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Tom Anderson - 10:19pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3500 of 3511)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Noel,

All I gotta do is roll dice or flip coins.

Neither of those is random; they just appear so to us because we cannot reliably predict the outcome. Each of these actions is actually dependent upon thousands of variables, so that if you could account for each one, you could know the outcome.

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.

Poly- and mono-theism are both types of theism (religion) where as atheism is the absense of theism (not-religion).

I still don't see how "bad" genes become recessive and "good" genes become dominant.

Selection. "Bad" dominant genes tend to be fully selected out because the animals that have them always express them, whereas "bad" recessive genes can hitch a ride on the "good" dominant genes and not cause problems until a few generations down the line when two parents carrying the "bad" recessive gene happen to mate. This causes a majority of dominant genes to be "good" and a majority (or at least a lot) of recessive genes to be "bad".

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

But reason would work better alone.

there are no known variables affecting the change of state of an electron in a deterministic way; everything is probabilistic

Probability is an attribute of determinism. Probability could not possibly model non-determinism.

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Tom Anderson - 10:21pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3501 of 3511)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

If this is so, I don't see how you can keep asserting the possibility of free will.

I don't. I said that I hypothesize that free-will exists and will search for such evidence to prove it one way or the other. So far, it appears that the hypothesis is incorrect.

It's an algorithm to make the probabilities of 0's and 1's closer to 50-50.

Like I said.

The only closed environment is the universe (ie even Vega's gravity will affect the outcome to an extent.)

Perhaps, but the fact remains that it is not random -- it is a product of all forces which act on it. But in the case of such a macro-event as a coin-flip, something so insignificant as Vega's gravity will not effect the outcome on its own; however, in conjunction with a small breeze, the magnetic field of a passing airplane, the heat eminating from a nearby person, et cetera, et cetera, it just might effect it. But the point remains -- it is the product of all forces which act on it, not randomness.

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

Sometimes the logical course of action is to remove yourself from danger. But running for fear is not usually the best way to approach a situation.

I don't think I wrote this

You didn't, that's why I addressed the response to Kristine.

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Tom Anderson - 10:21pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3502 of 3511)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

For all we know, theists millenia from now could be saying, "Gee, our ancestors were so primitive that they believed in Science."

They would be wrong. Science is the only way to gather reliable knowledge, theism cannot.

Also, we've lost most of our instinctual behaviour that could actually help us.

First of all, we have not "lost" instintual behavior because of technology. We simply never had the type of senses you claim of other animals. Secondly, we were speaking of emotions, not instincts.

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

No, they see a million problems where there are none, and cannot see the true problems before it is too late to correct them.

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.

Then I suggest you study the subject more carefully. Do not read about various philosophical interpretations of QM, just read the science, for that is all we can reliably know. Everything we know of particle physics is determinstic and everything we know of relativity is deterministic. The only thing even remotely related to QM that is not deterministic is the various ramblings of physicists playing philosophers in coming up with interpretations that do not stand up to a test of logic. So, please, just the science.

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Tom Anderson - 10:23pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3503 of 3511)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

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

Changing data? What are you talking about? One distribution is from the udder, and another is speculatory about the distribution in blood.

Transposable elements are very well documented. Try reading about them.

Thanks for the suggestion, but no, I think I already know enough. What you are continually ignoring is the fact that the oocyte cytoplasm contains RNA and protein that can change the DNA to a "reset" state. It is also hypothesized by Wilmut that quiescence does this as well.

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.

You needn't explain anything, because you are clearly wrong. The insertion of a nucleus into a cell has nothing to do with any form of selection. An arbitrary cell is taken and it is fused with the cytoplasm of another... the cell then grows. No selection involved.

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.

Would you get off of the transposon thing; I have already shown it to be irrelevant to the ability to clone a differentiated cell.

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Tom Anderson - 10:35pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3504 of 3511)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

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!!!

No, before I said that it was obvious that undifferentiated cells will differentiate more readily than differentiated cells will. Now I am trying to show you that we cannot guage the difficulty in making differentiated cells dedifferentiate. The purpose of putting the adult sheep into the experiment was to determine if the differentiated cell would dedifferentiate and then redifferentiate into an embryo. This was not about simply transferring of nuclei, but also dedifferentiation of nuclei.

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?

I suggest that you reread Viable offspring derived from fetal and adult mammalian cells I. Wilmut, A. E. Schnieke*, J. McWhir, A. J. Kind* & K. H. S. Campbell Roslin Institute (Edinburgh), Roslin, Midlothian EH25 9PS, UK * PPL Therapeutics, Roslin, Midlothian EH25 9PP, UK

In so doing, you should note that the experiment involved only a very few implantations, and certainly not enough to support your assertion. You'll also notice that the percentage of implantations that resulted in a live lamb are nearly identical between the embryo-derived and the adult-derived cells.

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Tom Anderson - 10:35pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3505 of 3511)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

YOu also stated that it is obvious the young ones will do better.

I said no such thing.

He did this only on the sheep that were born and their surrogate mothers.

Not true, and I quote: "DNA microsatellite analysis of the cell populations and the lambs at four polymorphic loci confirmed that each lamb was derived from the cell population used as nuclear donor" You see, he did so on the derivative populations as well. What he did not check was whether the derivative cells were from the pregnant ewe or her fetus. It was his assumption that he was taking cells from the adult animal only, which is still a very good assumption.

Carl,

I'm having a little trouble understanding how one measures the degree of differentation a given cell has undergone.

There is really no such thing as a "degree" of differentiation. A skin cell is obviously differentiated differently than a liver cell, but you cannot really say which is more differentiated. Differentiation has only to do with which proteins the cell produces. It is entirely possible to have a very differentiated cell in which there is a nucleus that is in no way different from that of a zygote. The only difference will be that different genes are being transcribed. On the other hand, there may be transposed genes and protein inhibitors -- these can be reversed and stripped, respectively, according to Wilmut, through serum starvation and implantation in an oocyte.

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Nagano Leotard - 10:53pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3506 of 3511)

Does any one think cloning go against the cristian beilefs

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Keith Fosberg - 11:01pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3507 of 3511)

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

Geez Tom,

I had all of these nice rejointers for Noel -- and you beat me to all of them! :P

I can only follow the surface of the ongoing debate you are having with Frank (my specialty is open systems integration, and my main interests are physics and space exploration, so I am getting lost in the froth of your discussion) but it seems like a more viable approach is to attempt to duplicate the procedure. Picking apart what "may have happened" is not really usefull unless the procedure proves ir-reproducable.

For one last crack at free will; It really boils down to an unknown. What drives the vacuum? (110 AC? -- sorry) If the vacuum is spontanious then it is, by neccesity, random. If there is any driving force, such as (what's his name's) "super-strings" then we have a universe that is in a constant harmonic and only appears randon as the "inductance" (I know that is the wrong term, but it's late and my brain is rattled from paying bills) between a 4 spacial dimensional framework is never quite in phase with our three spacialial dimensioned universe (it lags/leads by something just less than the Planct limit in space/time) I (sort of) remember the proof for this one (and it is truly ugly, or beautifull) But anyway; It appears that Tom and babel are correct as the "harmonic" universe is more likely than the one based solely on the vacuum. The latter requires a God to be credible. No good programmer (even if he does exist) writes a system that requires constant "nudging."

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Keith Fosberg - 11:10pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3508 of 3511)

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

Nagano Leotard,

I don't see how. It is possible to imagine a number of applications of cloning that would be less than ethical, but cloning is really nothing more than a rather novel way to reproduce.

In itself, cloning has no ethic, possitive or negative. I can easily replace cloning with other more accepted procreative methods to reproduce every argument against cloning on this board.

I maintain that if you beleive your life is a gift from God and/or evolution, that you abuse that gift if you do not use it to your fullest ability. Our minds, and the disipline of science, ballenced by the ethics of our consience. are the greatest part of that gift.

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Cliff Beall - 11:39pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3509 of 3511)

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

Sure. But we have a problem. Who is going to do it? If Carl Sagan was still around, he would be a natural. He could make the rounds of the late night talk shows, ostensibly to promote a book, and on cue, Letterman (or whoever) could ask about the Human Genome Project. In just a few word from Sagan, millions would be made aware of this important project. Not only that, people would be comfortable with the information because people were comfortable with Sagan. But who do we have now? The last thing in the world we need is somebody like Seed explaining it. It is a problem, and I do not have the answer.

Actually, you should be reasonably knowledgeable about a subject before you accept it. To accept something without having sufficient information on which to base an informed decision is the very definition of gullibility. I think skepticism is often justified until reasonable questions are cleared up.

If it isn't a religion, what is it? What would you call it?

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Cliff Beall - 11:45pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3510 of 3511)

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

It is my understanding that the donor of the cells from which Dolly was supposedly cloned was already dead before Dolly was cloned. Dolly was cloned from frozen cells. There was never a time when the procedure you suggest could have been performed. It should also be noted that other labs, when using adult somatic cells, have been unable to duplicate Wilmut's results.

I do not consider it condescending for me to refer to you as a non-specialist. I freely admit you know a hell of a lot more about the subject than me. (Of course, that isn't much of a feat since I know almost nothing.) I am well aware that you are a student who has taken some courses in biology. This coupled with your natural brilliance means you are quite knowledgeable on the subject. I have respect for that, but it does not make you a biologist. Sorry if that upsets you. I remember an argument you had with Dawn some time ago in which you argued it was impossible for Dolly to have been a clone of a fetal cell existing in the adult sheep's udder. I think it should now be clear to everyone that Dawn was correct. That was my guess from the beginning, since Dawn is a specialist, as is Wilmut.

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Cliff Beall - 11:48pm Feb 23, 1998 ET (#3511 of 3511)

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

I think there is such a thing as a legitimate fear. Not in this case, but legitimate fears do exist. Fear is not always a demonstration of ignorance. Sometimes it is the result of insight.

I disagree. Sometimes it is useful to disseminate information whether asked for or not. For, example, I think Jessica is correct that much more information about the Human Genome Project is needed. The problem occurs when the information is disseminated the wrong way. When disseminating information to the masses, it generally is not helpful to explain how stupid and ignorant they are, and how they probably won't understand anyway. This insures that they will not understand it the way you want them to understand it, in any case. Reagan, as well as Sagan, understood this. Remember "Star Wars"? Who would have guessed that that far out scheme could have been sold to the masses by anybody. But Reagan sold it, and because he sold it, he won the cold war. By the right person, the Human Genome Project can be sold the same way.

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Frank Joyce - 12:14am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3512 of 3534)

Tom Anderson:

You do realize he did have to establish a cell culter of the udder cells right? This involves cutting out tissue and digesting it with enzymes to establish free cells. This is where the blood part comes in. Don't make me go over the entire biology of cell culture for you as well.

I do have the paper with me as well as the 96 paper in which he tests all three sources with minisatellite analysis. the 97 paper only tests the surrogate and the offspring. otherewise he wouldn't have to tell the world that he might have had an error. He does't have the DNA work for the origional sheep!!

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Frank Joyce - 12:20am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3513 of 3534)

BTW you also misquoted the research article. re read it again. ALso read the 96 articel in Nature vol 380 64-66.

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Tom Anderson - 02:51am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3514 of 3534)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Cliff,

Actually, you should be reasonably knowledgeable about a subject before you accept it.

Before you accept it for yourself, of course; but that does not give you the right to object to other people accepting it who understand it better than yourself.

To accept something without having sufficient information on which to base an informed decision is the very definition of gullibility. I think skepticism is often justified until reasonable questions are cleared up.

Absolutely, skepticism is necessary at all times in regards to everything. But skepticism involves searching for the answers, not shunning them.

If [Buddhism] isn't a religion, what is it? What would you call it?

From www.fundamentalbuddhism.com, "...the emphasis is on seeing Truth, on knowing it, and on understanding it. The emphasis is NOT on BLIND faith. The teaching of Buddhism is on "come and see" but never on come and believe. Buddhism is rational and requires personal effort, stating that by only one's own efforts can Perfect Wisdom be realized... Buddhism allows each individual to study and observe Truth internally and requires no blind faith before acceptance. Buddhism advocates no dogmas, no creeds, no rites, no ceremonies, no sacrifices, no penances, all of which must usually be accepted on blind faith. Buddhism is not a system of faith and worship but rather it is merely a Path to Supreme Enlightenment." What I would call it is a way of approaching life.

Dolly was cloned from frozen cells.

Really? Was that [Dolly cloned from frozen cells] in the paper, or did you find that elsewhere? If that is true, then they probably still have other cells so that they can in fact perform electrophoresis. It can be determined for sure then.

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Tom Anderson - 02:54am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3515 of 3534)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

but it does not make you a biologist.

What does? A piece of paper saying so? Understanding is not so easily quantized. There are thousands of incompetent doctors practicing medicine and incompetent researchers botching their results. Some people would have you believe Wilmut is one of them. There are also thousands of people with knowledge far beyond what they're "officially specialized" to do. Richard Seed could be one of them. I never claimed that I was or was not, but that is not in your capability to do either. I will, however, readily agree with you that I am no specialist, by far. On the other hand, biology is not a difficult subject to master, and a decent grasp of fundamentals paves the way for a good undertanding of the specifics of any particular field given just a little hardcore research. Biology envelopes a very finite area of study, and once you've read up on the work done so far, it is relatively simple to debate the current research.

I remember an argument you had with Dawn some time ago in which you argued it was impossible for Dolly to have been a clone of a fetal cell existing in the adult sheep's udder. I think it should now be clear to everyone that Dawn was correct.

Actually, I recall questioning Dawn on how it was possible, not arguing against it. And I'm still not so sure on the probability of fetal cells being in the sheep's udder. I would like to see some actual experimental results confirming fetal cells and in what proportion.

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Tom Anderson - 02:56am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3516 of 3534)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

legitimate fears do exist

Only as a logical stand, not as an emotion. The very term "legitimate" requires that the situation has been analized. No emotional fear is legitimate, unless by coincidence. That is, both the rational person and the emotional person might run away from a raging fire, but for different reasons. On the other hand, both the emotional person and the rational person might stay to fight the raging fire, but for different reasons. In either case, the emotional person is more likely to be in error than the rational person.

Frank,

This is where the blood part comes in.

There is no reason to assume that there was any blood in the cell sample that was taken. From what Cliff has said, the donor was actually dead prior to extraction, so the udder may have been opened and a layer of cells taken from the inside membrane without so much as breaking a capillary. But a more prudent thing to do would be to actually find out the method that they used. Do you know? Speculation really does not help. But the question remains, what proportion of the blood would contain fetal cells?

He does't have the DNA work for the origional sheep!!

If the cells were from a frozen source, then you would think they would keep a few around. This does not sound like much forethought was taken.

BTW you also misquoted the research article.

No I did not. It is exactly as it appears in Nature, Volume 385, 810 - 813, February 27, 1997.

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Tom Anderson - 03:00am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3517 of 3534)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

I just re-read my last post and could not help but laughing out loud at a misspelling I did't catch the first time around. "...the situation has been anal-ized" ;o)

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Frank Joyce - 03:05am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3518 of 3534)

tom Anderson:

You are totally wrong about the quote!

Here is the actual statement from the 97 paper as it reads from Nature.

"Microsatellite analysis was carried out on DNA from the lambs ( the offspring) and recipient ewes ( the surrogates) Using four Polymorphic ovine markers."

as you do notice nothing was csaid about the Udder cell line he produced.

The 96 paper in which he clones solely form fetal cells mentions all three papers.

So do you have to change wilmuts words as well to make people beleive your argument.

Maybe you need to get into a lab and see how these techniques are done. I have done lots of cell culture, animal plant bacterial and fungal, and plenty of molecular work to know what I am talkin about. What exactly is it you do?

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Frank Joyce - 03:13am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3519 of 3534)

Tom Anderson:

please get a book on animal cell culture so you can see that when making cell cultures, you first need to cut tissue then digest away the ECM. Usually wash it with PBS afterwards then finally put the mixture into media containing serum. Thats why when he established the cell culture line of udder cells, he ended up with a mixed bag of cells. From these he then isolated nuclei.

This is why Wilmut himself said there was a chance that fetal cells were there.

I think you really need to reevaluate your opinion. you've changed your own words and wilmuts so many times I don't think you even understand your own argument

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Frank Joyce - 04:03am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3520 of 3534)

It's not up to us to disprove wilmut it is up to him to repeat his experimetns. this is what he is attempting right now!

He himself cast the shadow over his own experiments and is trying to determine if he has done what he claimed.

I think I have expained more than enough times why my arguments hold. unless you want to tell me that dna extracted from a cell line that contained fetal cells would only show udder DNA

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Frank Joyce - 04:28am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3521 of 3534)

I think what this really boils down to is that you can't prove that there wasn't fetal cell contamination without speculating.

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Tom Anderson - 04:55am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3522 of 3534)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

I am missing a page so sorry about that.

Well, its nice to see that you can admit when you are wrong. Maybe you'll consider doing the same about other statements you've made. For instance, the one where you accused Wilmut of defrauding his results. Or the one where you claim Dolly is necessarily the result of a fetal nuclear transfer.

But your argument would still be wrong considering the cell lines would have also contained fetal cells!

If the derivative population contains fetal cells, then it is possible to distinguish two seperate genomes. If not, then there will only be the ewe's genome. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how to seperate them.

If he hadn't thought his cell lines had a chance of being contaminated he still wouldn't have made the statement publicly.

First of all, you cannot honestly imply that you can read his thoughts or intentions, can you? He had to admit that there was such a possibility if one, no matter how slim, does exist. If he is later able to compare the derivative populations and Dolly, then he will surely make another public statement about whether it is conclusive one way or the other.

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Tom Anderson - 04:57am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3523 of 3534)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Please tell us more about your lab work though.

I live on a university campus, and in an area full of labs and universities. I have had various internships, classes, and independent experimentation in which I spent hundreds of hours in lab. I have grown animal, plant, bacteria, and fungus cells in culture; I have performed E.coli transformation using restriction enzymes; I have done genetic testing using PCR amplification, agarose gel electrophoresis, southern blot, and the modified Sanger Method; I have done genetics expermiments with drosophila melanogaster; I've tested immune response against various pathogens; I've induced cell hybridization with sendai virus to cause cells to make a foreign protein; I've created lysogenic bacteria with tranducted bacterial genes; I've studied embryology of tadpoles regarding embryonic induction as related to cell differentiation; I've done various dissections and a plethora of other experiments.

I'd like to here that. from the guy that thought that transposons had never been proven to be involved with anything other than methylation!

I never "thought" one way or the other, I simply questioned whether it had been proven one way or the other. Since you apparently think that it has been, please enlighten me as to how you can test a DNA strand to tell whether it has been altered in regards to gene location. You might be able to pull this off if you could find just the right restriction enzyme, but I don't think that has been done, has it? Any other method of genetic testing can show whether or not the gene exists, but not where it exists. So please explain how it has been shown that dynamic DNA is the only explaination for transposable elements.

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Carl Nicolai - 08:12am Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3524 of 3534)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Thank you boys, but where pray tell is the argument? Somewhere out there buried in your fight is the unknown. A little light would be usefull.

Thanks!

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Bob Janitor - 01:24pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3525 of 3534)

Carl:

Believe it or not, there IS a point. This board is all about cloning-- in particular, the nuclear fusion technique used by Dr. Wilmut. Frank Joyce attacked Dr. Wilmut's research, calling Dolly a "fake", and right now Tom is just ripping apart his logic and assumptions. I would join in, but CNN deleted a particular witty retort of mine that I'm not pleased about, and Tom is doing a good job anyway...

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Tom Anderson - 02:22pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3526 of 3534)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Carl,

Actually, this is the closest we've come to a discussion directly related to cloning in a very long time. If you could not follow, here is a review: Frank claims that Wilmut defrauded his own results and that Dolly is definitely the result of a fetal cell nuclear transfer rather than an adult cell nuclear transfer. I, however, have pointed out that even if Wilmut's results were inconclusive, they were not wrong and certainly not intentionally wrong. In addition, probability would be in favor of Dolly being the result of an adult cell nuclear transfer by a ratio of 99 to 1.

I would also add that Frank appears to have this superiority complex by which his ego is severely damaged every time he is wrong. Seeing as he is wrong so often, he had no choice but to lash out at me for disproving his statements. I, of course, was somewhat angered, but tried to keep the mud to a moderate level. Sorry if I did not have more self-control, but I do not take kindly to false accusations and childish responses.

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Frank Joyce - 05:36pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3527 of 3534)

I think the problem to most of this argument is that you still don't seem to get the idea that we both agree that adult cells dedifferentiate adn can "reprogrammed" to start over. This is the point you harp on. I have stated several times that is not what I have been talking about. I have been telling you that cells not only differentiate as they get older, they also AGE and there are problems associated with aging which include damge from a variety of sources. Starting with the amount of energy cells put into repairing their genomes and ending with the discussion of transpsition and insertional mutagenesis. thus finding Cloneable adult cells is much more difficult than just deprogramming and reprogramming. Its more like trying to find a needle in a hay stack. But somehow you got lost in all that.

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Frank Joyce - 05:37pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3528 of 3534)

Tom anderson:

Do you remeber how viruses insert and excise themselves from the genome. this is the same model for transposition of elemments that do not copy themselves. That is why many translposable elements have terminal repeats. AKA homology at each end. It is also why they are coonsidered evolutionarily related to viruses.

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Noel Yap - 05:49pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3529 of 3534)

Keith Fosberg: 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.

I agree.

Tom Anderson: 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.

Wouldn't one still have to prove that quantum phenomenon are deterministic?

Tom Anderson: Poly- and mono-theism are both types of theism (religion) where as atheism is the absense of theism (not-religion).

I'm surprised you're moving away from generalisation (ie "religion is belief in zero or more gods" as opposed to "religion is belief in one or more gods and belief in zero gods is not religion.") It's like saying, "All rational numbers are real except for zero. Zero is in a class by itself."

Tom Anderson: "Bad" dominant genes tend to be fully selected out because the animals that have them always express them, whereas "bad" recessive genes can hitch a ride on the "good" dominant genes and not cause problems until a few generations down the line when two parents carrying the "bad" recessive gene happen to mate.

This is so obvious I don't know why I missed it to begin with. Thanks.

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Walter Brameld - 05:50pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3530 of 3534)

I can't believe the rediculous assumptions I have read on this message board.

For example: mass-produced soldiers (or any other type of specialized worker)

Slavery was abolished many years ago. It could never happen.

made-to-order brides

Yeah, sure, if you want to wait 20 years for your bride to grow up...

Humankind is playing god.

So? The idea of a god is mearly a culture-bound idea, not shared by all. And assuming there was a god, why would it allow us to do something it didn't want us to do? It's a god, isn't it? I mean, letting us do something like that and then punishing us for it would be like leaving the cookies out on purpose, knowing that the child is going to take some, and then spanking the child for it. Sound cruel? It is.

What if some lunatic decided to make hundreds of copies of him/herself?

Well, if he/she did, first he/she would need to pay lots of money to many women to be surrogate mothers (unless she wanted to have them all herself, in which case she would constantly be pregnant). Then, he/she would have to support all these babies. By this time, word has gotten out about what this lunatic is doing and he/she gets locked up, and all the kids get put into foster homes where hopefully they have a better childhood than their father/mother did.

Having somebody else walking around who looks like you is freakishly unnatural.

Well, what about identical twins? Nothing unnatural there.

I think most of these fears come from people who talk too much but don't think much. There is a word for people like these: "Yammerheads."

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Noel Yap - 05:51pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3531 of 3534)

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

Tom Anderson: But reason would work better alone.

Reason would have me go home 'cos I'm tired.

Tom Anderson: Probability is an attribute of determinism. Probability could not possibly model non-determinism.

Could you elaborate on this reasoning?

Tom Anderson: Sometimes the logical course of action is to remove yourself from danger. But running for fear is not usually the best way to approach a situation.

Tom Anderson: They would be wrong. Science is the only way to gather reliable knowledge, theism cannot.

Your faith is unwaivering ;)

Tom Anderson: Everything we know of particle physics is determinstic and everything we know of relativity is deterministic.

What's deterministic about quantum tunnelling? AFAIK, it just spontaneously occurs at any given moment (without depending on anything.)

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Noel Yap - 05:51pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3532 of 3534)

Tom Anderson: There is really no such thing as a "degree" of differentiation. ... It is entirely possible to have a very differentiated cell in which there is a nucleus that is in no way different from that of a zygote.

This sounds contradictory. How can you gauge very differentiated if there's no such thing as degrees of differentiation?

Nagano Leotard: Does any one think cloning go against the cristian beilefs

It depends on which Christian beliefs you're talking about. I would think that the Bible says nothing about cloning. I would also think the Pope would be against it.

Keith Fosberg: No good programmer (even if he does exist) writes a system that requires constant "nudging."

Unless they're using Monte Carlo simulation.

Cliff Beall: In just a few word from Sagan, millions would be made aware of this important project. Not only that, people would be comfortable with the information because people were comfortable with Sagan.

I would prefer this than having a scientocracy (word?).

Cliff Beall: I am well aware that [Tom Anderson is] a student who has taken some courses in biology.

I think he's done more than this.

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Noel Yap - 05:51pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3533 of 3534)

Cliff Beall: The problem occurs when the information is disseminated the wrong way.

Yes, I agree.

Tom Anderson: Before you accept it for yourself, of course; but that does not give you the right to object to other people accepting it who understand it better than yourself.

Does this go for the Pope and religion as well? IOW, assuming anyone else understand religion less well than the Pope, would they have a right to object to his acceptance? How does one know that he understands a subject better than another in cases where they both have a firm grasp?

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Frank Joyce - 08:43pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3534 of 3534)

Walter Bremeld:

I agree. I think it is strange that people come up with bizarre "uses" for clones. The origional idea of nuclear transfer was to establish a method stable gene transfer into cells without ending up with a "genetic mosaic" from only a few cells in an embryo taking the transgene.

wilmuts attempt at cloning from adult cells was only to be the first to get a clone from an adult cell to grow past the juvenile stage. The idea being that no genes are lost in the process of differentiation. that the only effect of differentiation on the genome was topical. in other words the types other factors that bind to DNA control differnetiation and can be removed. Actually most people were content with Gurdons experiments before. everyone felt they proved the point .

the thing that origionally made me post here is that the technology is very old. Nuclear transfer has been around for at least 15 yrs. That's why I find the sudden interest to be so hillarious. It became even more funny to me when there were shadows cast on the dolly experiment itself. NO one said a word when it was done with fetal sheep cells a year before dolly.

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Cliff Beall - 10:53pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3535 of 3538)

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

Would this apply to religion? Suppose there is someone who understands religion better than you. Do you have a right to object to their acceptance of same?

Yes this is true. But, of course, I know of no religion that urges "BLIND faith," but rather the emphasis is always on "acceptance of the truth." So what is the truth? Well, more or less, that is something you take on "faith."

I got it from Dawn. On Jan 30, 1998 at 01:30pm ET, Dawn posted the following: "This just in from 1/30 issue of Science: Dolly may not actually be a clone from a somatic cell. The cells were taken from a frozen stock of mammary cells of a pregnant ewe, who had died. (I said earlier that a dead person couldn't be cloned--but of course if living cells are frozen, they can be)..."

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Cliff Beall - 11:03pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3536 of 3538)

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

Well, all I can say about that is that on Feb 8, 1998 at 04:03am, you posted the following:

Subsequently, On Feb 8, 1998 at 5:41pm, after an explanation from Dawn, you posted the following:

You can call that a question if you wish. I might also mention that Dawn posted a fairly comprehensive subsequent response on Feb 9, 1998 at 04:19pm. I was convinced she was right.

The cold hard fact is that, so far, other labs have been unable to duplicate Wilmut's results when attempting to clone adult somatic cells using "quiescent" cells. However, his method appears to works just fine for fetal cells. I would say that this may be a fair indication that Dolly was cloned from a fetal cell.

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Carl Nicolai - 11:53pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3537 of 3538)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Noel Yap #3533:This sounds contradictory. How can you gauge very differentiated if there's no such thing as degrees of differentiation?

This doesent just sound contradictory it is contradictory. I think specialized is the word I heard most often years ago. The problem is that if suitability of the nucleus for cloning is a criteria then that is just another speciality. So we have heard about some of the factors. Anyone got a list?

Waoa. All of a sudden the immage of these tall intelligent cloning scientists fades and is replaced by these goofy country bumpkins.

"Sheesh Wilber what didyal put them tit cells?" "Heck I donno Harvy. Jus look in da back of dat der freezin unit. I think izz nex to da bear sperm."

Some of these "scientists" are beginning to sound like Dan Quale.

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Cliff Beall - 12:22am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3538 of 3538)

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

Carl, I think maybe you might have had a career in showbiz:-)

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Cliff Beall - 12:42am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3539 of 3539)

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

Seriously, Carl, I am sure that if Wilmut does not have the cells to prove that Dolly is a clone from adult somatic cells, the situation must be embarrassing for him. Perhaps he should have repeated the experiment and made sure before he anounced it, but people do get excited and jump to conclusions sometimes, scientists included.

And don't forget that Stice and Robl have said that two of their cows are well into pregnancies carrying fetuses that are cloned from adults. If Wilmut does not have the goods, perhaps Stice and Robl will.

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Tom Anderson - 01:18am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3540 of 3560)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

I have been telling you that cells not only differentiate as they get older, they also AGE and there are problems associated with aging which include damge from a variety of sources.

I've been telling you that you cannot know this. You can hypothesize that this is the case, but this is what Wilmut was trying to determine. You cannot claim that the experiment is both inconclusive and conclusive simultaneously.

Starting with the amount of energy cells put into repairing their genomes and ending with the discussion of transpsition and insertional mutagenesis. thus finding Cloneable adult cells is much more difficult than just deprogramming and reprogramming.

This is not evident. It may follow from your line of thought, but it is not evident. Until you can provide statistical analysis of this phenomenon, you cannot credibly make this claim.

Its more like trying to find a needle in a hay stack. But somehow you got lost in all that.

Yes, I was lost in your haystack of false claims. You should verify your premises before drawing conclusions from them.

That is why many translposable elements...

You seem to be ignoring my argument that transposable elements, whether dynamic DNA or not, do not effect dedifferentiation.

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Tom Anderson - 01:19am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3541 of 3560)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Noel,

Wouldn't one still have to prove that quantum phenomenon are deterministic?

There is no reason to assume that "quantum phenomena", which you still have not defined, are not deterministic to begin with. Proving as such is secondary.

I'm surprised you're moving away from generalisation (ie "religion is belief in zero or more gods" as opposed to "religion is belief in one or more gods and belief in zero gods is not religion.") It's like saying, "All rational numbers are real except for zero. Zero is in a class by itself."

No, it's like saying that a man who owns two horses is a horse-owner, a man who owns one horse is a horse-owner, but a man with no horses is not a horse-owner. The difference is in the defined domain of the set. A horse owner must own at least one horse; a religion must worship at least one god.

This is so obvious I don't know why I missed it to begin with. Thanks.

No prob.

Walter,

I can't believe the rediculous assumptions...

I'm working on a FAQ.

Noel,

Reason would have me go home 'cos I'm tired.

Only if that is the reasonable choice. If you have a deadline the next morning, reason might keep you up while emotion would give in to your hormones. On the other hand, if the deadline is at the end of the week, emotion might keep you up all night and then you would be tired the entire next day, whereas reason might tell you to go to sleep and be twice as productive tomorrow. Reason is always a better tool.

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Tom Anderson - 01:21am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3542 of 3560)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Could you elaborate on this reasoning [that probability cannot model non-determinism]?

If events were truly random, then no probability could be assigned to an event seeing as it could do anything. For instance, take the flipping of a coin. Generally, we assign it a value of either heads or tails. Because the forces effecting the outcome are so complex, the event averages fifty percent heads and fifty percent tails. However, now consider if the coin could also land on its side, or spontaneously disintegrate, or change shape, etc., which would all be possible were events truly random. Nondeterminism would invalidate the idea of any universal constants, and events would be entirely unpredictable. Since science has shown this as otherwise, we can only conclude that the universe is deterministic. In addition, randomness would contradict the conservation of energy since this law is deterministic: energy can neither be created nor destroyed -- however a random action must draw energy from nowhere.

Your faith is unwaivering ;)

You still don't seem to understand. Science produces reliable knowledge because it is the only method of finding truth which depends not on the person trying to find the truth, but on the truth itself. Athoritarian, tenatious, or aprioricious methods of fixing belief cannot distinguish between an arbitrary belief and the actual facts about reality, they are only ways in which to maintain some belief whether true or not. Religion is not a method of gaining knowledge; it is a method of keeping faith in some arbitrarily believed notion, usually something that was aprioristic in the past. Science on the other hand produces reliable facts about reality that always agree with reality, for those things that science discovers that do not agree with reality are discarded for better ones. Therefore, reliable knowledge is always increasing when using science as the method of finding truth.

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Tom Anderson - 01:27am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3543 of 3560)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

What's deterministic about quantum tunnelling? AFAIK, it just spontaneously occurs at any given moment (without depending on anything.)

You mean nothing that you know of. If it were nondeterministic, it would violate Conservation and lead to complete unpredictability in the universe, and make universal constants impossible to ever even concieve of. Certainly there is a potential that causes it.

This sounds contradictory. How can you gauge very differentiated if there's no such thing as degrees of differentiation?

I'm sorry, that does sound contradictory. What I should have said was that we tend to think of the zygote as undifferentiated because it can differentiate into anything and everything, however the zygote is actually a very differentiated cell as compared to all other cells. This is because it is producing different proteins. What we want to do during cloning is redifferentiate some bodily cell to the form of a zygote. The nuclei between vastly different cells can be the same while they are simply transcribing different genes to make different proteins. We want the cell to transcribe the genes necessary to grow an embryo.

I would prefer this than having a scientocracy (word?).

I would prefer the scientocracy, so long as it is a democratic scientocracy rather than a despotic or fascist one. Science by its nature is democratic. Authoritarian science is a paradox. And an idiotocracy is just plain idiotic, so why let the ignorant rule?

I think he's done more than this.

Thanx Noel, at least someone does.

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Tom Anderson - 01:29am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3544 of 3560)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Does this go for the Pope and religion as well? IOW, assuming anyone else understand religion less well than the Pope, would they have a right to object to his acceptance?

Nobody has the right to play thought-police. It is our First Amendment right in the U.S. Unfortunately, in the past some people have tried to do this (Inquisition). We have since become more scientific (which demands free-thought by its nature).

Frank,

NO one said a word when it was done with fetal sheep cells a year before dolly.

I think that is because it was not published in general-public newspapers, only in scientific journals that the average Joe never even heard of. This time, however, the reporters made the quick deduction that this could be used to clone humans, and the next thing you know, you have world-wide panic.

Cliff,

Would this apply to religion? Suppose there is someone who understands religion better than you. Do you have a right to object to their acceptance of same?

Like I said to Noel -- no, nobody has the right to tell others how to think. Why do you think this is relevant to me? Do you think I want to tell others how to think? I simply try to help people see their mistakes, not force thoughts on anyone. Anyone I debate with has come willing to debate with me -- unlike many rude Christians who have tried repeatedly to convert me despite my requesting that they leave me alone.

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Tom Anderson - 01:31am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3545 of 3560)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

But, of course, I know of no religion that urges "BLIND faith," but rather the emphasis is always on "acceptance of the truth."

I guess you haven't heard a Christian sermon in a while. I hear the darned things every time I flick through the channels. Read the bible in a while? I recall Martin Luther as saying that blind faith is the only way to heaven and that reason is the work of the devil. Millions of people died in the Inquisition because they did not have blind faith, and only those who admitted to having blind faith were allowed to live. Et cetera, et cetera.

I got it from Dawn.

Well, now Cliff, citing a fellow debater is not much of a source. Perhaps you could find Dawn's source. Why don't you quote the "Science" article? Regardless, though, it seems credible, so I won't doubt it unless something prompts me to.

You can call that a question if you wish.

Inquiry requires testing all previous premises for veracity. I am still skeptical of fetal cells being in the udder, and will continue to be so until I see a positive test for them.

However, his method appears to works just fine for fetal cells. I would say that this may be a fair indication that Dolly was cloned from a fetal cell.

That is a fallacy. Other experiments have no bearing on the probability of this one.

Some of these "scientists" are beginning to sound like Dan Quale.

You have no place criticizing the scientists involved. You should give them far more credit. If anyone is jumping to conclusions, it is the likes of you and Frank.

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Keith Fosberg - 08:24am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3546 of 3560)

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

Carl Nicolai - 11:53pm Feb 24, 1998 ET (#3537 of 3545),

LOL

Unfair, but funny!

Noel,

I will try again about QM since my last post on the subject was heavily influenced by somulism. :)

We have no way to predict many (actually most) discreet quantum events. This is not a result of randomness, however. This is a result of the complexity of the system and our less than perfect undrstanding of the mechanism.

Since all objective reality is the product of structure based upon the current quantum state of the universe, we have a working model for a deterministic system. Structure would not be possible in a non deterministic system.

What is very much in question now is the dertermination regarding how structure is imposed. Super-string arguments suggest that structure is imposed from "outside" via the influence of structures in a multidimensional ( (+-)10 ) space that interfaces with the vacuum as a point. Competing arguments suggest that structure is self imposing across state changes. These are both deterministic models.

All this really says in the end is that reality is deterministic. Free-will, as it is usually understood, means that sentient beings have the ability to choose their actions and beliefs. Although babel's argument is valid in so far as it shows that our actions are determined by the influence of our environment it does not rule out free-will as we are free to synthethise information without intelligent interferance.

Tom,

In following your debate with Frank I notice (or at least think I do) that a couple of vital datum are missing. 1) Are fetal cells normally present in the tissues sampled? 2) Would the "damage" a cell accumulates over time be expected to render its "copy" of the complete organism "code" invallid?

I don't think these points have been substantiated one way or the other in the debate on this board.

Anyone (hopefully someone who knows <w

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Keith Fosberg - 08:26am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3547 of 3560)

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

Should have known I was getting to windy!

The last was supposed to end with:

Anyone (hopefully someone who knows <wink>),

Does the genetic "code" contain verbatim "design specs" for the precise structure of the adult organism, or is it more comparable to a set of complex algorithms that detail how to construct an organism?

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Tom Anderson - 09:45am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3548 of 3560)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Cliff & Carl,

You have no place criticizing the scientists involved. You should give them far more credit. If anyone is jumping to conclusions, it is the likes of you and Frank.

I'm sorry, I addressed this to the wrong person. Carl, I know it was just a joke, but I don't think a personal attack on the researchers is appropriate.

Keith,

I will try again about QM... We have no way to predict many (actually most) discreet quantum events. This is not a result of randomness, however. This is a result of the complexity of the system and our less than perfect undrstanding of the mechanism... Structure would not be possible in a non deterministic system... These are both deterministic models... All this really says in the end is that reality is deterministic.

Thank you, Keith; that is what I was trying to say, but not in such effective words.

Although babel's argument is valid in so far as it shows that our actions are determined by the influence of our environment it does not rule out free-will as we are free to synthethise information without intelligent interferance.

Just because we do not have free will does not mean that we are intelligently controlled, in fact it means that we are certainly not. How is it that we are free to do anything in a deterministic universe? Can a falling tree choose not to fall? Can electrons choose not to move in a potential gradient? Can a satellite choose not to orbit? Freedom would necessitate nondeterminism, and in arguing that we do not have nondeterminism, we also cannot have freedom. This does not mean that we are controlled by some intelligent thing outside of us, it just means that there is no free-will within us. Our actions are more than determined by the influence of the environment, they are determined entirely by the environment. What is information synthesis except another complex system?

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Tom Anderson - 09:47am Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3549 of 3560)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

In following your debate with Frank I notice (or at least think I do) that a couple of vital datum are missing. 1) Are fetal cells normally present in the tissues sampled? 2) Would the "damage" a cell accumulates over time be expected to render its "copy" of the complete organism "code" invallid?

Precisely what I have been saying. 1) I have seen no proof that fetal cells are in fact present in udder tissues, but I am continually being told that they are; I can accept that it is a possibility, but I would like to see some evidence. 2) One of the major reasons Wilmut was performing the experiment was to determine whether the DNA is impaired so much that it cannot be induced to become a zygote. I have seen no evidence that DNA accumulates unreperable damage. It is Frank's argument that it does, and it is his place to try to prove it.

Does the genetic "code" contain verbatim "design specs" for the precise structure of the adult organism, or is it more comparable to a set of complex algorithms that detail how to construct an organism?

Not so much "specs" or "algorithms". DNA codons are translated into amino acid sequences which create a protein. Depending on the external environment of each cell, different genes are transcribed due to inducers and repressors. One factor of the external environment is the existance of other cells. The other cells produce proteins which tell neighboring cells what kind of cell it is and what kind they should be. This leads to differentiation of cells according to whatever cells are next to them. Each cell, then, is producing different proteins depending on what kind of cell it is and on what chemicals are interacting with its membrane from the outside. This leads to a complete organism, though not to the knowledge of any one cell. So the DNA never actually has a "plan" for an organism, it just so happens that (due to evolution) an organism results because of the proteins that it codes for.

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Frank Joyce - 12:02pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3550 of 3560)

Fetal cells in mammary tissue?

In the experiment he makes cell cultures. He describes in his procedure from producing the fetal cell line, that the fetus was euthanized by cutting its head off. and the rest chopped up and treated with trypsisn (proteolytic enzyme) to digest away the Extra cellular matrix. This means an enzyme freed the cells so they would not longer be bound by tissue. This is the standard protocol for making cultured cells.

Fetal cells are not typically in the tissue itself but are known to be in the blood stream and move through the tissue. So if Wilmut followed the protocol he did for the fetus, he then chopped up an udder, or a section of it, treated it with enzyme, washed the cells and put them into culture medum. this means that blood and possibly fetal cells would exist in the medium. Tom tries to argue around this by suggesting that the tissue was somehow sucked into a syringe or that he very carefully scraped cells without getting blood. Ifind that not very likely. If he took precautions to not have blood contamination he would not have publicly stated teh possibility of fetal cell contamination.

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Frank Joyce - 12:16pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3551 of 3577)

Question 2 of the above:

there are many factors involved in the the process of differentiation. the simple point that needs to be made is that there are genes that are required for each stage of development. If damage over time knock one or more of those genes out, then you have a problem.

Interesting thoughts on developent. and the question about DNA coding the blueprint.

Early experiments demonstrated that you can remove the egg nucleus and teh egg begins to divide. Not only that but egg activation is typical with increase in cell respiration and protein sythesis. This was later explained by the existance of maternally derived RNA's that were stored in the egg. also various othe cytoplasmic components. It was actually this combo that guided the first steps in development. Not nuclear genes at all. This was supported by the known existence of maternal effects genes and the classical genetics models that explained them. Later the RNA were cloned and sequenced and many turned out to be transcription factors. there are many other models of development taht would be great to discuss here. But its too much to be summed into a paragragh.

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Tom Anderson - 12:36pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3552 of 3577)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Noel,

"Fear can sometimes be a useful emotion. For instance, let's say you're an astronaut on the moon and you fear that your partner has been turned into Dracula. The next time he goes out for the moon pieces, wham!, you just slam the door behind him and blast off. He might call you on the radio and say he's not Dracula, but you just say, 'Think again, bat man.'"

      -- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey

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Frank Joyce - 01:45pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3553 of 3577)

Tom Anderson:

Your attempt at sayin that a cell does't age and that there is no proof is ridiculous. It's alomost as sad as trying to claim there is no proof of transposons moving.

as far as cell aging gopes it is well characterised. I would have mentiononed the telomers and telomerase that is a normal characteristic but I beleive that is reset. as far as Mutaion research goes. there have been numerous studies on the Mutatin Rates of individual genesin Somatic cells, cultured cells and germ cells. Guess what? as expected the germ cells have the lowest mutaion rate. That does make sense!

Spontaneous Mutation rates and mutation spectra are commonly reported in a periodical called Mutation research, and other periodicles as well.

I realize your a student But don't assume that because your class hasn't gotten this far that these things don't exist. Please check the literature on Mutation rates and you will find that to be true. If mutation wasn't a natural part of aging in somatic cells we all would have to worry less about cancer.

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Bob Janitor - 03:42pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3554 of 3577)

I realize your a student But don't assume that because your class hasn't gotten this far that these things don't exist. Please check the literature on Mutation rates

The classic Frank Joyce's "you idiot, read a book" any time someone makes a valid point.

and you will find that to be true. If mutation wasn't a natural part of aging in somatic cells we all would have to worry less about cancer.

I suppose you're not aware that animals capable of regeneration (regeneration defined here as cells dedifferentiating, moving to the area of damage and redifferentiating and become another type of cell) don't get cancer?

Did you know that lizards don't get cancer in their tails?

Have you ever heard of tooth cancer in humans? There's tongue cancer, lip cancer and gum cancer. But we can regenerate our teeth.

So tell me, Frank, exactly what is it that allows cells to dedifferentiate and redifferentiate into new types of cells? According to you, that would not be possible because of the mutations and genetic damage.

And tell me, Frank, exactly what is the link between cancer and regeneration?

And what are your credentials?

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Tom Anderson - 04:08pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3555 of 3577)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

Your attempt at sayin that a cell does't age and that there is no proof is ridiculous. It's alomost as sad as trying to claim there is no proof of transposons moving.

It is apparent that you do not have much experience in logic, so I should tell you that applying an emotion to the conclusion of an argument is not a valid counter-argument. You must provide a valid argument to be taken seriously.

as far as cell aging... That does make sense!

Aprioricity.

I realize your a student...

Ad hominem, fallacy of division, generalization, and red herring.

If mutation wasn't a natural part of aging in somatic cells we all would have to worry less about cancer.

So you're saying that, since we worry about cancer, mutation is a natural part of cell aging? Argumentum ad populum, non sequitur, affirmation of consequent, non causa pro causa, ignoratio elenchi, and ad hoc.

If you ever think of a valid, non-fallacious argument, I'd be glad to hear it.

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Frank Joyce - 07:01pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3556 of 3577)

Tom Anderson:

Nothing youy have said has diprovaen any of the Mutatin research that has been done. The reason I brought trransposons in this argument is that it makes a good analogy. Because you did not know aboutthem you assumed it hadn't been proven. I'm sure if you take the time to look it up you'll find many transposonshave been cloned and sequenced along with their respective TRANSPOSASES which are the enzymes responsible fro theeir excision and insertion. I beleive these enzymes are also commercially available now.

When it comes to cell aging again because you are not familiar eith the literature on Mutatin rates and mutation spectra in somatic, germ an cultured cells you assume it has not been proven.

finally No amount of your personal attacks are going to change the fact that you didn't bother to read and find this out for yourself. try Looking up mutatin rates and spectra for TK, APRT, HPRT represent rates that have been measured by many different investigators and again provide a classic model for mutation research.

Again no matter how many personal attacks you make you still can't disprove either transposition or Mutation research and thats where your argments are flawed.

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Frank Joyce - 07:02pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3557 of 3577)

Bob janitor:

here is a classic example of one of your arguments.

Lizards aren't mammals so it is irrelevant

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Frank Joyce - 07:06pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3558 of 3577)

tom anderson:

Does it make sense to you that in order for you to make your point you have to prove that transposons don't transpose and that cells don't aqcuire more mutations as they age? Both are well characterized by investigation in many labs with many publications. Do you really think your going to disproove very large areas of research just to make you point?

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Frank Joyce - 07:25pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3559 of 3577)

Bob Janitor:

the link is not between cancer and regenration. It is between cancer and acquiring Mutations. In specific mutations in genes such as p53 which is a known tumor supressor. In fact the general community should have heard of that protein because it made the cover of newsweek a while back. they heralded it as Molecule of the year.

One of the reasons there is an abundance of mutation research both rate an spectra Is because many genes need to be either turned on or off as a cancer progresses.

Mutational spectra research also allows us to characterise the types and locations of mutatins that occur both spontaneously and are chemically induced. It was beleived fro a long time that Mutation spectra would act like a fingerprint and allow people to verify that a cancer was indeed cause by exposure to a particular carcinogen.

All of this is why there is an abundance of information on Mutation rates and aging in a cell.

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Frank Joyce - 07:38pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3560 of 3577)

Bob janitor:

In regards to tooth cancer:

Hey Have you ever heard of Breast cancer? Do you think it is similar when it happens in sheep?

Ever hear of a sheep's udder regenerating after it has beek hacked off?

How about a woman after she's had a mastectomy? does her boob regenerate?

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Bob Janitor - 09:18pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3561 of 3577)

Lizards aren't mammals so it is irrelevant

I would never make that comment because it is so clearly illogical... however, my others were not.

the link is not between cancer and regenration.

Then why can't a lizard get cancer in its tail, but in the rest of its body, or a human in the tooth?

Your logic and assumptions fall apart.

How about a woman after she's had a mastectomy? does her boob regenerate?

That was an extrememly immature comment, especially when taken with your personal insults and lack of logic.

Breast tissue does not regenerate.

And now you're saying sheep's udders regenerate? Give me a break.

You also failed to specify your credentials.

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Frank Joyce - 09:32pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3562 of 3577)

Bob Janitor:

- 09:18pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3561 of 3561)

Lizards aren't mammals so it is irrelevant

I would never make that comment because it is so clearly illogical... however, my others were not.

That's the exact statement of logic you made when You stated that drosophila was irrelevant to the discussion because it is a fly. You did it again when i mentioned plant tissue culture.

anyway keep making attacks cause you still haven't disproved any points I'v e made

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Frank Joyce - 09:39pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3563 of 3577)

Open question for everyone:

Fertility clinics are extremely careful with the way they handle both sperm and eggs when they do invitro fertilization. in particular they try to keep them out of light and direct contact with air (an oxidative environment). These represent two conditions that are not naturally present during in vivo fertilization.Actually they are conditions that eggs and sperm are protected from during gametogenesis as well. Why do they do this? and how does it affect the potential baby?

If you know the answer tehn try this one.

If Wilmut had taken as much precaution with teh cells he generated to be used in nuclear transplant, Would he have greater or lesser success? Why?

does anyone find this an easier model to understand?

Now for t

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Bob Janitor - 09:40pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3564 of 3577)

anyway keep making attacks cause you still haven't disproved any points I've made

Tom and I have disproven every point you've made, you just don't realize it because you're too busy throwing a temper tantrum and insulting us.

Don't you think the fact that A) Wilmut cloned a sheep from a differentiated cell, with a 99.99% probability, B) someone else cloned two cows and C) cells regularily de-/redifferentiate into another type of cell without loss from mutation that you keep whining about might just help prove your illogical statements to be wrong?

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Frank Joyce - 09:47pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3565 of 3577)

the point about the breast is that neither an udder or human breast regenerates, they both get cancer, and finally Wilmut used udder cells.

Sorry that was too difficult to understand

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Frank Joyce - 10:00pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3566 of 3577)

Bob Janitor:

tom recently stated that he is now understanding from other sources that fetal cells would have been present.

No you have never proven your point or disproven any of mine. you two had a temper tantrum when I first came in here because I had somehow Blasphemed ("defrauded") your God (Wilmut).

Once again did you or did you not make the statement about drosophila been irrelevant because it is a fly? I can alwasy go back and copy/past your statements.

Try answering my open question and see how it only proves my points again!

BTW as Carl had stated No there has not been any other cows cloned!!

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Frank Joyce - 10:18pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3567 of 3577)

Bob Janitor:

fail to specify my credentials. I stated them before when you tried to claim I was getting all my arguments from a CD-rom. then you two went balistic about me being arrogant because I stated my credentials. You tried to argue that crendentials have nothing to do with it.

anyway i have my B.S. in cell and molecular biology. I am currently at candidacy for a PhD in molecular genetics. I have done an enourmous amount of lab work Which includes transformations of: bacteria, Yeast, aspergillus, Tomatoes, tobacco and human lymphoblasts. DNA work: PCR RT-PCR, PCR-SSCP, DGGE, Sequencing, Northerns, southerns, Primner extension. cDNA library construction. Construction of complimentation groups.

Proteins : SDS- PAGE, Native gels. ELISA, Immunohistochemistry. Native enzyme assay.

Cell culture human lymphoblastoid cells. Mouse NIH 3t3 cells, Just about any plant you can name, several types of fungi including yeast. and several types of bacteria.

Oh and HPLC. MOst the other stuff is more chemistry related. But I do have quite a lot of experience. I could list much more

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Frank Joyce - 10:20pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3568 of 3577)

BTW I have also taught college level biology and introductory genetics. As well as lab classes that go over both plant and animal cell culture

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Carl Nicolai - 10:54pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3569 of 3577)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Sorry about my last post. I feel totally duped by my acceptance of this half baked idea of cell differentation. Looking up the word here is what I find: 1. the act or process of differentating 2. development from the one to the many 3. a. modification of body parts for performance of particular functions b. the sum of the processes whereby indifferent cells, tissues, and structures attain their adult form and function

Now the true problem starts to emmerge. I, like everyone else, have been using a word that has such vagueness associated with it that strict logical thinking can not be applied.

Lets look at some of the things we can measure about cells.

Size; Metabolic rate; Age; Production of protens and other specific chemicals, electrical signals, or cells and antibodies; Longevity and reproductive rate; Sustability to heat, cold, and toxins; Ability to detect physical phenomenon;

We should to be able to use these and other measurable qualities of cells to construct a value associated with what we call differentation. At least we should be able to rank cells.

One of the questions I have about the people that are trying to clone animals is are they acting primarily as scientists or technicians?

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Frank Joyce - 11:17pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3570 of 3577)

Cliff.

To answer the question, its both. Wilmuts attempt at cloning was to finish off what John Gurdon proved over 10 years ago. He cloned frogs but didn't bother to take them past tadpole stage. the question being solved at the time was wether or not differentiation occured via gene loss or selective gene activation/deactivation. In other words, does each cell have a full deck of chromosomes. The answer is basically yes they do have the full compliment of genes. Wilmut just wanted to prove that you can go beyond just the juvenile stage which is where Gurdon left off.

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Frank Joyce - 11:20pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3571 of 3577)

Cliff:

Nuclear transfer is the product of many researchers. Wilmut cites a paper from 1983 as one of the earliest.

Nuclear transfer will now be used as a tool by both researches and techs to answer many questions and create many new things.

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Tom Anderson - 11:47pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3572 of 3577)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

No amount of your personal attacks...

I am not the one making personal attacks. I only attack your arguments, because they are wrong; I'm sorry if that upsets you.

Does it make sense to you that in order for you to make your point you have to prove that transposons don't transpose and that cells don't aqcuire more mutations as they age? Both are well characterized by investigation in many labs with many publications. Do you really think your going to disproove very large areas of research just to make you point?

No, you are somehow confused. My point is that Wilmut did not defraud his results and that Dolly is probably not the result of a fetal cell nuclear transfer. Your points change every post, so I don't know what you are trying to prove anymore. Perhaps you could say something that is relevant to your argument so that I might follow.

All of this is why there is an abundance of information on Mutation rates and aging in a cell.

Perhaps you would like to somehow link this back to your allegation that Dolly is a fraud.

the point about the breast is that neither an udder or human breast regenerates, they both get cancer, and finally Wilmut used udder cells.

That was the point of the experiment.

BTW I have also taught college level biology and introductory genetics. As well as lab classes that go over both plant and animal cell culture

But you cannot hold an argument. Try attending a logic course.

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Tom Anderson - 11:49pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3573 of 3577)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Carl,

We should to be able to use these and other measurable qualities of cells to construct a value associated with what we call differentation. At least we should be able to rank cells.

Rank cells from what basis point? Differentiation must be specified as being relative to some other cell.

One of the questions I have about the people that are trying to clone animals is are they acting primarily as scientists or technicians?

I would say that the people from Roslin are scientists and the people from PPL Therapeudics are technicians. What's your point?

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Cliff Beall - 11:50pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3574 of 3577)

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

Very good. Now suppose a laboratory reports, based on an experiment, that if you do certain things, certain results occur. Since this is a scientific experiment, the results of the experiment should hold for a second laboratory, assuming, of course, that the second laboratory performs the experiment correctly. Wilmut performed an experiment and obtained a result. He published his method and his findings. Other laboratories have since attempted to re-create the experiment, but have been unable to duplicate his results. What conclusions can we draw from that?

In other words, you might, with some justification, question the original experiment described above. Is that correct?

This certainly sounds like a high minded goal. I think I will keep it in mind for myself.

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Cliff Beall - 11:52pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3575 of 3577)

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

I would like to know when Dr. King was supposed to have said that reason is the work of the devil. First of all, I don't believe it. Second, I think that coupling the work of Dr. King with the Inquisition is slander of the vilest kind. Third, I think you have some explaining to do. Even if you can substantiate the above statement as having been made by Dr. King, which I seriously doubt because it doesn't sound to me like something Dr. King would say, I think you owe an apology to the memory of Dr. King, and to all of us who hold the memory of Dr. King in high regard, for coupling this great man of peace with the Inquisition, in any case.

In this case, I did not cite Dawn as a source. I merely answered your question. You asked where I go the information. I told you. However, to make sure I had quoted Dawn correctly, I looked up the post. And since I had it in front of me, I decided to quote it directly for your benefit. For the record, I would not hesitate to cite Dawn as a source. As a reputable biologist, I consider her to be an excellent source of information on biology. For you to suggest that Dawn is "not much of a source," is downright ridiculous.

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Cliff Beall - 11:54pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3576 of 3577)

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

It is also interesting that you suggest that I cite the source she referenced. To suggest that I do such a thing is rather silly, I think, because the source she cited is a technical journal to which I do not have access. It is not on the neighborhood newsstand in my town. And, anyway, I would not know what to make of the technical lingo it contains if I had it. As a non-scientist, Discover and Scientific American are much more on my level.

I thought you said: "Science on the other hand produces reliable facts about reality that always agree with reality..." Sorry, I guess I must have misunderstood.

Maybe. But there are a lot of things that are unfair. If Wilmut does not have the data to back up his experiment (and I do not know this for a fact, but it does appear that way), I think he is deserving of some criticism. Scientists should be held to higher standard, with respect to these kind of details, than the average person. It is the nature of their job.

Do you accept "Basic and Clinical Immunology" by Stites and Terr, that Dawn referenced in her Feb 9 post?

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Bob Janitor - 11:54pm Feb 25, 1998 ET (#3577 of 3577)

the point about the breast is that neither an udder or human breast regenerates, they both get cancer, and finally Wilmut used udder cells.

Exactly. The point is, they get cancer, and they don't regenerate. I asked you for an explanation, I'm sorry you didn't understand it.

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Bill Perez - 12:52am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3578 of 3584)

Cliff: I would like to know when Dr. King was supposed to have said that reason is the work of the devil. First of all, I don't believe it. Second, I think that coupling the work of Dr. King with the Inquisition is slander of the vilest kind. Third, I think you have some explaining to do. Even if you can substantiate the above statement as having been made by Dr. King, which I seriously doubt because it doesn't sound to me like something Dr. King would say, I think you owe an apology to the memory of Dr. King, and to all of us who hold the memory of Dr. King in high regard, for coupling this great man of peace with the Inquisition, in any case.

You're funny. I think Tom Anderson was referring to Martin Luther not Martin Luther King, Jr. Perhaps you've heard of Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century firebrand cleric who ignited the Protestant Reformation? Martin Luther was a seriously intolerant fellow--endorsing the killing of witches, the persecution of Jews, the torture and execution of anabaptists, and Calvin's treacherous torture and murder of Michael Servetus, a "heretic" on the run from the Inquisition whose unspeakable crime was to suppose that God was love. And Luther was indeed suspicious of reason, observation, or any other activity that would attempt to eclipse faith. The Lutheran Church is named after Martin Luther, its founder, although Lutherans tend not to indulge in any of Luther's more despicable ideologies these days.

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Frank Joyce - 12:54am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3579 of 3584)

My origional post said I thugh ti was hillarious that peoplemande a big dela out of dolly. Why beacuasse the knowledge and techology had been around for over 15 yrs. I though it was even more funny that there were shadows cast over dolly.

I argued that the presence of fetal cells were significant! you said insignificant but can't rpove ewither way. Mostly youo continued to claim they weren't there but now you retract and say you find they are present

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Cliff Beall - 12:56am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3580 of 3584)

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

Bob, I don't know what Frank's point is. He seems to move around a bit. I think I understand what you and Tom are saying, but I tend to disagree. Specifically, at this point, I would disagree with your A if you mean an adult somatic cell. As for B, it has not yet been done, and if one of those cow do eventually drop a healthy calf, it will be by a different method. Wilmut's method does not appear to work. (It can not be duplicated.) I have no opinion on C. I don't know if it is true or not, or to what extent it is true.

Tom, this is a reversal of logic. You are making the cause the effect and the effect the cause. It does not compute:-)

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Frank Joyce - 12:59am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3581 of 3584)

Statements I've made that have not been proven wrong

as cells age they acquire more mutations. Literature supports this! tom argues against. and is wrong !1st claiming no proof and denies the proof of transposition

Germ cells have greater protection than somatic cells as far as DNA is concerned. Literature supports this. tom argues against and is wrong.

Younger less differentiated cells are Easier to clone than older differentiated cells. Tom said that's stating the obvious.

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Frank Joyce - 01:03am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3582 of 3584)

I stated several times that it is not the ability to reprogram adult cells but simply that older cells experience Aging ( shortening of telomeres and acquiring mutations), which is documented. Tom says no such thing as aging.

DNA repair is linked to transcription Tom so no yet it is again published data

DNA repair is coupled with replication Tom says no Yet it is published data

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Frank Joyce - 01:05am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3583 of 3584)

I have stated several times that CLONING adult cells is possible just difficult for the above reasons. Tom says no such thing as the above reasons he's disproved them all.

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Cliff Beall - 01:06am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3584 of 3584)

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

Oh my God. Bill, thanks for straightening me out. I was not trying to be funny. My apologies Tom. I should have know better then that, but somehow I got it into my head. That was dumb. I am truly sorry.

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Frank Joyce - 01:09am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3585 of 3588)

I stated that in culture, different cells divide at differet rates and "come up " at different rates. So depending on how many times the culture was split It would be easy to produce a cell line of teh fastest dividing cells. AKA an artifactual selection

Without the donor ewe and its biological lamb you cannot determine wether or not Dolly came from adult or fetal cells.

Dolly can only be proven true through repeating the experiment. Everyone agrees.

So again nothing I have said has been proven wrong

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Frank Joyce - 01:11am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3586 of 3588)

Bob Janitor

Now that you have both Toms and my credentials. How 'bout yours?

BTW you never got back to me about your statement. you know the one where you claimed drosophila was not relevant because it is a fly.

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Frank Joyce - 01:24am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3587 of 3588)

Cliff beal:

My point is. I started with a statement that I found it funny people made a big deal over dolly. agian I thought it was funny because it is "old news" Nuclear transfer and cloning had already been around more thatn 10 yrs. then when I heard the news about doubts over dolly I thought it was hillarious that she was a " fraud". Because of the above reasons. BOB couldn't accept this and went on an attack. He anfd tom continued to confuse the simple yet very published data that older cells acquire many mutations. making them difficult to clone. they confused this with teh process of differentiation. and continued to argue something we both agreed on. That cells can be reprogrammed. In doing so they continued to try to prove that many things that are known such as the older a cell gets the more mutation it gets was some sort of fiction. That transposable elements haven't been proved to do anything but methylate.

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Frank Joyce - 01:29am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3588 of 3588)

Cliff: cont

Basically they were making the mistake of claiming several known things about bioloy either didn't exist or were not proven yet although they had been. Because they were upset at my origional statement and could not see the humour in it. They immediately took it way too seriously and began with a lot of arrogant attacks. So several times I've stated over and over and over again. I beleive that adult cells can be cloned but are more difficult becuase of problems that exist outside of differentiation and dedifferenttiation. So they claim those problems don't exist becuase aging doesn't exist. and mutations don't happen in somatic cells over time.

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Tom Anderson - 02:23am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3589 of 3621)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Cliff,

He published his method and his findings. Other laboratories have since attempted to re-create the experiment, but have been unable to duplicate his results. What conclusions can we draw from that?

Nothing yet. How many others have tried? I haven't heard of any other attempts to recreate this exact experiment. If several fail, you must be very skeptical. Then it would be prudent to seriously look for possible error. However, it is still very early -- someone could repeat the results next week. Now is not a time to be so doubtful as to attack the work, only question it and try to reproduce it, and it is never acceptable to attack the researchers themselves.

In other words, you might, with some justification, question the original experiment described above. Is that correct?

Given justification, absolutely.

I would like to know when Dr. King was supposed to have said that reason is the work of the devil.

Who said anything about a Dr. King?

For you to suggest that Dawn is "not much of a source," is downright ridiculous.

As she is involved in the discussion, she is not an objective source, she is biased. Besides, I don't believe that she is an expert in this matter since she was not on the research team.

It is also interesting that you suggest that I cite the source she referenced. To suggest that I do such a thing is rather silly, I think, because the source she cited is a technical journal to which I do not have access.

I just want to be certain that the information is reliable. A second-hand account of another second-hand account of yet another second-hand account does not for a reliable source make.

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Tom Anderson - 02:25am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3590 of 3621)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

I thought you said: "Science on the other hand produces reliable facts about reality that always agree with reality..." Sorry, I guess I must have misunderstood.

The experiment cited has nothing to do with the one we are discussing.

Do you accept "Basic and Clinical Immunology" by Stites and Terr, that Dawn referenced in her Feb 9 post?

No. First of all, I do not have access to it. Second of all, I doubt it has a statistical analysis of the proportion of fetal cells in a sheep udder, if any. Finally, I still fail to see how the fetal cells can pass through a two cell thick membrane. However, if experts are saying that there is a probability, I will take their word for it, but with doubts.

Bill,

Quite right.

Frank,

I argued that the presence of fetal cells were significant! you said insignificant but can't rpove ewither way. Mostly youo continued to claim they weren't there but now you retract and say you find they are present

Now you are changing both your arguments and my arguments too?

Cliff,

I would disagree with your A if you mean an adult somatic cell.

By volume, there is a 99% chance that Dolly's cell was an adult somatic cell.

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Tom Anderson - 02:28am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3591 of 3621)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Tom, this is a reversal of logic. You are making the cause the effect and the effect the cause.

You're right, I misstated it; but the point I made is correct because I was thinking it the right way, I just wrote it backward. The point is, this is not a valid argument. Let me go through it in more detail to straighten it out.

"If mutation wasn't a natural part of aging in somatic cells we all would have to worry less about cancer." can first be equivalently rephrased by distributing the negative to form an explanation from the original conditional statement so that this results: "Because mutation is a natural part of the aging in somatic cells, we all have to worry more about cancer." Do you see that these are the same?

If a statement is made "A because of B", in order to be an argument it must be able to be rephrased "B therefore A", otherwise it is an explanation an not an argument. An argument can always be rephrased in this fashion. So, we can then equivalently rephrase the statement again as follows: "Mutation is a natural part of the aging in somatic cells therefore we all have to worry more about cancer." Do you see how this is still the same statement?

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Tom Anderson - 02:28am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3592 of 3621)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Now let me point out the fallacies. First, Frank was trying to prove that mutation occurs because people worry; this is an argumentum ad populum fallacy because it is appealing to the emotions of a large group of people rather than a statement of fact. Since it was stated in the form of an explanation (disguised as a conditional), it is an example of an ad hoc fallacy. After the rephrasing, it is now apparent that even his attempt at proof is wrong since he is actually assuming what he was trying to prove is true and that his premise is the result; this is in fact a circulus in demonstrando fallacy (going in circles). Since the premise does not have anything to do with the conclusion, this is a non sequitur fallacy. Frank is trying to say that mutations imply people worry about cancer, and since people worry about cancer is true, therefore mutations are true; this is an affirmation of consequent fallacy. Since mutations have not actually been shown to be the source of cancer worrying, this is also a non causa pro causa fallacy. And since he claims that worrying is somehow linked to mutations, when actually the one cannot be shown to follow from the other, it is a ignoratio elenchi fallacy. Overall, it is just a very, very bad argument (and not even an argument, but a statement).

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Tom Anderson - 02:33am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3593 of 3621)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

as cells age they acquire more mutations... Germ cells have greater protection than somatic cells... Younger less differentiated cells are Easier to clone than older differentiated cells... I stated several times that it is not the ability to reprogram adult cells but simply that older cells experience Aging... DNA repair is linked to transcription... DNA repair is coupled with replication...

These are all red herrings. They do not relate to the argument. And your statement of my arguments against all of them is false, only arguments against your arguments have I made and arguments against some of these things or the provability of them. Please try to stick to the subject at hand instead of going out on irrelevant tangents.

I have stated several times that CLONING adult cells is possible just difficult for the above reasons.

No, you said that Dolly is necessarily the result of a fetal nuclear transfer and cannot be that of an adult.

Tom says no such thing as the above reasons he's disproved them all.

I never claimed to disprove anything but your wild assumptions about things which you cannot know.

Cliff,

My apologies Tom. I should have know better then that, but somehow I got it into my head. That was dumb. I am truly sorry.

Easy enough mistake to make, I guess; but I thought you knew me better than that. I also thought you would be more familiar with the man.

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Tom Anderson - 02:34am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3594 of 3621)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Frank,

I stated that in culture, different cells divide at differet rates and "come up " at different rates. So depending on how many times the culture was split It would be easy to produce a cell line of teh fastest dividing cells.

No matter. It is still a function of the initial sampling, which is a function of the relative volume. You must have at least some background in probability, don't you? The probability of B due to A is the is the probability of their intersection divided by the probability of A. And the probability of any outcome is the product of the probabilities of the events that lead to that outcome. So, the probability of selecting a fetal cell due to multiplying it in a culture due to the selection of it from the udder -- assuming culturing produces a 90% chance of selecting the fetal cell -- is (0.01)(0.90) = 0.009, or a 0.9% chance that Dolly resulted from a fetal cell. And that is with the generous figure of 90% growth factor over somatic cells. So, again, you are wrong; Dolly is most likely (99.1% chance) what she was originally claimed -- the clone of an adult somatic cell.

nothing I have said has been proven wrong

No, actually all of your ridiculous assumptions have been proven wrong. You've only stated a very few facts, and they do not support your arguments.

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Frank Joyce - 02:44am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3595 of 3621)

Tom anderson:

I can't beleive how stupid you are being!!

First of all I didn't change your opinion on any of the statements. you stated first that fetal cells were not present and tried to argue that they woulnd't be present. Some onne later ask if they were present in udders and you lately stated that you are learning from other sources this is true.

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Frank Joyce - 02:50am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3596 of 3621)

Tom anderson:

We have both already agreed that the only way for Wilmut to get out of this mess is to redo his experiments. WE went on to a new argument after that. In which I stated that adult cells are easier to clone.

all of those argumetns you then attacked so now I will ask individulaly about the statements you have argued against so you can state your true opinions

1 do cells acquire more mutations as they age?

2 are germ cells protected from damage more than somatic?

3 Has it been proven that transposons remove and reinsert into new locations inthe genome?

4. Will a cell that has lots of mutations be less likely to produce normal embryos than less damaged cells?

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Tom Anderson - 02:52am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3597 of 3621)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

And, to defend Bob's quote of 99.99% for a second, lets play with more reasonable numbers. Let us assume that 0.5% of cells in the udder are fetal cells, as Wilmut alludes. Then, let us assume that fetal cells grow 10% faster than somatic cells. Now the probability of selecting a fetal cell is (0.005)(0.1) = 0.0005 = 0.05% chance. This means that there is a 99.95% chance that Dolly is the clone of an adult somatic cell. Or let us assume that fetal cells account for 0.25% of cells in the udder, and that fetal cells grow 5% faster than somatic cells; then there is a 99.99% chance that Dolly is the clone of an adult somatic cell. If you happen to have the exact distribution of fetal cells in the udder and the exact ratio of cell growth rates, then we can come to a more reliable estimate, but the fact remains that it is very close to a 100%.

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Frank Joyce - 02:53am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3598 of 3621)

the reason I stae this is that after we had agreed several times about dolly can't be proven either way wihtout redoing experiments you then started an argument that mutations have nothing to do with differentiation. I have tried to tell you no they don't. tehy just make it more difficult to produce normal offspring and that has nothing to do with differentiation!! But your ego won't handle that. Instead you've tried to explain away entire fields of biology rather than say that your wrong.

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Frank Joyce - 02:58am Feb 26, 1998 ET (#3599 of 3621)

Finally. we don't know how many cells were present or there rates of division. We don't even know if the mother can be determined genetically from the biological daughter using the four markers. htus at this point that is all speculation. again stuff we agreed upon will only be determined by redoing the experiment. Again after that you started up with trying to prove that aging has nothing to do with differentiation. If you would have listen ages ago you would have heard me state this over and over again. Once again you tried to prove that aging doesn't exist and that transposons don't excise