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Rachelle Erickson - 03:54am Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4100 of 4102) (deleted, presumably by CNN)

God you people are stupid! I didn't realize that total idiots posted on this board! None of people even know what cloning is! Anyone who would the oxymoronic phrase "human-animal cloning" hasn't the foggiest idea what cloning is. The fact that the separation of so-called "conjoined twins" is an example of human cloning is not an analogy you fool! If someone said that one type of cloning was cloning by nuclear transfer, would you say, "I think you may be stretching the analogy a tad here?" What analogy? What the hell are you talking about?

The idea of being against human cloning because of the success rate doesn't make any sense. First of all, let's say hypothetically, 227 human clone embryos would die for every one that lived to term. Considering that there are two million abortions that occur every single year in the United States alone, that's not even worthy of mention. Even the most die hard obsessed pro-life advocate would be more concerned about two million healthy human fetuses being delibrately every single year in the United States alone than they would about 227 human embryos that died naturally due to severe birth defects. Second of all, the low success rate only exists in the very beginning when you are in the process of figuring out how to do it. After, you achieve it, the success rate is much higher. Guess what. You don't need to use humans when you're in the process of figuring out how to do human cloning. Humans and chimps are 98% genetically identical, and therefore obviously be cloned in an indentical way. You can use chimps when you're going through the low success rate period of figuring out how to do it, and then afterwards use humans. That's what I would do if I was in charge of a human cloning research center. Besides, as I said, if 227 human embroys died naturally from severe birth defects, how could anyone care about that when two million healthy human fetuses are delibrately killed every single year in the United States alone.

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Carl Nicolai - 04:41am Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4101 of 4102)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref. Rachelle Erickson - (#4100 of 4100)

God you people are stupid! I didn't realize that total idiots posted on this board! None of people even know what cloning is! Anyone who would [use] the oxymoronic phrase "human-animal cloning" hasn't the foggiest idea what cloning is. The fact that the separation of so-called "conjoined twins" is an example of human cloning is not an analogy you fool! If someone said that one type of cloning was cloning by nuclear transfer, would you say, "I think you may be stretching the analogy a tad here?" What analogy? What the hell are you talking about?

I'm glad you dropped by. It seems to be difficult to find the correct words and a lot of people become confused.

For instance I can't seem to figure out what is the difference between transgenic and chimera? What do you call the single cell that is the product of neuclar transfer? Zygote dosent seem right. Heck it's not even a complete clone.

What do you call a mosaic created by conjoining two nuclear transplant cells to form a single complete blastosyst. What if the neucli are clones but the cytoplasm comes from different eggs? What is it called if the cytoplasm comes from different species? If the nuceli from a third species?

Besides, as I said, if 227 human embroys died naturally from severe birth defects, how could anyone care about that when two million healthy human fetuses are delibrately killed every single year in the United States alone.

I think that most people would have a great deal of trouble dealing with what happens if they live.

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Carl Nicolai - 04:46am Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4102 of 4102)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Well I guess it's time for Unkle Karl's Korner.

So I'm rereading throuth the commission report on cloning and it hits me. Woa! These people are telling me how nuclear transfer is done. So I flip to the back and there are all the revelent refrences. Boping into the CNN links I get tutorials, and lab manuals, instructions if you will. How to clone. Far Out! Sounds like a lot more fun than making drugs or atomic bombs. And it is not even illegal yet.

It kind or remindes me of the story of what one grape producer did during prohibition. They put out barrels of grape juice labeled thusly:

WARNING This is pure Concord grape juice. DO NOT store at 47 Deg. for 6 months or it will become wine.

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Dawn Willis - 02:17pm Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4103 of 4104)

Rachelle, if you had been around this board longer, you would realize that most of the contributors are actually very intelligent.

I think the 97-98% genetic similarity between human and ape is being mis-interpreted. It does NOT mean that 98% of the individual genes are the same. Only a few changes in the sequence can make a big difference, and hardly any genes are exactly alike. As for what makes humans human (aside from physical appearance), it is primarily in the cerebral cortex..in my opinion. It isn't likely we will be putting human brains into whatever chimeras are created.

Carl: Transgenics are created when genes from one species are put in another, and this has been going on in research (human genes, too) for a long time. Chimeras and mosaics, I believe, are the same thing--fusing embryonic cells of one organism with those of another before the formation of a blastocyst--so far the same or closely related species is all that works. There are some ideas floating around about doing this at a later time in development, e.g., putting human fetal liver cells into a pig embryo, but this is still on the drawing board and if the Rifkin patent is approved will remain there for a while. I don't know what the "zygote" formed from nuclear transplant is called. It's a new creation, and will have to have a new name.

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Dawn Willis - 02:35pm Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4104 of 4104)

Cliff, you might be interested to learn that the BRCA1 gene sequence was first published by Mark Scolnick at the U. of Utah and Myriad Genetics in 1994. However, in his rush to get there first, Scolnick apparently got it wrong in about seven places (at least this is what Pat Murphy of Oncormed says). For whatever reason, I don't think Myriad patented their sequence, although they have patented the diagnostic technique that they use to sequence patient samples. It's an interesting situation--I'll learn more about it at a conference I will attend in late June.

I saw a title in last Friday's New England Journal of Medicine that scleroderma (an autoimmune skin disease much more common in women than men) might be due to fetal cells remaining in the mother. I'll read it tomorrow to see if any kind of calculations are given about #'s of fetal cells, etc. I'm glad Dolly is a mom, but the questions about her origin still haven't been satisfactorily answered. Where are those three calves cloned by the "Dolly technique" mentioned in the CNN article? "Calves" implies live births--where are they, and where is the publication documenting their parentage?

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Cliff Beall - 07:26pm Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4105 of 4110)

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

Yes that is true. I have also said that I am not opposed to abortion of a fetus having birth defects. It is the abortion of healthy fetuses that I generally oppose. At the same time, I am not sure I would subscribe to a procedure for which it can be predicted that a large number of abortions is likely to be required in order to obtain one, possibly healthy, offspring. Personally, I do not see it as an easy call. I suggest the procedure be perfected in animals before it is tried with humans.

Yes that is true. Except for one thing. With respect to humans, I think it is the parents, generally the mother, who decides, not the scientist or doctor. I think this may throw a wild card into the equation.

I was not aware that any specific number has been specified publicly, but I got the impression it was considerably more than two. My recollection is, according to the article in the Seattle Times, Dr. Wilmut's indicated that about 60 percent of the fetuses died before birth, and a significant portion died, after being born, of severe abnormalities, including heart, lung or genito-urinary-tract abnormalities. If you have other information, I would be interested. I don't know the success rate of detecting heart, lung and genito-urinary-tract abnormalities in the unborn fetus.

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Cliff Beall - 07:29pm Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4106 of 4110)

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

Very true. But this is a subject that truly has the potential of an explosion. Yeah, you might be right about the clone wars, after all.

My my, Rachelle, honey, this comes dangerously close to a personal attack:-)

I think it does. Leaping into human cloning at this time is, I think, absurd. When the process is perfected in animals, I will support human cloning trials. Until then, I do not and will not. And no amount of bombast and insults from you or anyone else will change my mind.

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Cliff Beall - 07:30pm Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4107 of 4110)

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

My my. And since when did you become an expert on "die hard obsessed pro-life advocates"? Funny, but I have this notion that "die hard obsessed pro-life advocates" will probably prefer to speak for themselves.

This assumes it is actually possible, and that the success rate will, one day, be higher. So far, assuming Dolly actually was cloned from an adult somatic cell, which has not been firmly established, so far as I know, it has not yet been proven that the Dolly experiment can be repeated even once. Furthermore, for technical reasons, it is expected that human cloning will be more difficult than sheep or cattle cloning. Even after nuclear transfer is perfected in sheep and cattle, assuming that it is perfected at some point, it is likely that there will be significant hurdles to overcome when transferring the procedure to humans. Your insults aside, the problem is not trivial.

Shall we keep it that way?

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Cliff Beall - 07:32pm Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4108 of 4110)

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

It is not a human cloning center until you start cloning humans, honey.

Oh, I get it! Two wrongs do make a right. My, what words of wisdom! Spread the word.

Its free speech, Carl. I think we both support freedom of expression. I understand you can get instruction for drugs or atomic bombs on the web too, legal or not. Making cloning illegal won't change that. The wine story was neat, a good laugh.

Actually, I think it is clear that Rachelle is quite intelligent also. That she made a fool of herself with the personal attack is regrettable, but not irreversible. If she were to straighten up and act a little more civil, I think I might enjoy conversing with her. I think she has something to offer.

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Cliff Beall - 07:34pm Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4109 of 4110)

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

Understood. But I guess the question now is: what does 97-98% genetic similarity mean, and is this assertion--which we have all heard--actually valid? That is just a rhetorical question, of course. But I do have a real question. Was my answer to Terri's questions reasonable close? I almost decided against posting it after I had written it, but I did posted it anyway, and wonder how close I came to being correct. Would you do me the favor of a critique? You don't have to worry about my feelings. I want to know.

BTW, thanks for the answers to Carl's questions.

Yes, that was a point of confusion for me. One of the articles I visited on the net referred to a patent application by Myriad Genetics for the BRCA1 gene, and that Scolnick had been given credit for being one of the "inventors" of the "discovery." However, I assumed that Myriad Genetics must have changed their name to Oncormed, which made some sense, since such things do happen. Come to think of it, I think I may be more confused than ever:-)

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Cliff Beall - 07:55pm Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4110 of 4110)

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

It does look peculiar, does it not? But the thing I am most interested in is the results of tests on Polly and Molly, which, as I understand it, should have occurred by now. Does their milk contain the clotting factor needed for hemophiliacs? And how soon will similar sheep, or cattle be ready to produce proteins needed to counteract other genetic disorders?

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Cliff Beall - 10:04pm Apr 26, 1998 ET (#4109 of 4109)

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

Dawn, it appears to me that the CNN report must be incorrect in the sense that it reports that the three clone calves born in January was by the "Dolly Technique." As near as I can tell, the report must refer to Charlie, George and an unnamed calf, "cloned from the cells of cow fetuses by two University of Massachusetts scientists, James Robl and Steven Stice, who also work for Advanced Cell Technology Inc.," according to an article, by Carey Goldberg with Gina Kolata, New York Times News Service, I found on the net dated Feb 5, 1998.

The article also says that "Stice and Robl also reported that two of their cows are well into pregnancies carrying fetuses that are cloned from adults."

If "well into pregnancies" means what I think it probably does, I would guess the cows are perhaps a couple of months away from dropping a calf, assuming they are still pregnant.

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Carl Nicolai - 04:19am Apr 27, 1998 ET (#4110 of 4116)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref. Dawn Willis - (#4101 of 4109)

I don't know what the "zygote" formed from nuclear transplant is called. It's a new creation, and will have to have a new name.

Ya. I hate it when the subject matter is so new that there is no way to express ideas except by inventing a new word or trying to fit the concept into very old (Latin or Greek) words. This hapens a lot in electronics, but we just make anacroms (ie. radar stands for radio direction and range)

The other question which is bothering me should be easy to answer.

If I take two cloned fetal cells and insert them into different enucleated egg cells, (same species) what differences will be expressed. In other words how important are the very few genes contained in the cytoplasm. What if the species are different but closely related. Since these "clones" are made form fetal cells nucli this should be very easy to try. ??

CNN had a story the other day about a company that was producing a desease and bug resistant plant by inserting genes into the chloralblasts (SP?) of the plant. Since the genes could not be passed by interspecies plant fertalization via pollen, a bug resistant varity of cotton for instance could not pass this to weeds.

Since it is my understanding that the mitochondria in animals corisponds to the chloralblasts in plants, it should therefore be possable to limit the spread of genetic abilities to only children of specific mothers. (A new Eve) This could have strange social ramifications for humans and legal differences for animals, I would think.

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Jeffery Winkler - 06:23am Apr 27, 1998 ET (#4111 of 4116)

I wrote papers on reproduction, within which I discuss cloning, which I can send to anyone whose interested. You can either post your address here or e-mail it to me at [email protected]

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donald windrom - 04:48pm Apr 27, 1998 ET (#4112 of 4116)

Hey this new technology is great. Invision being able to produce a love one even if it was an infant the original could be produced. Science should afford itself to the will of the people. God gave us this concept to produce at will. Whatever humans can produce they should take it to the highest level. Maybe one day we can produce disease free humans and produce Jordans and Emmitt Smith's at a"small"costs of course. No one said this type of technology comes cheap. In closing concepts make the world turn. Russia keeps upgrading the SS SATIN ballistic missle to hold 20 warheads instead of 10. So let the research continue and don't worry about the protesters. Maybe one day we can create people who don't protest. DONALD WINDROM

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Dawn Willis - 06:26pm Apr 27, 1998 ET (#4113 of 4116)

Carl--The only genes in the enucleated mammalian egg are the mitochondrial genes, which are all involved in the aerobic energy -generating system. Mitochondria are small, and there isn't room to insert many additional genes. The chloroplast isn't exactly analogous, although both organelles are thought to have arisen from symbiotic bacteria. Plants have mitochondria too, to generate energy at night. Chloroplasts are about 10 X the size of mitochondria, so there is more room to insert more extra genes. But the egg is special because it has messenger RNA sitting on the ribosomes ready to go as soon as fertilization (or nuclear addition?!) occurs. It's the stored messages from the "maternal effect" genes that guide the developing embryo through the first cell divisions up through gastrulation, I believe. The group that is doing the calf cloning reported that bovine eggs work across species, including transfers of primate fetal nuclei, at least for getting things started. They didn't report any live births this way. Raises an interesting spector, doesn't it? My mother, the cow?

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Dawn Willis - 06:41pm Apr 27, 1998 ET (#4114 of 4116)

Cliff, thanks for looking up the calf story. How long is the gestation of a calf? You live in cow country, don't you? Myriad and Oncormed are not the same company, but competitors. Each has their own patented genetic testing kit that operate on slightly different principles. But the Oncormed BRCA1 sequence is being used in a gene therapy trial for advanced ovarian cancer at Vanderbilt.

More information on fetal cells in maternal circulation, if anyone is still interested. A 1975 publication inthe Scandinavian Journal of Hematology reported that 0.02-0.16% of lymphocytes in 7/11 women pregnant with a male had a Y chromosome from 15 weeks gestation on. The fetal lymphocytes are protected from maternal immunological destruction and may play a role in the mother's accepting the foreign "graft." A 1996 paper by Bianchi in the Proceedings of the Nat. Acad. Sci., by which time the PCR technique to detect small numbers of cells had been developed, showed that fetal cells could be found in 13/19 women as long as 27 years after giving birth! Pregnancy results in the establishment of a "micro-chimera" in the mother. Apparently the transfer of maternal cells to the fetus is much rarer. than the reverse, and a good thing.

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Cliff Beall - 12:02am Apr 28, 1998 ET (#4115 of 4116)

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

Dawn, it has been more years than I care to count since I was a kid growing up on a farm, but I understand that the gestation period for cattle is, on average, about 10 months.

Perhaps I should explain my estimate of a couple of months before the Advanced Cell Technology Inc. calves drop. It is just a guess. I more or less supposed that "well into pregnancies" would mean at least three or four months, but probably not much more than five.

However, it seems to me that the wildcard in this may be ABS Global Inc. Back in August of last year, ABS Global Inc. reported that they had cows pregnant with clones from adult skin, udder and kidney cells from 10 different cows. I can count, and it has been over 8 months since that report, and according to Dr. Michael Bishop, the director of research and technology at ABS Global Inc., some of the cows were due "real soon."

Now one might suppose that since there has been no report from ABS Global Inc., they obviously had problems. However, it should be remembered that Gene was six months old before they announced him. As far as I know, they never gave a reason for the delay in the announcement.

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Cliff Beall - 12:04am Apr 28, 1998 ET (#4116 of 4116)

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

I wonder whatever happened to the Myriad Genetics patent application on their version of the DNA sequence of the BRCA1 gene.

Of course, we don't know if the same thing happens in sheep. Probably not for 27 years, at any rate:-)

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Sinzo - 06:31am Apr 28, 1998 ET (#4117 of 4119)

Cloning is a subject that normally generates a lot of debate. There should be no much furore when it comes to cloning defenceless animals. What is highly debatable is the cloning of humans. If a human being is like any other animal in substance, cloning human will be 100% success. But if the difference between humans and animals is the presence of human spirit and soul, then the product of cloning a human will be an animal that looks a human being, unless somebody out there proves to me that a human spirit and soul can be replicated by hands of mortals.

Sinzo

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Scott Case - 11:45am Apr 28, 1998 ET (#4118 of 4119)

This human cloning bit sounds to me like a good way to study the ol' nature-nurture thing.

Anyway, you cannot stop science from going forward. It simply will never stop. Not as long as the world is many countries. Just try to imagine what our great-grandkids are going to be debating...

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Sinzo - 12:58pm Apr 28, 1998 ET (#4119 of 4119)

Scott Case, Yes scientific advances will continue, may be at our own peril. AIDS could have been a product of scientific manuvours. But now we are almost threatened with extinction. There is no knowledge on the disposition of a human clone. For example how confident are scientist that the human clone will succumb to human manupilation to be used for whatever purposes? It could well be a ferocious beast of our own creation that we will have to put up with at a great cost.

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Cliff Beall - 10:04pm Apr 28, 1998 ET (#4120 of 4121)

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

This has not been established, Sinzo. It appears that Dolly was a clone from adult somatic cells, but that has not been firmly established. Assuming that Dolly truly was cloned from as adult cell, there is no indication that the experiment has been repeated, even once. If it cloning was as easy as many people seem to think, the feat should have been duplicated many times over by now. On the other hand, we know that cloning from embryonic and fetal cells is possible in sheep and cattle, since several example of that exist.

Sinzo, mere mortals can not cause a cell to grow. To suggest that the scientist is responsible for the growth of a clone is like suggesting that a surgeon is responsible for the healing that takes place after surgery. The surgeon may have sewn two pieces of skin together, but that is all. The surgeon does not cause the two pieces of flesh to grow together. Nuclear transfer (cloning) is similar to surgery except it is at the cellular level. It is analogous to an organ transplant. When transplanting a heart or a kidney, the surgeon does not cause the new heart or kidney to function. The same is true for nuclear transfer.

Interesting thought. For one reason or another, I suspect they will consider us old fashioned.

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Cliff Beall - 12:18am Apr 29, 1998 ET (#4121 of 4121)

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

By AIDS? Sinzo, it is my understanding that more children die from measles every year than people of all ages from AIDS. Also, fewer people died from AIDS last year than the year before. I would not suggest that AIDS is not dangerous to human life, but to suggest that we are threatened with extinction by AIDS is, in my opinion, preposterous. Some Hollywood types seem to think AIDS is the greatest scourge since the bubonic plague. Personally, I think more money ought to be spent combating measles. It is a greater threat to human life.

I am opposed to mixing human genes with animal genes in such a way that both are expressed in an offspring. It is fully acceptable to me for scientists to add a human gene to the genome of a female animal, such as a sheep or cow, in such a way that the animal produces a human protein in it's milk, as well as for other purposes, provided the gene introduced into the animal's genome is not expressed in a way that would make the animal part human.

Assuming nuclear transfer is eventually perfected, it is my opinion that you need not be concerned that cloning for reproductive purposes will yield a monstrosity. In that case, the clone would be a twin of the individual whose somatic cell was used for the nuclear transfer, and the new human will have physical and mental characteristics similar, though not identical, to his or her twin. Biologically, both will have the same parents, similar to any set of identical twins.

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Carl Nicolai - 03:39am Apr 29, 1998 ET (#4122 of 4125)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref. Cliff Beall - (#4121 of 4121)

It is fully acceptable to me for scientists to add a human gene to the genome of a female animal, such as a sheep or cow, in such a way that the animal produces a human protein in it's milk, as well as for other purposes, provided the gene introduced into the animal's genome is not expressed in a way that would make the animal part human.

Ahhh...Now that's the trick isn't it.

So lets say I get my pig teeth in 10 years or so or pig cell implanted brain tissue to prevent me form having alsheimers(SP). Does that make me part pig?

Well of cource it does. Just if I get a mechnical knee joint makes me part cyborg.

This does not make me less human.

And I would not be less human if I could pass on these chages by having them in all my genes so they could be passed on. And my children would not be less human.

But many would argue this.

And there is certantly a point at which most people would not recognize such a beings human rights.

So there is not going to be a hard and fast rule that can satisfy everyone, and this is a moving target as well. Every discovery that helps people overcome problems sows the seeds of even more problems.

I think we will see the rise of a large numver of latter day luddites(SP?) in the cloning and Bio.Eng. fields.

Leaving it to the experts, of any ilk will not help much either. They are just as confused as everyone else.

The only proper thing to do is to enable as many people as possable to espress their ideas and try to resolve the conflicts. In this, The CNN message boards are doing a great service to us all.

Bring on the arguments!

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Greg Banerian - 07:24am Apr 29, 1998 ET (#4123 of 4125)

No, as a matter of fact I DON'T have an attitude.

You people ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

Imagine.

Sitting there at your PC's talking about having sex with animals on a CNN message board.

Tsk tsk.

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Dick Tanio - 03:34pm Apr 29, 1998 ET (#4124 of 4125)

clone! I want to be clone..

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Jeffery Winkler - 04:21pm Apr 29, 1998 ET (#4125 of 4125)

If you want for me to mail you my papers on reproduction, you have to give me your address.

Aristotle's Lyceum in Cyberspace

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Cliff Beall - 01:22am Apr 30, 1998 ET (#4125 of 4126)

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

Well, yes, if you want to keep things simple. Mentioning every possible complication was not what I wanted to do last night. But, as you insist on pointing out, there are complications.

Not in any substancial or important way.

I would tend to disagree that a mechnical knee makes you part cyborg. If it does, it is not important. You will still be the same Carl you alway were, except now you can walk. Same with Pig teeth. I am sure I would not be able to tell the difference, except for your smile, if I could see it:-)

I agree. A cell is a cell, a gene is a gene. Once your pig heart has been transplanted successfully into your body, it is your heart.

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Cliff Beall - 01:29am Apr 30, 1998 ET (#4126 of 4126)

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

Very true. It is great to have available the expertise of the Dawn Willis's of this world, but we should not leave the decisions to her, and others like her, alone, any more than we should leave the decisions to the Catholic Church. We, as a society, will have to decide. And collectively, we will. Be prepared for some politics. It always happens that way, and this time will be no different. But it works. Our founding fathers were very wise, were they not.

I wholeheartedly agree.

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Sherif B - 12:00am May 1, 1998 ET (#4127 of 4128)

I think we should try to clone a human. its experimenting. And if it works, the only difference between he or she and me would be the absence of family. Heck, make one and I'LL adopt it. Besides, what have we got to lose? He or she would grow up and sue the scientist that made them?

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Jeffery Winkler - 05:15am May 1, 1998 ET (#4128 of 4128)

The stupidity of some of the people who post on this board staggers the imagination. If CNN set up a board on "twiliwigs", would you decide to post on it even you don't know what a "twiliwig" is? Why then do people who haven't the foggiest idea what cloning is, decide to post on a board about cloning?

Cliff said, "biologically both will have the same parents similar to any set of identical twins" which is absurd and rediculous. The clone will only have one parent while it's parent will have two parents (unless it's a clone also).

Sherif said, "the only difference between he or she and me would be the absence of family" which is absurd, a horrible thing to say, and totally untrue. The clone will have one parent, two grandparents, and perhaps a step parent, half-siblings, cousins, etc.

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Dawn Willis - 06:26pm May 1, 1998 ET (#4129 of 4129)

Jeff Winkler, I agree with Cliff that the clone has the same two biological "parents" as the person from whom he or she was cloned. How could it be otherwise? If you are cloned from your grandmother, then you are your own grandma, and you have the same biological parents she did. The legal parent(s)will probably be different, once society decides how to define a parent. The woman who gives birth to the clone may be the same genetic make-up as the clone, but she is a surrogate mother all the same. I believe that the legal parent(s) should be the ones who requisitioned and paid for the cloning process, no matter who donated what.

Carl--the cloned dopamine producing fetal bovine cells implanted in the rat brain represent a chimera (article referenced at the top of this board). I assume the researchers are using immunosuppressed animals to avoid rejection. But the rats aren't turning into cows, and the humans who get the pig dopamine cells won't start oinking either. If this works to treat Parkinson's disease, I am sure most people (except PETA advocates) will agree it is better than using human fetal cells.

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Cliff Beall - 11:10pm May 1, 1998 ET (#4130 of 4130)

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

Chief, I have to tell you that name calling and general insults such as contained in the above have no purpose except to intimidate. However, what you apparently do not understand is that what you say does not reflect on the targets of your attacks. Instead, what you say is a reflection on you and your character only.

Heck, Tom, I didn't recognize you at first. But what's with the pseudonym? A little "rediculous" wouldn't you say?

That is the way I see it.

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Jeffery Winkler - 05:20am May 2, 1998 ET (#4131 of 4132)

I'm going to assume that Cliff and Dawn are the same person and he/she delibrately posts incoherant babble as some sort of strange joke or trolling. No one could possibly believe one word of what they say, since no one could be that stupid. You can't even respond to it because it's just meaningless gibberish. I don't even know what they are saying. Cloning is artificially induced asexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction is a form of reproduction in which the DNA within the resulting offspring is derived from one single individual lifeform. Sexual reproduction is when the DNA within the resulting offspring is derived from more than one individual organism. There is only one type of sexual reproduction in nature but there is a very large number of different types of asexual reproduction in nature. Asexual reproduction can be divided into four categories: mitosis, parthenogenesis, budding, and self-fertlization. I don't have time to describe each of these. The vast majority of reproduction that takes place on Earth is asexual reproduction. The amount of mitosis that takes place is astouding. Bacteria are reproducing all around you, inside your body, and all over the world, all the time, and has since life on Earth began. Almost all reproduction within the entire planet kingdom takes place through budding and self-fertlization. I wrote a paper on the evolution of all types of reproduction, which is fascinating. For instance, parthenogenesis evolved from meiosis, the premise of sexual reproduction, which evolved from mitosis. Cloning is artificially induced assexual reproduction. This Cliff/Dawn person's post is so garbled, I can't decipher it to try to figure out what they are trying to say. Are they trying to pretend that asexual reproduction doesn't exist? Are they saying that there is only one E. coli bacterium on the planet and it's four billion years old? I assume that this is some sort of joke. It's not possible for there to exist a person that stupid.

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Jeffery Winkler - 05:22am May 2, 1998 ET (#4132 of 4132)

If anyone would like to read my papers on reproduction, you can give me your address, and I'll mail them to you. [email protected]

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Cliff Beall - 01:37pm May 2, 1998 ET (#4133 of 4134)

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

Tom, please come back to the board as Tom Anderson. It is better that way. This board is like everything else in life. You win some and you lose some. When you win, it is fun. When you lose, it is instructive. Not a bad game--in my opinion.

But I am glad you created the Winkler page. Some of the stuff you did with it is quite clever. You are obviously a very creative guy. In my own way, I think I am somewhat creative, and I have some admiration for this kind of thing done well, even when it is not necessarily my own cup of tea.

Tom, I was once before intentionally mistaken for Noel Yap, as a joke. I believe I was called "Cliff Yap." I took it as a high compliment since I have high admiration for Noel. But this is even better. For someone to confuse an old country boy like me, who has no degree of any kind, with someone who has a PhD, and who has the reputation as a molecular biologist that Dawn has, even as a joke, is perhaps the highest compliment I shall ever receive. It made my day.

Very true. Obviously, a good start.

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Cliff Beall - 01:39pm May 2, 1998 ET (#4134 of 4134)

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

Good technical detail: which every good argument needs.

Ah, so that is it. I knew that somehow, somewhere, you would try to re-engage Dawn in that argument. As I recall, it started when I questioned your statement: "There are strands of DNA in your body millions of years old... it never dies, it just keeps replicating," and I asked Dawn for a second opinion. She did sort of wipe you out on that one, didn't she.

Actually, the argument you give here is rather clever. But it does not address the issue of the identification of the biological parents of human clones.

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Carl Nicolai - 01:52pm May 2, 1998 ET (#4135 of 4136)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref. Dawn Willis - (#4129 of 4132)

The problem is that new studies indicate that mothers may have severe reactions to their childrens fetal cells many years after introduction. This is true even when the numbers of cells is very small and seems to be ignored by the mothers immune system.

I woulld argue that this delayed reaction (if true) could represent a hazzard that may be very difficult to address because of the time lag.

When you deal with something as serious as Parkinson's disease I'm sure that anything you can do for them won't be opposed by many.

The reason I brought up teeth is that there are many alternatives and so the arguments are much more complex. Elective surgery has uasually taken a back seat, except for people with a lot of money.

In human misery terms the flu has probably caused more productivity loss than AIDS on a world wide basis. All strains, except the most recent Hong Kong varity are beleived to mutate when passed from wild ducks, raised with pigs, and then passed on to humans. Many beleive this was also true for HIV. (different vectors but the same basic idea)---Cont.---

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Carl Nicolai - 02:29pm May 2, 1998 ET (#4136 of 4136)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

---Comt.---

I would not be very supprised to see a new small pox appear, maybe one that can be passed on through animals. That would sure be harder to stomp on.

Now we have a pretty good idea that maybe half of the higher level animals are known. And we will undoubtly make some new ones, but viruses evolve at warp speed and we are going to make lots of new ones for gene insertion.

Like in chemestry, there are only a relatively few isolated chemicals with molecular weights of 100,000 or more, and a countable number with weights of say 500 or less, but in between the number of "natural" organic chemicals is vast beyond beleif. I see viruses in this sence.

Now the Argumentum ad ignorenceum. (ie. we don't know what will happen) uasually doesen't sway a lot of people, but viruses, ebola and drug resistant "super bugs" have got many people real spooked.

If we are going to use pigs or other closly related species to supply cells for insertion into humans they had better be provably azenic in respect to other forms of life. The other viable alternative is to do IVF and raise the embryos in tanks prior to harvesting.

Now some brillent dimwhit is going to figure out a way of bringing them to term, and what you can do with pigs.......

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Cliff Beall - 12:00am May 3, 1998 ET (#4137 of 4138)

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

I understand your point, Carl. It is that the patient may eventually experience reactions to the cell implants. However, I do not expect that the above information will convince women to stop having children, and I do not expect the possibility of reactions to the implanted cells to be a prevailing argument against cell implant treatment.

That is precisely the point. Possible future reaction to the cells introduced to treat the disease might possibly be a problem, but when you are dealing with something like Parkinson's disease, a few risks are justified. The possible introduction of a virus is another possible problem, and if the scientists and doctors find that a virus is being introduced, they will obviously want to modify their procedures to avoid it. But I would not be in favor if denying this apparently benefical treatment in the fear that future reaction to the cells introduced may occur or that a new virus might result.

BTW, I have heard, and I suppose it is true, that one of the more dangerous places to be is a hospital, since so many people in hospitals have infections of one kind or another, and so many germs are floating around. But if you get really sick, the hospital may be the only place that can save your life.

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Cliff Beall - 12:02am May 3, 1998 ET (#4138 of 4138)

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

And, I suspect, a lot more death. But, of course, most of the victims of the flu, as well as diseases such as measles, live in third world countries, and do not have a name that most people would recognize. AIDS get more attention because, to a significant extent, it is a disease suffered by the "beautiful people."

I thought it was chickens and chimpanzes:-)

Okay, I agree it is possible, perhaps even probable that animal viruses may be passed to humans in some cases, because of this technology. But if we make sure that only people who know how to handle such things are involved in these processes, then I think we are likely to remain reasonably safe. The real problem is people messing around with it who don't know what they are doing. We have to have laws to guard against that, much as we have law against unqualified people performing surgery.

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Cliff Beall - 12:06am May 3, 1998 ET (#4139 of 4139)

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

In consideration of the "greater good," I will continue to be in favor of allowing competent experimenters to proceed with these treatments until they are proven to be a significant danger.

That is what laws are for. I am not in favor of losing this technology which hold significant promise of benefit to mankind in the fear that unscrupulous people will misuse it. But I am in favor of laws that punish those who do misuse it--in the hope of avoiding said misuse.

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Jeffery Winkler - 05:33am May 3, 1998 ET (#4140 of 4140)

Who the hell is "Tom Anderson"? Let me in on the joke.

Aristotle's Lyceum in Cyberspace

Your DNA is hardly "millions of years old". When DNA replicates, each of the new strands is constructed, and the old is destroyed. Thus the DNA in a cell is only as old as that cell.

It's so strange that someone would even need parentage defined for them. Those who contribute DNA to an offspring are that offspring's parents. Why would you need that told to you? Let's say an oak tree was created by self-fertilization, it's parent was also created by self-fertilization, and that tree was created by sexual reproduction, what would you say is the oak's tree's parent(s)? Would you say it's parent is it's parent, like any rational person, or would you say it's great grandparent is it's parent? With bamboo, they reproduce sexually very rarely, perhaps once every few centuries, and the rest of the time, they reproduce asexually by budding. You might have to go back several hundred generations before you come to an individual that had two parents. Let's say that there is an oak tree that reproduces by self-fertlization twice, and thus has two offspring that are both genetically identical to itself, and thus each other. Now let's say that those two trees reproduce sexually with each other, and create an offspring that is genetically identical to both. Now that offspring was created by sexual reproduction, but might as well have been created by asexual reproduction, since it's genetically identical to both parents. There's no way, even by a DNA test, to determine whether the pollen came from the same tree on which the flower was pollinated, or the other tree. It's not even relevant since it makes no difference. Now, I would say that that tree's two parents are it's parents. Which would you say are the tree's parents?

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Cliff Beall - 11:13am May 3, 1998 ET (#4141 of 4141)

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

Hum. Interesting question. I would have to say that Tom is someone who is bright, complicated, interesting, self-indulgent, self-engrossed, self-righteous, insecure, argumentative, audacious, creative.

No problem. Webster defines it quite nicely: "biol. designating or of the generation in which fertilization produces hybrids."

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s. schmidt - 01:10pm May 3, 1998 ET (#4142 of 4142)

Jeff; "When DNA replicates, each of the new strands is constructed, and the old is destroyed. Thus the DNA in a cell is only as old as that cell."

Maybe I just interpereted this wrong but it doesn't sound like you are describing the semi-conservative model of replication. This sounds like the non-conservative model which of course is incorrect.

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Carl Nicolai - 05:55am May 5, 1998 ET (#4142 of 4143)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Jeffery Winkler: Who the hell is "Tom Anderson"?

Well for one thng he wrote the cloning FAQ for this group.

Tom Anderson's Cloning FAQ

Like all FAQ's on a board it's purpose is to allow people to know what has been covered or discussed so they dont lool like nubies.He hasen't posted in a long time.

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Dawn Willis - 03:54pm May 5, 1998 ET (#4143 of 4143)

Carl Nicolai: The fetal cells that cause the reaction in mothers years after pregnancy are T-cells. It is they that are reacting against the mother's cells, not the mother reacting against the fetal cells. It's a delayed graft versus host reaction. The condition (scleroderma) is obviously rare. The beauty of using cloned pig dopamine-producing neurons is that all of the T-cells or other immune cells that might react against the host can be eliminated. I'm not Cliff--I am a 59 year old female scientist, reallly I am. I do agree with Cliff a lot, but not always. I am pro-choice, for example (although not pro-abortion).

Cliff: The reason the hospital is particularly dangerous is that all the microbes are almost invariably drug-resistant. Hospitals use a lot of antibiotics for "prevention." Thanks for looking up the Webster's definition of parent. We do speak of "mother" cells and "daughter" cells of asexually reproducing cell cultures and organisms, but it is for lack of a better term.

Jeff Winkler--I hope you paid attention to the post on DNA semi-conservative replication. The old strand does remain, but it gets altered and diluted over time.

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Cliff Beall - 10:26pm May 5, 1998 ET (#4144 of 4144)

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

Come to think about it, I guess there is another side to that. In my exuberance about being mistaken for somebody really smart, I guess I neglected to see the other side. I suppose that if I was a scientist with a PhD and a reputation like yours, I probably wouldn't appreciate being confused with someone with no credentials and no reputation at all. On the other hand, I am only 56;-)

Yeah, I know. Don't tell Jeff, but I had to look in three dictionaries before I found the definition I wanted.

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Carl Nicolai - 12:46am May 6, 1998 ET (#4145 of 4146)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Dawn Willis - (#4143 of 4144)

Carl Nicolai: The fetal cells that cause the reaction in mothers years after pregnancy are T-cells. It is they that are reacting against the mother's cells, not the mother reacting against the fetal cells. It's a delayed graft versus host reaction.

The condition (scleroderma) is obviously rare. The beauty of using cloned pig dopamine-producing neurons is that all of the T-cells or other immune cells that might react against the host can be eliminated.

Thanks for the clarification and information.

I'm not Cliff--I am a 59 year old female scientist, reallly I am. I do agree with Cliff a lot, but not always. I am pro-choice, for example (although not pro-abortion).

I don't understand. I do not confuse you with Cliff. I research anyone on this group who has anything interesting to say.

I do not have a Ph, and only one patent instead of 5 like Cliff. I have had an article about me in Science Mag. and made Patent Of The Week in the New York Times though. At 54 I guess I'm still a kid. ;)

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Cliff Beall - 01:22am May 6, 1998 ET (#4146 of 4146)

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

Carl, I'm jealous. An article in Science Mag. and Patent Of The Week in the New York Times. As Gomer Pyle would say: "Goll-oh-leee!"

And to think, you are only 54. My my!

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Dawn Willis - 05:53pm May 6, 1998 ET (#4147 of 4147)

Carl and Cliff: Somebody confused me with Cliff, but i don't remember who. I don't have any patents! Wish I had the one for endostatin and angiostatin. Wish I had been clever enough to buy stock in Entremed when I heard about the experiments curing cancer in mice five months ago! I thought I would wait until the compounds had been tried in humans first, silly scientist that I am! The genes are cloned, and they are producing the stuff in yeast, but the yields must not be all that great.

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Cliff Beall - 11:41pm May 6, 1998 ET (#4148 of 4148)

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

Okay, it is time to clarify. There was never any confusion of Dawn and me by anyone, except in jest. On May 2, 1998, Jeffery Winkler posted the following: "I'm going to assume that Cliff and Dawn are the same person and he/she delibrately posts incoherant babble as some sort of strange joke or trolling. No one could possibly believe one word of what they say, since no one could be that stupid."

This was, I believe, in response to my suggestion that he and Tom Anderson were one and the same. The reasons I believe Jeffery and Tom are the same person are as follows: First, I noticed that Jeffery misspelled "ridiculous" as "rediculous," the way Tom typically misspelled it. Second, I checked out the "Jeffery" site, and noticed a kind of similarity in the site name. Compare "Aristotle's Lyceum in Cyberspace," with Tom's old site: "The Vestibule of Truth." The word "Lyceum" refers to a hall or auditorium where public lectures or discussions are held, and "vestibule" refers to an entrance hall or passage to a room or a building. In the "Lyceum" site, I looked for stylistic similarities in the documents I found with Tom's posts. Also, since Jeffery had offered to send anyone his papers on reproduction (and cloning) by e-mail, I looked for that subject on the site, but it appeared not to be there. However, the Vietnam messages, I found, sounded like vintage Tom Anderson. Of course, the content of Jeffery's post with respect to cloning was at odds with Tom's prior position on the matter, but if Tom was attempting to put us on, as I suspected, the post would likely to be tongue in cheek anyway. I therefore quoted the sentence containing the misspelled "rediculous" and wrote: "Heck, Tom, I didn't recognize you at first. But what's with the pseudonym? A little "rediculous" wouldn't you say?"

As I stated above, I believe it was in response to this that Jefferey said, "I'm going to assume that Cliff and Dawn are the same person..." But there was never any real confusion. Just a

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Cliff Beall - 01:30am May 7, 1998 ET (#4149 of 4149)

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

It was a joke. Jeffery/Tom did not really confuse Dawn and me, but I made a big deal of it anyway, for fun. Basically, I just went along with the joke--and even helped it along--to see where it would end. But that is all it ever was, just a joke. I didn't intend to upset anyone. Sorry if that was the result.

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Carl Nicolai - 12:19pm May 7, 1998 ET (#4150 of 4150)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

I'm having trouble understandiong some things about cell aging. It seems that the only way you can tell the "age" of a cell is by the condition the tolomeres are in. I mean genetic drift occurs too slowly.

Does the shape that tolomers are in make the cells more sustable to producing a cancer mutation?

Since cancer cells contain some kind of a tolomere repair process it must be in the chemicals produced by the cytoplasm.

What hapenes if you just take a large cell like a fat cell and replace the fat with fluid from egg cytoplasm or from a cancer cytoplasm.

Every one is talking about nuclear transfer but I dont read anything about cytoplasm transfer.

Also I don' understand at what point in differentation tolomere damage becomes a problem. Is it only after the cells are highly differentated and producing only relatively few chemicals?

Also since some types of cells reproduce very fast the slowly reproducing cells they must have more generations of division left before they are too damaged to work. At this time are the slowly deviding cells in good shape as far as their tolomeres are concerned?

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Tom Anderson - 04:22am May 8, 1998 ET (#4151 of 4154)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Hello Ladies and Gents,

It's in the middle of finals, and seeing as I've managed to stay away as long as I have, you'd think I could hold off a little longer. But I've simply got to clear up this little misunderstanding here.

Cliff-Yap-Willis,

I have not been using a pseudonym. Though I can see why you might suspect such a thing of me after that whole babel dispersus thing (and I think I forgot to thank you for saying how clever that was). But that was not a joke, just a way to introduce some ideas that may have seemed to, but did not actually, clash with other things I had been saying. However, this allegation is entirely different. Come on, I thought I made more of an impression on you than a common typo! Certainly I should hope you could distinguish my mindset a bit more than that. I mean, come on, the thing that Jeff called "rediculous" was actually right on. The genetic parents of a clone are the same as donor of the genetic material. Also, I certainly wouldn't go through the trouble of creating a web page for the purpose of pulling one over on the cloning board! I don't have that kind of time. And even if I did, no offense to Mr. Winkler, but I would be a bit more creative; I am a web designer after all.

Now, what really gets me is this statement: "I would have to say that Tom is someone who is bright, complicated, interesting, self-indulgent, self-engrossed, self-righteous, insecure, argumentative, audacious, creative." Ok, I can see some of that, but what's all of this "self-" stuff? And I'm anything but insecure! I don't see how a person can be both audacious and insecure anyway. I'll accept the bright, interesting, argumentative, audacious, and creative though. ;o)

Anyway, how could you have thought it was me without seeing any of my patented twenty-part posts?

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Tom Anderson - 04:24am May 8, 1998 ET (#4152 of 4154)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

While I seem to share some interests and similarities with Jeffery, and I tend to agree that there sometimes appears "incoherent babble" on this board, here are some things which Jeffery said which were somehow attributed to me, and which now I must refute to regain my good name.

Cloning is artificially induced asexual reproduction.

Cloning is asexual reproduction, not necessarily artificial in nature.

Sexual reproduction is when the DNA within the resulting offspring is derived from more than one individual organism.

Sexual reproduction involves recombination and may be derived from a single hermaphroditic organism as well as two distinct organisms. The former often occurs in plants and is referred to as self-fertilization. For more info on types of sexual or asexual reproduction, I would suggest a highschool-level text.

When DNA replicates, each of the new strands is constructed, and the old is destroyed.

This is not the case at all. During interphase, DNA polymerase constructs a complimentary set of nucleotides using each side of the double helix as a template. This is known as semiconservative replication. The "old" DNA is never destroyed, but continues on indefinitely through one duplication after another.

Jeff, I suggest reading my FAQ.

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Tom Anderson - 04:26am May 8, 1998 ET (#4153 of 4154)

Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat

Cliff,

And to think, you are only 54. My my!

Sheesh, I'm dealing with a bunch of grandparents here! I'm only 20 :oþ

Dawn,

I don't have any patents!

Oops, I almost thought you said "I don't have any parents!" Genetic experiment?

Carl,

Every one is talking about nuclear transfer but I dont read anything about cytoplasm transfer.

The nuclear transfer procedure includes plasmogamy (the fusion of cytoplasms). The nucleus isn't really taken out of one cell and placed in another; one cell has its nucleus removed (the oocyte in this case), and then the cell containing the wanted nucleus is fused (cytoplasm and all) with the enucleated cell.

As for telomeres, everyone keeps saying how they are the answer to aging and everything, but there is a huge grey area as far as I can tell. It seems to me that they are rather disconnected from the aging phenomenon. Aging appears more dependent on hormones or the absense thereof. But, then again, I've only brushed the surface of the topic.

Ok, that's enough for me... I've got a Comp Org final that I need to sleep for tomorrow. I'll be back eventually (not with a pseudonym, you'll know it when I'm here).

Tom

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Jeffery Winkler - 07:56am May 8, 1998 ET (#4154 of 4154)

First of all, I assumed that whoever called me "Tom Anderson" was joking since I couldn't imagine someone confusing me with anyone, so I returned the joke.

Second, I spell rediculous "rediculous". If it ever appears spelled differently in any of my posts, it's a typo.

Third, not only is an infintesimal fraction of my writings on my page, but a tiny fraction of the subjects I've written on appear on my page. I've written on computers, wine, humor, Judaism, evolution, the origin of multicellularism, superconductivity, and almost every other subject.

Fourthly, "Lyceum" was the name of the school that Aristotle founded, just as Plato's school was called "Academy".

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Cliff Beall - 07:24pm May 8, 1998 ET (#4155 of 4157)

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

I have been expecting you, Tom. Glad to see you back as your old self again.

Expected also.

You must be confusing me with someone else, Tom. While I did admire babel's argument, I did not know you were babel until now. Therefore that could not possibly be the reason I suspected you of having some fun, under a pseudonym, in this case.

Tom, I can truthfully say you have made much more of an impression on me than a typo. That was just the first hint. You are, without a doubt, one of the most unforgettable characters I have ever known.

By the way, Tom, now that I think about it, I think it was a bit disingenuous of you to indicate that you were swayed by babel's argument. You once jumped on me for referencing Dawn, since, as a participant of the board, you thought she might be "biased." Hell, Tom, it occurs to me now that when you referenced babel, you referenced yourself! How "biased" is that?

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Cliff Beall - 07:27pm May 8, 1998 ET (#4156 of 4157)

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

Suffice it to say that, having seen the "Vestibule" page, I am convinced that there is nothing in the "Lyceum" page that you could not have created.

If I had it to do over, I would probably leave out the "insecure." I assume that you must have your insecurities, like everyone else, but I think I might be hard pressed to find specific evidence of said insecurities in you posts. But the "self-" stuff stays. They belong. Notice the ease with which you speak of yourself. It is the "self-" stuff, along with the "bright etc." stuff, that makes you an interesting character. It is part of the package of self-consistent contradictions I know to be Tom Anderson.

I think your name (however it might be characterized) is intact.

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Cliff Beall - 07:39pm May 8, 1998 ET (#4157 of 4157)

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

Remember, Tom, one day, you too...

Yes, and you did it precisely the way I would expect Tom to do it.

Actually, the one thing that gave me pause, in this matter, was that there were a couple of other misspelled words in that particular post. That almost threw me off. Tom doesn't usually make many spelling errors, except for "rediculous."

So has Tom. Are you suggesting you are as bright, audacious, and creative as Tom? Or babel?

I was aware of that. But it did not advance my supposition that the same mind created both web sites.

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Cliff Beall - 02:32pm May 9, 1998 ET (#4158 of 4158)

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

In reviewing the babel posts, I find that I must add a word to the list of words that describe Tom Anderson. It is "self-serving." As evidence I submit the following:

Therefore, my "updated," and "corrected," list of words that give a "complete" description of Tom Anderson is now: bright, complicated, interesting, self-indulgent, self-engrossed, self-serving, argumentative, audacious and creative." I think that about does it :-)

(Note that I have deleted the word "self-righteous" from the list for the following reason: I think it is a somewhat derogatory term that can be applied to us all equally. As such, it is probably unfair to use it to describe anyone at all.)

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Carl Nicolai - 05:13pm May 11, 1998 ET (#4159 of 4161)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref. Daniel Hsu - (#4159 of 4159)

If you want to find out what this is about just read Tom Anderson's FAQ and you will have at least a clue about what is going on.

Also you might try following the CNN "genetics and cloning links" at the top of this page.

------------------------

BTW I just noticed that Tom's FAQ is now refrenced by CNN. Congrats Tom.

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Jeffery Winkler - 06:19pm May 11, 1998 ET (#4160 of 4161)

What would you say is/are the "parent(s)" of an E. coli baterium form whom all it's ancestors reproduced by mitosis, meaning asexual reproduction, going back four billion years to the origin of life?

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C. Richards - 04:28pm May 12, 1998 ET (#4161 of 4161)

I don't believe that experiments consisting of the cloning of organisms that are part man/part animal are warranted at this time. However I do believe that Cloning is a valuable asset to the medical community, and can benefit society as a whole. More emphasis needs to be placed on the Human Genome Project, in order to further this research. Its experiments such as the New York story that give genetics a bad name.

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Cliff Beall - 11:57pm May 13, 1998 ET (#4162 of 4162)

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

Okay, assume we have this E. coli bacterium form which is a single cell. Suppose, it splits into two identical cells. Which is the parent and which is the child? Actually, neither is either. They are siblings.

Suppose these two sibling cells each split. Now, do we have cousins? I would argue that we do not because the four cells resulting from the two splits are genetically identical. Since they are all genetically identical, no two cells can be considered any more closely related than any two other cells.

However, suppose, at some point, a mutation occurs, and the mutated and the non-mutated cells continue to divide. Then do we then have cousins? I would argue that, yes, the variation that results from the mutation might be considered cousins to the non-mutated cells.

So who are the parents and who is the children? Well, for starters, none of the existing cells are parents. All of the existing cells are either siblings or cousins. When a cell divides, it no longer exists as a single entity. Therefore, even if the original cell is considered to be a parent, it can be considered a parent only after it has ceased to exist. This being the case, I would argue that in pure asexual reproduction, there is no parent-child relationship.

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Cliff Beall - 01:38am May 14, 1998 ET (#4163 of 4164)

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

I am opposed to adding a human gene to the genome of am animal such that a human characteristic is expressed in an animal. I do not think such mixing of expressed genes will ever be warranted.

It doesn't seem to be moving as fast as I expected it to move. Six months ago, it seemed that the major breakthrough had already occurred. Now it seems less certain. I guess I am glad that Dolly had a lamb, but it was Polly and Molly who were supposed to produce a human protein in their milk. Whatever happened to Polly and Molly?

The New York story is not an experiment. It is a story about one scientist's efforts to patent the intermixing of human and animal genes to form a part animal, part human offspring. It is my understanding that the application for said patent is intended only as a means of preventing others from using this procedure to do this. I have already expressed opposition to the adding of human genes to the genome of am animal such that human characteristics are expressed in an animal. In order to be consistent, I must support the attempt to obtain this patent, for the purpose described. But I would more gladly support a law making it a criminal offense.

I am not sure I understand why you would say that this story gives genetics a bad name. I think that most people who are aware of the story understands that genetic engineering can be used for both good and bad purposes.

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William C. Williams - 04:12pm May 14, 1998 ET (#4164 of 4164)

I do not understand what the big deal is. As long as we are talking consenting adults who cares if someone decides to become a clown. I would not like to be a clown but I'm not going to force my career choice on everybody else.

As far as animals clowning now that is a different story since they can't make an informed choice in the matter.

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Cliff Beall - 05:42pm May 14, 1998 ET (#4165 of 4165)

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

The problem is, William, that some clowns will try to force kids into a life of clowning from birth. And don't think it is only in the future; it has already began. My wife and I just got back from Branson Big Mo, and there is a kid there, somewhere between the fiddle and the guitar, who was born to a life of clowning. One of his cousins is escaping to Stanford in the fall, however.

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Rosette Greene - 06:29pm May 14, 1998 ET (#4166 of 4168) deleted

My brother would like to start cloning sheep. I worry about him sometimes. He was always shy with the ladies.

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Dawn Willis - 06:48pm May 14, 1998 ET (#4167 of 4168)

Does E. coli have parents? There is a form of sexual reproduction in E. coli, it is called conjugation. The two bacteria form a cytoplasmic bridge between them, and the "male" transfers all or part of its DNA to the .."non-male". There is some exchange of genetic material, etc., and you end up with a strain that is not quite the same as it was before conjugation occurred.

Other organisms, such as yeast, reproduce by binary fission most of the time, but under special conditions mate sexually--that is there are two "mating types" that combine and reassort their genes, form four spores and go into the asexual phase again.

Even in the microbial world, it isn't always as simple as it looks.--fromThe Grandmother

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Jeffery Winkler - 06:52pm May 14, 1998 ET (#4168 of 4168) deleted

Cliff's post is so absurd, it's not worth responding to. When a cell divides the original cell is called the parent cell, and the resulting cells are called daughter cells. Each daughter cell is then the parent cells of each of their daughter. If a cell divides, and each of of the daughter cells divide, then cells with different parents, and the same grandparent, are cousins. Who cares if they are genetically identical or not? What does that have to do with anything? Let's say there are identical twin girls? You're saying they're not sisters? What if they each have children. You're saying their kids are cousins to each to each other? Your post is so garbled, I can't even decipher it. You never answered my question. What would you say is the parent of an E. coli bacterium? What would you say is the parent(s) of an oak tree? Your posts are so rediculous, they're not worth responding to. I'll just let the absurdity of your remarks stand on their own.

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Cliff Beall - 11:05pm May 14, 1998 ET (#4169 of 4169) deleted

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

Dawn, I am so terribly upset that you waited until after I made a fool of myself before setting the record straight on E. coli. That post of Jeff's sat there for two days while I was in Branson, and "not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken. And the three men..." Sorry, I seem to be having trouble getting Branson off my mind. Anyway, Jeff said that E. coli reproduced by mitosis. And, as you know, I am such a trusting soul. And that post sat there for two days while I was gone to Branson with narry a comment. So naturally I assumed it to be the gospel, having had a good dose of the gospel in song, in Branson, and I responded believing that Jeff would not mislead me. And now you tell me my trust was misplaced. Maybe I need to be careful about going to Branson :-)

Then why did you respond, clown?

Great stuff, Jeff. For some reason, your wit reminds me of the wit of a guy who used to post here during another one of Tom Anderson's absences. As I recall, his name was Tom A. Sometimes I wonder what happened to good old Tom. He caused me to laugh myself silly more than once. Wonder if maybe he went to Branson to be a clown?

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Cliff Beall - 12:58am May 15, 1998 ET (#4167 of 4167)

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

To CNN,

Just as a point of information, I see that you have deleted Jeff's most recent post, and you got my response too. I can't say that I can object very strongly about either deletion, even though I thought Jeff's post was tongue-in-cheek, and found parts of it to be delightfully humorous.

But this is what gets me: you wiped out Rosette Greene's bit of humor, but you left standing William C. Williams's silliness about "clowning" and my tongue-in-cheek response. If that is okay, how can what Rosette posted not be okay? (I know it was a bit suggestive, but I've seen worse on TV.)

Puzzled, Cliff

Cliff...

Not sure what happened, I did see those messages, but did not delete them.

CNN Staff

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Cliff Beall - 02:53am May 15, 1998 ET (#4168 of 4168)

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

Dawn, thanks for the information about E. coli. However, it came at a most inopportune time. I wish I had known the true facts about E. coli before I posted my reply to Jeff's question. But as they say, that's life.

Jeff, you led me astray. You said that E. coli reproduced by mitosis, and, not knowing any better, I trusted you. But never mind. Perhaps you didn't know either.

In your deleted post, you said that I did not answer your question. Actually I gave your question a better answer than it deserved. I stated specifically that "even if the original cell is considered to be a parent, it can be considered a parent only after it has ceased to exist...in pure asexual reproduction, there is no parent-child relationship."

In view of Dawn's information, this can not refer to E. coli. But for an organism that reproduces strictly asexually, it most certainly is true. The question you asked is therefore meaningless, and your assertion that "the [human] clone will only have one [biological] parent while it's [biological] parent will have two [biological] parents (unless it's a clone also)," is absurd.

On the other hand, your posts tend to be delightfully humorous. I laughed until I cried at your most recent one. BTW, you remind me of a guy who used to post here during another one of Tom Anderson's absences. As I recall, his name was Tom A. Sometimes I wonder what happened to good old Tom A. He caused me to laugh myself silly more than once.

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Dawn Willis - 05:16pm May 15, 1998 ET (#4169 of 4169)

I am probably creating more confusion than I need to. E. coli, being a bacterium, has only one chromosome, and it doesn't have a nucleus. Strictly speaking, it reproduces most of the time by binary fission. That is, the chromosome splits in two and replicates semi-conservatively. Since the DNA is in one circular piece, telomeres and aging aren't relevant. This process isn't known as mitosis, which is confined to nucleated cells. Sometimes, under certain environmental conditions, some E.coli transmit their chromome, or pieces of it, to other E. coli. The resulting bacterium is different from either of the "parents" Many E. coli also contain plasmids, small circles of DNA that are typically used for cloning all kinds of genes from animals and humans. These plasmids are easily passed from one E. coli to another during conjugation--this is why a whole population of E. coli can quickly become resistant to antibiotics. Drug resistance genes are usually on plasmids. Now everyone is thoroughly confused, right?

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Cliff Beall - 08:56pm May 15, 1998 ET (#4170 of 4170)

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

Dawn, I appreciate the effort to clarify the above. I understand the difficulty of conveying these details in an understandable manner for non-specialists like myself. Sometimes it is useful to be to be appraised of the complications merely to avoid the misconception of simplicity. In this sense, I think the above is useful to me. I think it is likely to be useful to others also, but perhaps on a different level.

In general, it seems to me that a fuller understanding of these details are probably less important to the subject matter of this message board than the basic understanding that you provided in the answers to a series of questions I asked several months ago. Obtaining those answers was very important to me because they gave me a sense of the direction, ramifications and importance of the current technology. Of course I did not--and will never--fully understand all the details you provided, but I believe I was able to acquire a general understanding of the nature of the technology, the difficulties and the promise. Also, much of the fun I have subsequently had on this board has been a direct result of that exchange that started with an answer you gave to a question from Noel, back on Christmas day, 1997. What a Christmas present! Thank you.

Of course, back then, I didn't know you had a PhD in molecular biology and was the scientific program director for the American Cancer Society, and it is probably a good thing. Otherwise, I might not have felt free to quiz you so closely in the series of posts that followed. But I knew from your answer to Noel's question, and your answers to my subsequent questions, that you were not just another pretender. It was clear to me back then that you knew. And again, I thank you.

>CNN Staff: Not sure what happened, I did see those messages, but did not delete them.

Thanks for the reply. I think what you are saying is that it is sometimes difficult to draw the line, and, sometimes, about all you can go with is gut feel. To be frank, I don't think I would want your job. Perhaps I ought to thank you for letting me get by with murder from time to time. Cheers.

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Jeffery Winkler - 05:34am May 17, 1998 ET (#4172 of 4174)

There is no one over the age of 10 in this country who is so stupid as to actually be unaware that bacteria reproduce by mitosis. Could you imagine there actually existing some one who is actually unaware of this? It's like someone actually thinking that O.J. is innocent. You question whether the people actually believe what they say. I'll try to explain this so simply that even you can understand it. I feel like I'm trying to explain this to a chimp.

The process of conjugation that somebody mentioned has absolutely nothing to do with reproduction. Any unicellular lifeform can only reproduce by mitosis. This includes bacteria, protozoa, blue-green algae, unicellular green algae, a human zygote, etc. During mitosis, the chromosomes line up and replicate, the two halves of each pair being connected by centromere. The chromosomes on one side of the cell are connected to that side by spindle fibers, and those on the other side are connected to the other side by spindle fibers. The spindle fibers contract, and centromeres breaking, sending the chromosomes on one side to that side of the cell, and those on the other side to the otherside. The cytoplasm rushes to either side of the cell, and the cell divides. I won't confuse you with any more details of mitosis. Beforehand, there is one organism, and afterwards, there is two. 2-1=1 so the population increased by one. You could loosely say that there was one offspring, although technically there are two offspring, and the parent died, meaning ceased to exist, to create them.

In the process of conjugation, cells exchange DNA, and separate. Both before and afterwards, there were two cells. 2-2=0 There are no offspring at all. The population did not increase at all. Therefore, this is not a form of reproduction at all.

With asexual reproduction, whether it's mitosis, parthenogenesis, budding, or self-fertilization, the size of the population increases, and the genetic diversity within the population does not. With con

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Jeffery Winkler - 05:35am May 17, 1998 ET (#4173 of 4174)

With asexual reproduction, whether it's mitosis, parthenogenesis, budding, or self-fertilization, the size of the population increases, and the genetic diversity within the population does not. With conjugation, the genetic diversity of the population increases, and the size of the population does not. If you combine these two processes, you have sexual reproduction, in which both the size of the population, and the genetic diversity of the population increase.

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Jeffery Winkler - 05:42am May 17, 1998 ET (#4174 of 4174)

Let's say that there's a group of bacteria for whom conjugation did not take place for a million generations. If you select one of the bacteria in the last generation, what is that bacteria's parent(s)? Would you say that it's parent is the original bacterium that existed a million years earlier?

This is a level of stupidity that blows the mind. It's not even like the people on the UFO board, where you can figure out what they're trying to say. If an organism was created by asexual reproduction, that means it has one parent. If an organism was created by sexual reproduction, that means it has two parents. There is no one, however stupid, except you, who would suggest otherwise. Who cares if an organism was created by sexual or asexual reproduction. Who cares whether an organism is or is not genetically identical to it's parent(s)? What does that have to do with anything?

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Cliff Beall - 10:42am May 17, 1998 ET (#4175 of 4175)

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

Jeffery, I think your posts speak for themselves adequately, and no further comment by me is needed.

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Carl Nicolai - 04:10pm May 17, 1998 ET (#4176 of 4176)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref. What steps do you think the FDA should take to control cloning?

Since this is the question before us I thought we should speak to it.

Like many federal agencies the FDA keeps trying to expand it's power. That is to say that like any other group it serves the intrests of the people associated with it the longest.

As we have discussed before, all new inventions and discoveries convey new rights and abilities to people.

It looks like the federal government is bound and determined to controll "assisted reproduction", and natch the FDA wants its share of the action.

Since developments are moving so fast the normal route to enacting laws is too slow. To impose tyranny the uasual route is that the legislators pass so called "enabeling laws". These laws create a body of non elected people who have the power to pass "regulations" that have the effect of law. It is quite easy to draft regulations that make it difficult if not impossable to obey all of them. Then you just selectively enforce the ones that are required to controll a specific practice or group of people that do not political power. Or have fallen out of favor with "the democracy".

Under the present "assissted reproduction" regulations this should be a snap. If the FDA wants to controll cloning it should start by vewing the Constitution as containing "loopholes" which must be closed.

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Cliff Beall - 12:44am May 18, 1998 ET (#4177 of 4179)

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

Back on subject, I see. Oh well, diversions can be fun for a while, but you are right. The subject is cloning and the question before us is what the FDA should do.

This is not, and should not be, automatic. Some inventions and/or discoveries may be judged by society to be undesirable. An extreme example would be the discovery of LSD. This discovery did not automatically convey the right to jump out of tall buildings.

I support regulation of assisted reproduction. If I live long enough, I may one day support the regulation of unassisted reproduction. The population explosion may force it.

Actually, developments appear to be moving much slower that I earlier believed they would. Three months ago, I would have tended to agree that things were moving rapidly. Now I am not so sure. Consider:

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Cliff Beall - 12:46am May 18, 1998 ET (#4178 of 4179)

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

Dolly was born on 5 July 1996 and announced in Nature on 27 February 1997.

On 24 July, 1997, PPL announced that Polly and Molly had been born. However, unlike Dolly, Polly and Molly were cloned from fetal cells. At the announcement, Dr. Wilmut said, " We fully expect that Polly and Molly will make factor IX in their milk after we induce lactation sometime early in 1998."

In August of 1997, ABS Global Inc. reported that a calf named Gene, cloned from fetal cells, had been born six months earlier. Concurrently, they reported that they had cows pregnant with clones from adult skin, udder and kidney cells from 10 different cows. According to Dr. Michael Bishop, the director of research and technology at ABS Global Inc., some of the cows were due "real soon."

In January, Dr. Seed announced plans to set up cloning clinics for human reproduction all over the country.

Also, in January, it was announced that Charlie, George and an unnamed calf, were "cloned from the cells of cow fetuses by two University of Massachusetts scientists, James and Steven Stice." Stice and Robl also reported that "two of their cows are well into pregnancies carrying fetuses that are cloned from adults."

Since then: nothing.

Furthermore, Dolly is the only birth that has been announced as being from an adult somatic cell. According to the Roslin site: 29 of the 277 reconstructed eggs "that appeared to have developed normally to the blastocyst stage were implanted into surrogate Scottish Blackface ewes. One gave rise to live lamb, Dolly, some 148 days later."

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Cliff Beall - 12:49am May 18, 1998 ET (#4179 of 4179)

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

However, in the 1/30 issue of science, even this was questioned. In a couple of months, Dolly will be two years old. If Dolly had been the breakthrough we were led to believe, it seems to me that there should have been a herd of Dollys by now. So far, there has not been an announcement of even a second Dolly. All the other clones of sheep or cattle, that have been announced, are from embryonic or fetal cells.

When we talk about human cloning for reproductive purposes, we are talking about cloning from adult somatic cells. It should also be noted that for technical reasons, described in the Science section of the Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, human cloning is expected to be more difficult than sheep cloning.

I am beginning to wonder if perhaps it may be a very long time--years, perhaps decades--before a human is successfully cloned.

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Sohail Zia - 12:52am May 18, 1998 ET (#4180 of 4182)

With all the intelligence in Nature, I can not deny my Creator; the Source.

We have reached to 4176 messages on this board. In view of the participants of this board, what change, the posts of different participants have carried, in our approach towards human cloning and its applications. How many remained unchanged having unsympathetic, material approach for yearning the benefits of science. Are these posts going to effect our society, how?

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Carl Nicolai - 05:49am May 18, 1998 ET (#4181 of 4182)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Ref.Cliff Beall - (#4177 of 4180)

In terms of abilities it is automatic. In terms of rights many times it automaticly extends pre existing rights.

The vast majority of these cases were when people were unknowingly given psychotropic, drugs particulary when put under what would normally be hi stress conditions.

Most of the true horror stories occured because the society as represented by the CIA and in some cases the millitary conducted human experments which ammounted to mental rape.

Since you use this example however, I would like to point out that the use of these substances did call into question other drugs including alcohol and coffee.

These "rights" questions are still being examined as the citizens of California have clearly expanded, by popular vote, the right of some very ill people to use them.

I think the Fed. Gov. is going to have to recognise these rights. Sooner would be better than later as the federal law is now being openly and totally violated by the advocates of these rights.

This is not good.

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Carl Nicolai - 06:19am May 18, 1998 ET (#4182 of 4182)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

To continue.

The only recent country that I know of to use large ammonnts of forceable abortion and sterilization while insisting that it is legal is China.

Individual reproductive rights have through most times and places been held inviolate. Societies which have not respected these rights have fallen, uasually violently.

Cliff, population controll by subjecting people to these procedures is not only inhuman but insane.

While "assested reproduction" can only be safely preformed by highly skilled people it may, perhaps, sometimes, in certain cases, be regulated by society in opposition to the wishes of individuals wishing to reproduce by these methods.

When cloning becomes so simple that people can be trained to clone themselves, forget it.

A good example is the sales of home pregnancy tests. I remember when only advanced labs at a large expence could do these tests.

Now how much controll should the FDA have over home pregnancy tests?

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Cliff Beall - 11:53pm May 18, 1998 ET (#4183 of 4184)

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

Sohail, interesting questions you asked. I would doubt that the existence of this board will have a profound effect on human society as a whole, since such a small portion of human society is represented. But it is fun to argue with the likes of Carl.

Okay, perhaps that was a bad example. The point I was trying to make is that it is not necessarily the case that a discovery or invention conveys additional "rights" to an individual even though it may convey additional abilities. Perhaps a better example is that the invention of a hand gun does not give an individual the "right" to shoot people, although I must agree that it does increase one's ability to do so.

Well, this is part of the "greater good" argument. Some time ago, Dawn used it effectively with respect to abortion, something that I generally oppose. You have used it here. The "greater good" argument is a very strong argument, in my opinion. It defeated prohibition, for example.

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Cliff Beall - 11:55pm May 18, 1998 ET (#4184 of 4184)

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

It does not take a great deal of scientific expertise to urinate on a strip and view a color change. Actually, a pregnancy test was never really high tech anyway. Exactly how much scientific expertise is needed to determine whether the rabbit died? That is not quite the level of expertise needed to perform nuclear transfer on a embryonic cell.

The FDA should insure that all pharmaceutical products are both safe and useful. If the product performs the function in a useful and safe manner, it should be allowed. If a particular product is found to be not useful (error prone: gives bad results?) or dangerous (chemicals used for the strip potentially explosive?), the manufacturer of the product should be forced to withdraw the product from the market, and, when appropriate, pay damages to the victims.

An exception to this would be when a person has a terminal illness. It does not make sense to deny such a sufferer the possible benefits of a potentially useful drug until after clinical tests has proven a product both safe and useful. Give it to them now and test later. And if such a patient is suffering great pain, I think that concern about the addictive effects of a pain killing drug can be terribly misplaced.

<Picture: Delete Message>

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Carl Nicolai - 12:51am May 19, 1998 ET (#4185 of 4185)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Cliff Beall - (#4185 of 4185)

The "greater good" argument is a very strong argument, in my opinion.

Ya. It's a pity that I am prohibited by my ethics from using it and must consider it as fallacious. In a democracy it is uasually an extention of the Ad-populum.

The FDA while not elected is very responsive to the feelings of the people in our society.

It is very well known that allowing open flames, or other high temptures to come into contact with meat fat produces carcinogens. So much so that if you introduced an equivelent ammount into food by any other method you would face chriminal sanctions.

Under their mandate the FDA must work to prevent parents from killing their children by poisoining them with charcoal broiled meat.

Now I like my charcoal broiled meat, so it could be argued that as an adult if I wish to kill myself by this method it is my right, but innocent clildren?

Woops! I forgot perhaps people would resent being told what not to feed their clildren if the poisoin is a part of the cultural herratige. It would not provide the greatest good for the greatest number.

I think the least the cowardly FDA should do is force warning labels on meat instead of lobying to get a law passed prohibiting clonning by adult nuclear transfer.

Cliff as you have pointed out it is not even been established that this can be done yet, and the proposed law wants to make the attempt illegal.

Greatest good for the greatest number? Who decides?

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Cliff Beall - 10:39pm May 19, 1998 ET (#4186 of 4187)

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

Ethics or not, you use it about as much as anyone. In view of your statement above, I shall be sure to point it out to you when you use it in the future :-) But hey, what's the problem? It works against you sometimes. Why not use it in your favor when you can?

Well, not always. Remember cyclamates? They were found to cause cancer in Canadian rats. As I recall, Johnny Carson had a field day with things that caused cancer in Canadian rats, and I don't think the public was ever fully convinced that cyclamates were really dangerous. But cyclamates were banned anyway.

However, when similar results were obtained in rats with saccharin, and they tried to ban saccharin also, they were forced to back down. As I recall, the argument was that saccharin had been used for years and there was absolutely no evidence that saccharin causes cancer in people. (And, for once, the sugar lobby did not prevail.)

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Cliff Beall - 10:58pm May 19, 1998 ET (#4187 of 4187)

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

I'm not sure of that Carl. I'm sure that Dawn would know (and Dawn should feel free to correct me if I am wrong), but I suspect that there are more carcinogens in the air, that we breath every day in any major city, than we will get from eating an occasional charcoal broiled steak or hamburger. I suspect charcoal broiled meat may very well cause cancer in Canadian rats however :-)

I think you are overstating the danger. Anyway, a person has to live. Some things, like a charcoal broiled steak, for example, are worth a moderate risk.

That is correct and, I think, rightfully so, when you are dealing with something as dangerous as cloning. With cloning, we are not talking about a theoretical statistical increased chance of having future health problems. With cloning--based on recent experience with animals--we are talking about a virtual certainty of immediate significant health problems in a majority of the clones.

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Dawn Willis - 02:19pm May 20, 1998 ET (#4188 of 4189)

Jeffrey W. I can't resist a response to your note, since I am well over ten years old and not quite an idiot. Bacterisa do NOT reproduce by mitosis, since they do not have nuclei--and therefore no centromeres, centrioles, microtubules, or spindle fibers, or any of the other organelles involved in the mitotic process. No S-phase, G1, M or G2. Bacteria replicate their single circular chromosome semi-conservatively and divide by binary fission. It's asexual, but it isn't mitosis.

I'll acknowledge that conjugation doesn't result in an additional organism right away. In conjugation DNA doesn't exchange reciprocally--it is a one way passage of DNA from the "male" or donor, to the recipient "female". The donor doesn't change its genetic complement at all, but the recipient incorporates some of the donor DNA to become a slightly different bug, which then goes on to divide by binary fission. So in a sense, two separate organisms have come together to create one new organism with genetic characteristics from both "parents." One parent strain continues as it was, the other disappears and the new one takes its place. When I took micro in grad school in the 60s, we were taught that this was a form of sexual reproduction, even though one of the "parents" disappeared in the process of creating the "offspring." But eventually you'll have zillions of bacteria with a new genetic complement derived from that of the two "parents," even if you don't have an additional organism at the immediate conclusion of conjugation. One of my professors even gave a lecture on the sex life of bacteria. Maybe bacterial sexuality is being taught differently these days. Tom Anderson, where are you?

Carcinogens in charcoal broiled meat, yes that is true. However, like saccharine (and cyclamate, to be honest) you aren't likely to consume enough of it to cause cancer. Most of us have great detoxifying and DNA repair systems, so our bodies can take lots of insults. We'd be better off ea

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Dawn Willis - 02:21pm May 20, 1998 ET (#4189 of 4189)

. We'd be better off eating less meat, charcoaled or not, but I'm not a vegetarian. The absolute worse carcinogen in the world is tobacco smoke, which is legal and likely to remain so. I suppose that if tobacco were not legal, organized crime would spring up around it. Better to tax it and use the money to treat the cancer patients or fund more cancer research. I don't even mind funding daycare centers.

Guess this all far afield from cloning, but there hasn't been much news on the cloning front lately!

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s. schmidt - 10:47pm May 20, 1998 ET (#4190 of 4191)

Dawn,

My micro class and this years medical micro class support your discussion of the conjugation of an F+ with an F- bacteria (or HFr which ever you prefer). Along with conjugation there is also, as I am sure that you are aware, transduction and transformation. Both of these processes also aid in increasing the genetic diversity of bacteria.

Jeff

"I feel like I'm trying to explain this to a chimp."

Please get your facts straight concerning mitosis before you climb onto that high horse of yours.

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Cliff Beall - 11:55pm May 20, 1998 ET (#4191 of 4191)

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

Dawn Willis: The absolute worse carcinogen in the world is tobacco smoke

Unfortunately, I smoke. This is really off the subject, but, as you said, there hasn't been much news on the cloning front lately. And Carl didn't post.

I have quit a number of times. Once, I quit for thirty days. Every day was worse than the day before. I couldn't stand myself, and nobody could stand to be around me. Some time later, after I had started again, I talked to a guy in the plant who had quit for five years. I asked him how long it had taken for him to totally lose the craving. He said he still wanted a cigarette. I admire his will power. When it comes to smoking, I seem to have none at all.

Smoking is no fun. Unlike other drugs like alcohol and pot, there is no high from smoking tobacco --merely a release from anxiety and craving from not smoking. I no longer smoke in the house since my wife has asthma, and it would bother her asthma. In the winter time, I smoke in the garage. Otherwise, I mainly smoke on the back porch. At least my smoking doesn't adversely affect her health any more, although I am sure that it contributed to her having asthma in the first place. So far, I have not suffered any significant health problems, personally, but I figure it is just a matter of time. I particularly hate to see young people smoke. But who am I to tell anyone not to smoke?

I am scheduled for a physical on June 1. I have read about Bupropion (Zyban), and may ask my doctor for a prescription. I haven't yet decided. I get so depressed when I start thinking about quitting.

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Carl Nicolai - 05:10am May 21, 1998 ET (#4192 of 4194)

Located in Taipei Taiwan

Its been a number of years since I have read about the dangers of animal fat and excessive heat. My understanding is that the danger is a lot greater when nitrates are used to preserve it such as in bacon.

My point is that the FDA is largely motivated by political issues and does not just use a scientific or logical basis on resource allocation in many areas.

BTW I beleive that a purple (?) fungus that grows on peanuts contains the most dangerous carcinogen known to man possibly excluding plutonium.

I hope I at least have that strait.

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Thomas Wohlford - 02:29pm May 21, 1998 ET (#4193 of 4194)

I won't attempt to "know" what yall are talking about with all the technical jargon and nomenclature, but, I would like to express my opinion on cloning. I see this as a case of art imitating life as described by author Alvin Toffler in "Future Shock." Our technology has out-paced our ability to cope with it. We stand to reap many benefits from cloning, but, our religious and cultural mores are in direct conflict with this burgeoning technology. There's the rub. How do we proceed with cloning technology? Do we pursue the infinite possibilities and deal with the ramifications later, or, do we proceed with the technology with experimentation-result-experimentation-social impact-medical discovery-type process? Sorry for being vague, but, the point is, this technology is destined to proceed, not cease. From all the concerns I've read about the subject, they seem centered on the process of discovery pre-empting ethical and moral standards. Few scientists have made success stories from research without public concensus. Funding gets dropped, the governement (the FDA in this case) becomes involved and voilla, projects are canned and the technololgy withers and dies. Cloning is a real hot-bed and the players are big, powerful, and profit-minded. I would hate to see our lives and loved ones lives prevented from having potentially life-saving remedies, i.e., cloned human replacement organs and such, simply because some moralistic fanatics said it was against God's law. Alternately, I would hate to see the pursuit of profit driving and marketing technology that is unsafe and against God's law. What do you do? Thanks!

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Henry Chinaski - 04:51pm May 21, 1998 ET (#4194 of 4194)

Thomas Woolford - This is a capatalistic society we live in. So what if profits are made from human cloning. That is what drives competition. As long as this means there might be a liver available when I need one well I say let the competition begin.

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Cliff Beall - 12:02am May 22, 1998 ET (#4195 of 4196)

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

That is our system of government, Carl. The FDA is responsive to the congress, which, in turn, is responsive to the people. You will never get away from that in a democracy, and I would not want it any other way. The necessity of gaining the consent of the people may be inconvenient at times, but it is worth it. As long as a majority of the people want to retain most of the freedoms that we consider desirable--and they have for over two hundred years--the chances of our retaining those fundamental freedoms we cherish is strong.

I think the technology is a lot more difficult than you seem to think, and progress is much slower. We shall see how fast the technology develops in the future.

Animal cloning is not being impeded by any government that I know of. However, this technology is very difficult, and significant progress is needed before human cloning should be seriously considered. The technology is simply not ready.

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Cliff Beall - 12:24am May 22, 1998 ET (#4196 of 4196)

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

Well, at least they are profit minded. Most will probably go out of business.

I don't think that will happen. I have confidence in people. Once they have the information they need for an informed judgement, they generally do okay.

I certainly have concern for the "unsafe" part. With respect to "God's law," I assume you must refer to some level of ethics or morals with which I may be able to relate. However, I am an agnostic, and I prefer to discuss those things specifically without recourse to such phrases as "God's law." I think this phrase may mean different things to different people. In what sense do you mean "God's law"?

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Marvin James McCharles - 01:45pm May 22, 1998 ET (#4197 of 4201)

I, Marvin James McCharles, do hereby call for the bombardment of, and for counter-terrorism against, any and all laboratories, and any and all scientists, doctors, etc., currently involved in any and all cloning of organic life whatsoever.

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Charles S. Gasser - 02:44pm May 22, 1998 ET (#4198 of 4201)

A previous post says "

I, Marvin James McCharles, do hereby call for the bombardment of, and for counter-terrorism against, any and all laboratories, and any and all scientists, doctors, etc., currently involved in any and all cloning of organic life whatsoever."

There are several problems with this post. First, it would seem to be advocating violence and thus does not conform with the rules for posting. I would hope that CNN would remove it from this group. In addittion, "bombardment" would seem to be a terrorist act. "Counter-terrorism" would be a means of combatting such an act. The poster is clearly confused as he proposes attacking labs and blocking such attacks in a single sentence! Second, ALL citrus orchards, apple orchards, cherry orchards, peach orchards, plum orchards, avacado orchards, grape arbors and almost all other woody fruit plantations consist ENTIRELY of cloned plants. The process of cloning has been used for propagation of fruit species for centuries! Should all of these be destroyed? If you abhore cloning then, as a first step, you should stop eating all fruits which come from trees and suffer the consequences. Each time you grow yeast to make bread (or beer) you are performing a cloning reaction as yeast reproduces by simple fission producing a large culture of clones. Better cut these out too. The list goes on and on. Cloning is not new - there are just some new applications!

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M. J. McCharles - 03:24pm May 22, 1998 ET (#4199 of 4201)

Since when am I calling for two seperate acts in one sentence? In as much as cloning of organic life is a known form of terrorism.