think genetic code is "pinball" code (a la Beizer.)

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Noel Yap - 04:50pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3492 of 3498)

jessica tan: I may not be a geneticist or a scientist but i strongly believe that even i have a right to give my opinions on eugenics and the human genome project.

To ensure more stability, information should not be force-fed to people who aren't ready for it. Those that are ready can search for the information.

jessica tan: <regarding HGP>

There's a CNN message board for this topic.

Bob Janitor: Ignorance is NOT bliss.

For those that are, it is. They have no problems (that they know of) that they need to worry about.

Cliff Beall: I think we can have some confidence that scientist and businessmen will act in their own best interest. Where their best interests coincides with that of the public, it is useful. This is the usual case.

I agree.

jessica tan: if we go ahead, full steam with the project, without simlutaneously increasing the level of awareness of the hgp among the public... our society may not actually be prepared for such a genetic revolution....?

I disagree. The computer and information revolution is now embedded within our culture. I doubt that average Joe would be able to answer when asked , "What makes it work?"

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Noel Yap - 04:51pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3493 of 3498)

Tom Anderson: So you agree that we percieve randomness when in fact there is none.

I still believe that quantum mechanics provides true randomness (unless proven otherwise.) Also, if it does not, then I would believe we have no free will.

Tom Anderson: With so many arguments (cloning very much included) based on philosophical arguments, this is an exceedingly important distinction to make. The definition of a person, of intelligence, of consciousness, of individuality, of gods, and even of the meaning of life are all tightly wound around the idea of non-determinism and free will.

I very much agree.

Tom Anderson: You must be sufficiently knowledgeable about a subject before you can credibly object to it.

Since you qualified it with "credibly," I would agree.

Tom Anderson: In this country we have determined that all people are entitled to equal rights independent of their genetics (ie race & sex). Nothing will change that to the backward way it was before.

Perhaps you should join the "Genetic Discrimination" board (not that you have time for it ;)

Tom Anderson: I sure hope someone doesn't patent sex! But whoever does will be very rich ;o)

You can be sure Bill Gates'll try to do this ;)

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Noel Yap - 04:51pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3494 of 3498)

Carl Nicolai: My fear is that people who wish to remain uninformed about a complex field may panic over some TV super hype and cause the politicians to enact a bunch of seriously stupid laws.

I agree.

jessica tan: There is a distinction between being fearful and and being wary.This distinction is important. genetic developments have brought 'progress' but there is always a trade-off , something which may not have been fully discovered yet.

I agree.

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Frank Joyce - 04:56pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3495 of 3498)

Tom anderson:

first you state" BTW, there is a 90% chance that the cell used was from fully differentiated mammary epithelium, a 9% chance that the cell was from fully differentiated myoepithilium, and only a 1% chance that it was from a relatively undifferentiated stem cell or a fetal cell."

Then you state "so I'm sure they could avoid them. In any case, what percent of the blood do you suppose has fetal cells in it? 0.00001? "

Which is it. Are you now changing your data to support your position?

There are many types of transposable elements. I tried to make that clear to you so you would not make the mistkae of saying"You are assuming that the transposable elements are not returned to their original position at some point in the process. For instance, the oocyte transcriptase might do this."

Transposable elements are very well documented. Try reading about them. you will find that some excise tehmselves and reinsert in a new location, some make copies of themselves leaving one copy in its origional location and inserting new ones elsewhere. Please read about them. they are very interesting.

The paper doesn't mention selection such as antibiotics. you don't need to do an antibiotic selection. Teh mere insertion of the nuclues into an egg and attempting to regenreate it is a means of selection itself. this selects for the most stable nuclei to develope into a whole organism. Unfortunately I have to explain a lot of biology for you to understand this.

If you haven't looked up P-element, try tn3 tn5 and tn10 they are easy examples to find in general bio books. Keep in mind they are also example af bacterial transposons. I do know that eveolutionary biologists have looked at various primate transposable elements as well. I'm not aware of the names of these off hand. The only reason I did mention McClintock is that she Won The Nobel Prize for provi

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Frank Joyce - 04:57pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3496 of 3498)

That genes "jump around"

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Frank Joyce - 05:14pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3497 of 3498)

Tom Anderson:

You state "You should also note that the experiment included different stages of differentiation -- embryo, fetal fibroblast, and supposedly adult"

Previously you also referred to my statement that older cells are easier to clone than younger. You said I was only stating the obvious.

Now your saying that's not true!!!

My point again. If you have a mixture of nuclei containing some that might be younger. you insert them all into ennucleated oocytes. Which ones are more likely to grow, the young or old?

Well so far no one has succesfully cloned from an adult cell. YOu also stated that it is obvious the young ones will do better.

Do you understand that his experiment itself was the selection? that's why you don't see the word selection in the paper.

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Frank Joyce - 06:40pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3498 of 3498)

Tom Anderson:

Since you did mention electrophoresis, I will say that in the Wilmuts publication, he did do Microsatellite analysis using four ovine polymorphic markers. He did this only on the sheep that were born and their surrogate mothers. he did not bother to check the sheep that the udder cells were harvested from. This established that the "cloned" sheep were not genetically identical to their surrogate mothers.

He does not state how he harvested teh Udder cells. I doubt he tried to remove them with a needle. it is more likely that he cut up the tissue and digested away the extra cellular matrix with a protease. But I will find his protocol for that and let you know.

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Carl Nicolai - 08:46pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3499 of 3511)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

I'm having a little trouble understanding how one measures the degree of differentation a given cell has undergone. The only measure I've read about in this group is weither you can make a clone from it. This kind of baits the question. If in fact there are only a few kinds of adult cells that can easily produce sutable nucelli then that by deffination is differentated cell. A type of specialised cell?