Well we already have pigs with human growth factor genes in them. We also have an implantable matrix of pig liver cells with a barrier that prevents the human immune system from reacting against them.

We have also in many cases build a body of "common knowledge" that is absolutely false or misleading that as such, damages human rationality.

As a very good example, I was, like everyone else in the west, taught that Gutenberg invented the movable type press. It took me until the age of 45 to find out that in fact the Chinese had build a movable type press some 600 years earlier.

That particular lie, is still being propagated for some inane reason and among other things has led to a british survey of the most influential people of the millennium to include him as the inventor.

In many cases our basic law itself is corrupted by lies and deliberate misinformation concerning the true state of life itself and human life in particular.

Once you can look at them they are not weird possibilities but point out the existence of much important underlying scientific principles involved instead of the pap many of our educators feed our culture in order to preserve the status quo.

Or are you saying that it is ok to know the truth as long as it is not spoken? Is it a world class "state secret" that mosaic humans naturally occur?

First, Carl, I believe it was Solomon who said there is nothing new under the sun. That the Chinese may have been the first to invent a movable type press does not significantly detract from Gutenberg's achievement.

Otherwise I enjoyed both of your recent posts until the very end of the last one. I must admit that you slammed me me pretty hard with "it is ok to know the truth as long as it is not spoken."

Unfortunately, I can not complain that your treatment was unfair. I re-read what I said and, true enough, it does appear that I said what you said I said. Sorry about that. I know how I feel when somebody tries to shut me up :-)

Unfortunately, I can not complain that your treatment was unfair. I re-read what I said and, true enough, it does appear that I said what you said I said. Sorry about that. I know how I feel when somebody tries to shut me up :-)

Well I get a little carried away by how much of the true state of life, including the human existence, has been skewed to fit into the basic religious, social, and legal institutions of the Western culture.

Cloning and genetic engineering are showing us how ill prepared our society is to accept ideas that just a few years were science fiction.

The Frankenstein Complex is thriving in Europe and is fairly strong in the US.

Please forgive my barbarian tendencies of argument style.

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

Ok every player has to do a sheep and a steer.

Pigs seem good for liver replacement, which is a real problem.

Simians are next???

My dog just got a full set of vaccinations and a tiny id chip implanted in her neck tissue. I wanted one but it was suggested that it might be dangerous. My comment was "then how come you are doing it to my dog.?"

I recently heard about a 2 million donation to some scientists to clone the family dog. Sounds like a real good way to advance the field at the expense of emotional rich people.

Is doublemint gum the result of a cloning exspearmint?

;-)

The following appears to be an excellent site for cloning information:

Great link thanks.

Query

Will countries that develop and utilize the technology of cloning human beings gain any advantages over those that do not?

Ken, what kind of "advantage" are you thinking of?

Cliff Beall - Saturday, 09/25/99, 12:36:39am (#709 of 709)

Intellectual advantages. Raise the average IQ of the population and you will have better negotiators, leaders, planners, producers, etc.

Physical advantages. Stronger, more enduring military units.

Let's not forget Hitler's plan for a super race.

You create sheep with more wool, and I will create warriors with more muscles. Tomorrow, your sheep will be my sheep.

Well my sheep have been designed to have a default gene that makes their hair fall out if not given a complex bio substance.

In your haste to design warriors you neglected to consider the engineering trade off of strength for longevity.

They are now being informed that they will die a slow death at 30 and that it was your fault. If I were you I'd find a place to hide.

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

It is beginning to look like things in the human genome are a lot more complex than estimated.

I still want to do more research on the introns or non expressed genetic material as there is IMHO more hidden wealth there.

Maybe it is just that as a cryptologist it seems a more challenging code. Playing with exons seems to be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Carl Nicolai - Sunday, 09/26/99, 3:43:27am (#711 of 711)

Tnx for the link. Amusing company name - Incyte.

Absolutely in agreement. Mistakes can be made and will be made.

Some people are concerned about the prospects of cloning human beings. Many people want it banned. We could not depend upon the entire world to honor such a moratorium. There are always those who would put their own interests first. If some countries do ban the practice, will they be putting themselves at a disadvantage?

As you have pointed out, disasters are lurking in deep shadows -- inhumane disasters. Of course, nature also manages to produce a number of inhumane disasters.

Who better to play with the code? Nature? Man? Both?

I believe that utmost caution is warranted in this regard. It could prove disasterious to all of us. An simple unknown could be deadly. Permutations might be the cause of many serious viruses we now have in our midst, and the side efffects could be very well enormous. I think there is as well a larger moral issue in this regard.

I think we are often simply guessing.

Just cruising right past all of the technical and economic problems that an producing an army of bio-engineered super-soldiers presents; Would this army even be something to fear?

Will you super-soldier be able to walk through a cloud of sarin gas? Will s/he not evaporate in a nuclear fireball? Can s/he not be effectively countered by a scrawny ten year old boy with 2 kilos of C-5 in his lunch pail?

Bioengineering to develope economic advantagous traits, with cloning to fix these traits in a wide genome, will be a factor in the marketplace, but people, by and large, won't be fussing with the human genome much. This will be the result of both rational and religious fear.

Religion tells one not to mess with the image of the creator. Whether we agree with this or not, we do need to acknowledge the power and popularity of this messgae.

Rationality tells us that modifying our own code is dangerous. Ask a linux hobbiest what happens when you modify the kernal too much. Bear in mind that you can not just re-install the human genome from CD when the functioning version has been lost.

Keith Fosberg - Monday, 09/27/99, 8:03:31am (#714 of 714) "Bear in mind that you can not just re-install the human genome from CD when the functioning version has been lost."

One backs up one's functioning version. Then one makes copies, changes, tests, progress.

As for the religious, they will most certainly protest. They protest abortion; but the beat goes on. Would the protest against competing with the creator have any more effect than the protest against destroying the creator's children as they lie innocent in the womb?

Mankind does not refuse to utilize his technological developments.

They will accept change in easy stages, whining all the way, but accepting nevertheless. Startle them and they will freeze in pace.

As to the practicle argument: I advocate great caution on two fronts;

1. My car suggest that our engineering skills, on the whole, could stand review
2. Creating "backups" may provide a "safety net" for the genome, but not for the individual.

Although there certainly will come a day when we redesign our bodies at will, I think that cosmetic and cautious inertia will preclude dramatic changes to the human genome for the near future.

Keith Fosberg - Tuesday, 09/28/99, 11:07:24am

I think that cosmetic and cautious inertia will preclude dramatic changes to the human genome for the near future.

A few will venture forward. Where there is success, the masses will follow. Then the mistakes will become evident.

Using cloning to fool the human body into accepting xenoplants seem to be a lot more acceptable than manufacturing headless human clones.

Maybe Cliff or Dawn will comment on this.

I just returned from very provocative meeting in DC concerning human embryonic stem cell research. Although my organization backed out of a patient's advocacy group about this issue, we remain interested in its potential. A deal has been struck in the Senate not to bring the issue up until next year. The House was considering attaching the Dickey amendment, which would ban federal funds for all human embryonic stem cell research, to the Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill, but at last count decided not to do so. Mainly, many members of Congress are not yet sure how all this will play in Peoria. The Catholic Right to Life organization has been put in the very strange (for them) position of advocating for federal funding of fetal tissue research rather than embryonic research. Their reasoning is that abortion is legal, and the fetus is dead anyway, whereas a living embryo must be destroyed for the research to begin. Never mind that the donors have decided to destroy it anyway, one way or another. Nobody really knows if the embryonic cells will be more useful than the fetal germ cells, without some research. But Geron will probably do some research on their own, just not the basic stuff that will answer questions of human development or whether cancer is a stem cell disease.

I also heard rumors that there may be some wiggle-room among the scientifically inclined Catholic clergy as to whether an IVF produced embryo is entitled to the full status of a human being, because without medical intervention the embryo will never become a fetus. Of course, a Papal edict could end that argument but John Paul hasn't weighed in on this issue yet.

Carl, Geron, via their association with the Roslyn Institute (the Dolly cloners), is proceeding apace with human somatic cell nuclear transfer--but since they are a private company it is all hush-hush. Federal funds can't be used for that research, but no one has actually called to criminalize it yet.

The somatic cell transfer would obviously solve any problems of organ/cell replacement rejection, and Geron has promised not to implant any of the clones in a uterus. However, we are a long way from building complex organs such as livers, and genetic engineering of pigs as described in the NYT article actually has a lot of promise in the near future. The pigs can be engineered to be universal (or nearly so) organ donors for livers and maybe other organs. Since we do eat pigs, I'd much rather have a pig transplant than a primate one. We've been using pig heart valves to replace defective human ones for years, and I don't see a lot of difference between using pig heart valves and pig livers. The pig has to go either way. Most people who got the valves were glad to get them.

Dawn Willis - Sunday, 10/03/99, 1:08:25pm (#719 of 720)

This was probably a press report and they mangle this stuff up completely but it is defined. Once an egg is fertilized conception has occured and a child is present and is entitled to full human dignity. IVF is opposed because of several reasons. 1) it is an abberation from the natural conjugal conception; 2) more eggs are fertilized than are used leaving some to be destroyed by research or simple disposal; 3) multiple egg implants are required to ensure one takes place and the others die and often if more than one implants the others are aborted. I read about the case that sparked the press on this issue recently. Two couples who claim they are Catholics are fighting over their frozen kids. He wants to destry she wants to implant they both claim they are good Catholics and the Church supports their side. Well if they are 'good' Catholics why did they use IVF which is specifically proscribed? And the Church is now saying that the children deserve the chance for life the mother wants.

Bill, the Catholic church doesn't condone IVF, but Catholic couples are not excommunicated if they use it. They probably are if they destroy the embryos, however. Apparently, the Catholic Church has never said that "ensoulment" begins with the union of sperm and egg. They said that since it was impossible to tell when the soul entered the conceptus, it was best to take The most conservative position. There has been no papal encyclical about the status of embryos that are created outside a woman's body. Are they human beings or are must they be implanted to gain that status? It is estimated that 45-70% of fertilized eggs fail to implant--a big waste of souls, if you ask me.

Hey Keith

But Linus does it all the time! I'm looking forward to the 2.4 kernel myself. Maybe humans will have version numbers in the future :-)

Seriously, I don't think "superhumans" should be a goal, more like "disease free" humans. Many diseases are genetically based and the implications of genetic engineering for human health are enormous.

I think Ken is correct when he says:

Just as the "nuclear genie" is out of the bottle, so is the genetic genie. Good or bad there is no going back.

Dawn

:-] Agreed.

Regards

Blair

This is further confounded by the fact that more and more techniques of cloning are possible. Does every nucleated cell in my body possess a soul?

If we agree that egg cells are not human as such, and every cell in my body is not a soul carrying human, and I can combine the two to create a being obviously human, at least at birth, then when did the soul creation for that unique human take place?

Forgetting the organized religious groups and political considerations for a while, there is no religion or at least not a monotheistic one I am aware of that can deal with humans creating life in other than by the conventional methods. The only thing we have is the fear and loathing of abominations of nature.

The emerging set of capabilities have no secular law, scant religious law and a truly vital interest for all humanity. Our history in regard to the discovery of other technologies such as atomic energy gives us only a glimpse of the moral dilemmas in store. Even that is littered with unfulfilled promise and huge amounts of fear. (much of it rational)

Recently we have witnessed the easy accumulation of weapons of mass destruction by a religious cult in Japan. It seem logical to assume we may also see the rise of a religious cults possessing the technologies of mass creation in the near future.

Dawn Willis - Friday, 10/08/99, 1:54:56pm (#722 of 724)

Excommunication is an ecclestical penalty and not often used. IT is not a bearing on the seriousness of the sin in question. If you read the New Catechism there are sins and serious sins (a serious or grave sin is one condition needed for a mortal sin).

From the CCC 2319. "Every human life, from the moment of CONCEPTION until death, is sacred because the human person has been willed for its own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God. "

That is God's to judge and we commend those souls to the God who is infinite in his mercy.

While I am not adamantly agaist human cloning. However, with the exception of stem cell and organ donor research, I can see no pressing need to add more people (cloned or otherwise) to the face of the earth.

The pursuit of a 'superhuman' or even a genetically modified human is frought with peril as I have little faith in our ability to reliably fix a 'buggy' genetic code, or to create a human version of bug-free genetic code (The genetic code is just too much like a very complex computer program for us to 'get it right' on the first try).

On the other hand, using cloning to recover now-extinct species seems like a pretty good idea, even though the members of the recovered species most likely will not have the identical combination of DNA and mitochondria that the original creatures possessed. It would still be worthwhile to recover animals like the carrier pidgeon, the moa, and the blau buck.

Bill Clawson - Monday, 10/18/99, 2:38:53am (#726 of 726):

My major concern is the size of the gene pool we can expect the cloning of extinct species to produce. After all, they're all dead, so it's not like we have a huge amount of DNA to work with, do we? What would the resulting inbreeding mean for the cloned species?

Quintin H. Stone:

Point well taken. It might end up being a 'last hurrah' for the extinct species, but it would still be interesting. On the other hand, if there were enough representative tissue samples in various museums, etc., it could still end up being a viable way of regenerating a species.

One other problem might be that once species recovery became more common-place, the political effort to preserve viable populations in the wild might wain, which would be a disaster of course.

Hey all.

Apart from some scientific research value, what would be the point of cloning extinct species. If they have been extinct for any extended period the ecosystems they are from would likely have already adjusted to thier absence, so reintroducing them to the wild might be just as disruptive as losing them was.

Also, plant and animal species have become extinct for millions of years before man came along. Why do we think it is appropriate to try to "freeze" the status quo now. I know we may lose plants and animals that have valuable attributes such as pharmaceuticals, and I don't advocate wanton destruction, but the lengths we go to to preserve some seemingly "unimportant" species amazes me.

Later

Blair

Except for the moa, which would be 'cool' to bring back because it was a 3 or 4 meter tall bird (and must have been good eating because the maori drove them into extinction), the other species disappeared in modern times due to overhunting. I hadn't considered releasing them into the wild. Certainly if you brought back anything that has died out from the far past and introduced it into the outside world, you would be upsetting the current balance of nature, and might easily be responsible for some other species' extinction as a consequence.

There may be some species for which this would not be a problem, such as some of the galopagos tortoises. Still, your point is well taken.

Bringing back the Moa, even if it were limited to zoos or farms, I still think would be fun and probably quite tasty as well. The Moa being a 3 or 4 meter tall bird that was eaten into extinction by the Maori.

B Steenerson - Tuesday, 10/19/99, 12:16:55am (#729 of 732)

Two others.. Entertainment... Zoo's would kill for that kind of attraction. Consumption Mammoth might be tasty, the Hide may be virtually indestructable... we don't know for sure yet, not until we try.

Bill

Fair enough, I wouldn't mind a trip to Jurassic Park myself. Many extinct species would not have so much entertainment value as a mammoth though.

I here it tastes like chicken. :-)

Seriously, I have no problem with cloning, in fact I think it holds much promise in raising animals for organ donations, and in farming and other such things, but I don't think it is necessary to turn back time by resurecting species for no other reason than "we can".

I saw a story recently about a species of bat which is threatened by logging in the central US, and logging activities have been suspended as a result, causing hardship to many. My response is "who cares?". Nobody's life will be any worse if these bats do indeed disappear tommorow. Species become extinct every day despite our trying to make it not so. We cannot freeze this moment in time - despite what I'm sure are best intentions.

Yes, we are the cause of many of these extinctions, but we must accept that as part of the drastic changes we are making to our ecosystem. Life goes on (just not for the bats).

Now, of course if we can just clone the bats back in to existence on a whim, maybe losing them won't be such a big deal to so many people, but my original question stands, what would be the point?

I agree with you there. Part of mankind's success as a species is a result of the never-ending quest for more knowledge, and you do indeed never know until you try.

All the best

Blair

Blair:

I'm not sure I would agree with your expendable bat theory. Yes, species go extinct naturally, but you have to make an extremely good argument for forcing a species to go extinct for the sake of human progress.

For instance cutting down old growth forests in the northwest US, thereby forcing the extinction of species therein, is a somewhat bad policy because much of the forest in the area was already converted into tree farms earlier this century. So the economic need to cut down the old growth forests is essentially non-existent. If species are supposed to go extinct to satisfy human greed, I have to say, "Sorry, greed goes, species stay."

I don't know anything about logging in the Central U.S., but if the bat in question is going extinct because someone is practicing unsustainable logging in the bat's forest, then my sympathy goes to the bat.

I'm not sure which species of bat you are discussing... but as it is a North American bat I assume it is an insectivore. Bats are extremely important in the control of insect populations.

Though some shrug and say "Who cares if we lose a species of bat", it is a dangerous position to take. We rely on many reptiles, birds, amphibians, and bats to control insect populations that can carry serious human disease. The increase in acid rain has already been shown to cause a serious disruption to egg development of amphibians such as frogs that help to control insects. The use of pesticides has caused a loss in bird populations. Losing all these species could very well lead to a resurgance of insect related health problems for humans. We already know that the use of pesticides is a useless human technique for insect control... biological controls such as bats, birds, and frogs are much better... but if we lose them... we are going to wake up to more serious problems than just the loss of a species here and there.

Hey all

Bill C

We do it quite often with no argument. The nature of human progress today is very disruptive to the habitats of many species. As I said earlier, I don't advocate wanton destruction, but neither do I think we should go back to living in caves. Some species are going to suffer in the furtherance of our interest, that's just the way it is. We should try to minimise the impact, but not at all costs.

Debbie

Maybe the bat wasn't the best analogy (though it is only one of many species of bats in the US, and of course a species with a limited population - read endangered), however my point remains that we cannot try to preserve every species at all costs. The nature of life on earth is naturally dynamic. We cannot and should not try to make it artificially static.

Plants and animals that don't have the support of special interest groups are allowed to go extinct without a thought. The criteria we use for deciding which animals to try to preserve and which ones to ignore is in many cases based as much on emotion or politics as on scientific objectivity.

My thoughts on this matter may not be politically correct, but then I am more of a realist than an idealist.

Best regards to all.

Blair

Why not? Cloning a mammoth would be great fun. And I would suppose that adequate and reasonable compensation might be had for one's trouble. I can not imagine much of an objection from anyone, and I would suppose that most everyone would want to see one. Assuming it is actually possible to clone a mommoth from the cells they have acquired, I think it is just a matter of time until it is done. And why not?

Does this have anything to do with the prehistoric mammoth found in Russia frozen in ice?

There was a movie about 20 years ago called "Coma". Although it didn't deal with cloning, it dealt with human spare parts. But here is what I see in about 10 years, humans can be cloned. And so what you do is go to this massive warehouse holding your 20 clones in suspension (just like the movie). It is being kept alive with the appropriate intravenous solutions. Is your liver, heart, knee, eye, or anything else going bad on you? Go to your clone and have it cut-out and placed in you. Afterall, I suspect there should be no rejection, the genetic make-up should be the same. So hey, let's approve cloning, I am sure the clone would have the same "rights" as an unborn fetus, none.

In the not too distant future, I believe we will look back on the latter half of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st century.

What this 20/20 hindsight will show will be that there were many, many scientific breakthroughs that should not have been attempted based simply on the fact that we "could."

Genetic engineering & cloning are like opening Pandora's Box. We stand on the brink of unleashing something horrible on ourselves,

This is not really cloning. It is simply forcing the production of twins. They took a fertilized egg, and split it in two, thus producing twin monkeys. The fact that one of the embryos was then transferred to a surrogate mother is purely incidental.

Cloning is when you replace the DNA of a fertilized egg with the DNA retrieved from any cell from another animal, thus producing an offspring with the same DNA as the donor.

Regarding Cloning and genetic engineering

I believe this should go ahead with as little constraints as possible. I for one would like to live longer with quality of life being the priority. If someone else has ethical dilemas with this then they can die naturally and leave the earth to the ones who want to enjoy it.

All this talk of Big Brother, "1984", eugenics, and God getting angry with us taking for taking control of our destiny is a waste of mortal time.

It seems to be "natural" for humans to expand their knowledge base and enjoy what's here on earth and out there in the universe. It would be completely stupid to let all this slip by because of "ethics".

There's much pleasure and knoweledge to be had. Let use it, enjoy it and celebrate it.

We're not stuck in the Dark Ages with superstitious ideas. Lets move on as fast as we can. Just do it.

CYA

In response to the message posted by Greg Nexuth:

Even if you can dismiss the ethical issues surrounding cloning technology (which you can't ... but for the sake of argument), there is another point which comes to my mind whenever cloning is mentioned.

Cloning, if abused or overused, can pose a very serious threat to the survival of our species. Overpopulation has been observed as a potential problem for years (as far back as I can tell since Darwin's time). Unaided, our population already increases at an exponential rate. If we use our technological advances to artificially prolong life indefinitely -- which is, incidentally, what is being touted as the major benefit of cloning -- disastrous results are not hard to imagine as the world's resources deplete, environmental strains become environmental crises, and we all turn clausterphobic.

There comes, at some point, a time when quantity (that is, how long you live) must be sacrificed for quality (how well you live). Cloning for the purpose of postponing death in any number of imaginable ways is extremely short sighted in this regard.

Tetra is not a clone

Tetra is the name of a monkey reported on first page on CNN website right now. It made by a typical embryonic technique termed "embryo splitting". The scientific sense of Tetra is far away less by comparing her to Dolly. Dolly, is the sheep which was the first truly animal clone produced by a evolutionary approach called "nuclear transfer".

1. Tetra is not a truly clone. Because, the spliced other three parts did not make lives, so Tetra is just one survivor from an damaged partial embryo. There is none identical clone in this world today for Tetra. In scientifically term, Tetra also is not a clone for her either side parent. Her entire genomic pool is half and half coming from her father and mother. Her is from a fertilized egg! For this point, it is exactly like all of the other monkey in this plant. The news reported in CNN and other media today, said "Researchers clone monkey by splitting embryo", this title is wrong, at least is a misleading for the most readers.

2. At the very early embryonic stage, every individual cell are multiple potential and can make an entire embryo, this was a piece knowledge in college textbooks in the early of this century.

3. Embryo splitting was an old technique which successfully obtained identical twins in donkey published at SCIENCE in early of 80s, if I remember correctly.

4. The sheep Dolly, was made from an single adult cell, but not an egg or sperm, and was from a 5 years old sheep. So Dolly is truly genetically identical clone for the donor sheep. The sense of Dolly is not just a techniques to produce animal clone, it shakes the fundament conceptions of Biology.

In sum, Tetra is not a clone, but this old technique making Tetra which possible has potential to make genetically identical clone, This event did not happen in the paper published in today's issue of the journal of Science.

Aldous Huxley wrote about embryo splitting in his book, "Brave New World," back in 1932 (a fun book to read too). I agree with Yin-Xiong Li. Technically Tetra is not a clone.

Karen, an indefinitely extended life is not a problem if the people who choose it (such as myself) do not have kids. Overpopulation is a problem, but one that is be solved by economic development. As people earn more money and live better life-styles, they have fewer kids. Italy is a perfect example of this. 30 years ago Italy had the highest birth-rate in the world. Today, they have among the lowest.

Birth control, not restriction of life extension technology, is the proper and ethical method to solve the population explosion problem. Also, I will argue that humanity has a future onle if we do have indefinitely long life-spans, because if you know that you will be around in the year 3000 (like I do) then you will be more concerned about the state of the Earth than someone who does not plan to live for very long.

If life is not a crime, then why is it punishable with death? Physical immortality is not short-sighted, but is the most long-sighted goal I can think of.

Karen--as an English philosopher once said, "Life in nature is nasty, brutish, and short." Half of the population living in developed nations today might not have made it through childhood without antibiotics and vaccines. Are you opposed to drugs to lower cholesterol or blood pressure? Cardiac bypass surgery? Treatment of cancer? All prolong life artificially.

Contrary to Kurt, I don't want to live forever (since I have already produced two children and one grandchild), I do want to live in good health for another 25 years or so. The significance of the the monkey work is that it has the potential of creating a strain of identical monkeys in which to carry out organ regeneration using embryonic or other pluripotent stem cells. Once all of the details of this technique are worked out in monkeys, humans are the next logical step. We've had genetically identical mouse strains for years, but monkeys are more like humans in their genetics and cell development.

Although life extension technologies have been good for each of us as individuals, I'm very concerned with the role such technologies may have in human population growth. We are a species that is out of equilibrium with our environment (due to our cleverness) and our environment and the other species of the world are suffering because of it.

So when people tout great medical advances, I always temper that news with the thought that we continue to avoid the sticky issues of the control of human population growth.

I think there is a balancing act we need to adhere to if we are to be responsible stewards of this planet .. as we advance technologies that make life better for the individual, we also need to be conscious of, and deal with, the consequences those technologies have on our own population growth and the lives of our earthly co-inhabitants.

I find cloning technology interesting, especially for extinct species recovery, but the idea of human cloning on any large scale strikes me as very unlikely.

Dawn: Actually yes, I am opposed to using drugs for the purpose of lowering cholesterol or blood pressure. In fact, I am rather vehemently opposed to using drugs to even alleviate a headache. I think that most drugs are prescribed and used *way* too hastily when (especially in the case of things like blood pressure, cholesterol levels, migraines, allergies, etc) lifestyle changes make a way more sense than drugs ever did. I also believe that as a society our dependence on drugs is consequently extremely heavy -- too heavy -- which serves only to make us weaker as a whole.

This is off the topic though (and against the rules ;>) Basically, your question is where I draw the line at "artificially extending life" -- it's a hard call, and a slippery slope, but I don't think it is unfair to draw the line at organ regeneration and cloning. Calling genetically identical strains of mice a precedent for creating genetically identical strains of humans is an insult to the quality of human life. We are all given one shot at life and I think that what you describe as "the next logical step" is nothing different from cheating.

I agree with Bill when he makes the distinction between improving the quality of life of the individual and improving that of the population as a whole. In this case, one comes at the sacrifice of the other. I understand and appreciate how sensitive an issue this becomes when we start talking about denying our loved ones or ourselves a treatment or a course of action made available by modern technological advances which could potentially make us healthy or postpone death indefinitely. This is why I believe that a human should *never* *ever* be cloned. I don't think that this should *ever* *ever* be made a possibility ... because then each and every one of us will be in a position of deep deep deep conflict of interest in which most of would be helpless to think of anything but our individual will to survive.

Karen, the production of the genetically identical monkeys isn't a prelude to genetically identical humans as much as genetically identical organs. In transplantation research, it helps a lot to not have to deal with graft rejection. Researchers are learning to regenerate new tissues with stem cells (embryonic or maybe bone marrow) that can theoretically make or repair any organ. No one is suggesting cloning real people as organ donors. Will someone ever clone him or herself? Probably, but it will be very expensive and thus confined to the most wealthy and egotistical.

Following a healthy lifestyle is great, but doesn't always work. People with juvenile diabetes would all be dead at around age 4 without insulin, no matter what kind of diet they ate. Rather than checking their sugarlevels and getting insulin injections every four hours, organ cloning will give them new beta cells for their pancreas. Spinal cord injury victims like Christopher Reeve may walk again. I just can't think this is a bad thing. Fewer births is the answer to overpopulation, not more deaths.

I'm willing to go on record for being an strong supporter of genetically engineering humans. Yes it is like Pandoras box and there will be mistakes but I see it as inevitable and here's why.

In the US or any first world country I doubt that anyone would ever be allowed to engineer humans but pets are OK. Imagine a dog or cat that lived not 13 years but 50 or more and was smart enought to understand human language. You could sell cloned puppies in New York tomorrow at 10K each if you had them. The US alone spends 2 billion on pet care each year. That is more than enough money to get this started.

Once super puppy or whatever is common then the same technology that applied to them applies with minor variation to other mammals. In the third world you have parents desperate to survive in the face of starvation, disease, and sheer economic irrelevance. All it would take is one scientist to take the cell of a super model and doctor it up to have the disposition of Einstein and superior survivability. Splitting the embyro is easy so thousands of copies could be made for next to no cost. If there is any truth to a genetic advantage then these children will be taken seriously for the economic potential they provide.

The future is bright if you are skilled , smart, and well tempered. Why is it reasonable to expect those vastly less fortunate not to use everything at their disposal to have their children reach that. That their children will not look like them is nothing compared to who they are loyal to.

Karen, I'll take as many shots at life as I damn well please. My life is my own business and it is not for another person to ever, ever decide for me how I live my life or what technologies I you to enhance it. Your life is your business and my life is my business. Don't even think of arguing with this.

BTW, all of this stuff like the green-house effect are nothing but lies and fabrications made up by people who are bent on stealing our economic (not to mention personal) freedoms. I don't pay any attention to it all. The envionmentalists are nothing but a bunch of luddites who have nothing positive to contribute to the world. They're full of it and I refuse to listen to them at all.

I have no serious moral dilemmas regarding cloning, human or otherwise, and I'm not a dyed in the wool tree-hugger, but you don't have to be rocket scientist to figure out that the growth of humanity poses a serious threat to the health of the planet and consequently to ourselves. Maybe I'm just one of those humanity-hating luddite types, but I doubt it.

Kurt, on what basis do you say that. I am not totally convinced of it either, in case you are wondering. For example, it does seem strange to me that if man was the cause of of the hole in the ozone layer, why is it located over the south pole? Not very many humans in the area of the globe, you know.

Still, I am not sure your statement is completely justified. Of course, as an agnostic, I am not sure of too much of anything :-)

Have a nice evening.

Cliff Beall,

The agnostic comment was very very funny. Thanks.

Dawn:

There are no guarantees that human cloning will be confined to the rich and conceited. New technologies are always expensive when they first hit the market, but given enough time, and given the relative effortlessness of cloning once the technique is perfected ... I doubt that this technology will stay out of the hands of the masses for long.

Um, about over population: I have no idea what the answer to this problem could be -- but I think that restricting the arrival of new life is just as presumptuous as enforcing finite life spans (the best way I could think to put it) on the people already alive on this planet. It's a balancing act, really ... and I just fear that this kind of thing could permanently tip the scale.

The question of overpopulation is, I think, just a peripheral issue though, when the topic is why not to start cloning people. I mentioned it only as something else to think about if one refused *ahem* to think of the ethical issues which permeate the issue. The biggest problem I personally have with cloning is the insult and threat it poses to my (or anyone's) individuality as a human being.

To Kurt: A piece of highly recommended reading: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. =) You'd like it.

Kurt

I won't argue, I agree completely, however as the railroading of Dr Kevorkian and our Sue Rodriguez case here in Canada sadly illustrates, it is not really true.

Blair

IMHO, this particular issue isn't even newsworthy bacause it isn't new, and it isn't cloning. CNN and the other news sources blew it way out of proportion.

That fact of the matter is that the technique used for "cloning" the baby rhesus has been around for over 20 years in the cattle industry, and is now a very common way for producing high-quality beef cattle. All you do is to split the embryo when it's at the two- or four-cell stage, thereby creating twins. That's all it is: *twins*. Furthermore, you can't use it to create huge numbers of animals (or humans) because after about two splits, the cells lose their efficacy and it doesn't work any more.

Cloning, on the other hand, is producing a baby from genetic offspring taken from an adult. Dolly was a clone. Tetra isn't.

this is ridiculous... we are tampering with the power of GOD now... i am not a completely religious person, but for a person that is... how can they justify the idea of a clone... when are supposed to be made in the image of GOD

Neil, specifically, in your opinion, what is the problem with cloning? How is cloning tampering with the "power" of God?

On a basic level, a clone is merely an identical twin of the donor of the cell. True, a scientist may implant a cell that becomes a human being, but he/she does not cause it to grow. The reason it grows has to do with the mystery of life which we have all experienced. You can ascribe it to God if you wish whether the birth was "natural" or otherwise. It is all the same.

Also, in this sense, how is cloning more basic to life than in vitro fertilization?

Neil Gogate,

Having lost a child to a genetic "error", I would be delighted to edit the long leg of the fifth chromosome. The probable method is to fertilize a couple of eggs and clone them to test the copies for various genetic traits. Once I've established a outstanding mixture do you suppose I'm going to throw away the mold? While I'm tinkering what is to stop me from testing for other factors and adding in favorable ones? I've already got a known 1 in 4 chance of serious problems so the additional risks are fairly light. Embryos keep for centuries in liquid Helium.

Go look at what else is out there in the genes:

I have no problem with cloning humans. My concern arises to the purposes of such cloning. If the reason to do it is to ensure that the next generation would be more resistant to diseases, more stable psychologically, more capable mentally, more fit physically, etc.. Then these 'enhancements' would justify for me the application of human cloning, because it 'could' mean a more prosperous and peaceful existence on earth, although we always hear this in beauty pageants and political speeches, at least now we really mean it.

But if it's just to ensure future organ replacement, then might as well terminate your 40 year old identical twin and get his vital organs just as so you can live a longer life.

This is not just a matter of duplication but also the creation of bio-enhanced 'human beings' with emotions and has every right to live, not to be used for spare parts.

We 'are' playing gods here but we can be 'good' gods if we 'provide' these advancements to 'be' the next generation, rather than 'use' them for the benefit of this generation.

Great link. Thanks.

Edward, From what I know of stem cell research, you will not need to clone people for organ transplants. It is easier to just culture up your own cells and inject them back in the appropriate place. Need a new liver? Just find one healthy liver cell and one stem cell and you can do it.

Where cloning gets interesting is when people consider doing it for competitive advantage and the elimination of mediocrity. The two things that will happen is the non-cloned people may realise that there is some advantage in the genes that they do not as a group posses and that there are lots of tough tradeoffs when tinkering with traits. What makes you smart often makes you unbalanced.

Thor, I think you are confusing cloning with genetic engineering. I agree that cloning can facilitate genetic engineering, but they are not the same, and cloning does not necessarily involve nor presuppose genetic engineering. I think it is quite possible to use cloning as a reproductive method, for example, without genetic engineering rearing it's ugly/beautiful head.

Therefore, when I say cloning, I mean cloning. When I say genetic engineering, I mean genetic engineering. I encourage others to do the same.

Possible, I suppose, but I think I have seen about as many stupid unbalanced people as brilliant unbalanced people.

Cliff,

You are right that cloning is different that genetic engineering but I see one as the means to the other. Except for cloning rare, extinct or endangered species, I don't see any applicability to adult humans due to the risks of chromosomal damage that might have accumulated.

Cloning embryos by very simple methods allows you to make near infinite copies if you freeze them properly. This can be done just about anywhere with very little equipment. Again by itself this is nothing earth shaking but there is no way to prevent people from doing this if they choose to.

The more difficult issues, In my opinion start when you begin to engineer. The first things to change are the genes that cause pathological conditions. Then you have the option of changing appearance, and things like the number of NMDA receptors. I have trouble with the idea that I would intend to have a child and not want the best opportunities for them.

Cool! I wanna be hercules!! :)

It's shocking that the Japanese govt. allowed cloned beef to be sold to the general public without proper labelling. It's all the more frustrating because they won't allow America to sell genetically modified food products in Japan without labelling. Of course they are right on that issue, but they did it for protectionist reasons, not because it was the right thing to do.

Dawn and Cliff

Well my wife has another bun in the oven and this one looks very well implanted with a strong heart beat at 7 weeks.

If everything goes ok this time, we will save the stem cells from the umbilical blood in case replacement parts are needed later on.

She will have the baby in the US where we have some co-operative doctors and low cryo storage charges.

If the child lives very long, with the way things are going we probably wont need them as it looks very possible that cell de differentiation technology is improving.

I rejoined the AAAS and so now get the "hard copy" of Science Mag. Haven't taken it in about 10 years and I can't believe how much the ads have changed. Seems that about every other one has to do with bio tech. equipment.

Provocative hype also like "The Echo (TM) Cloning System. Rapidly Clone your Gene into Multiple Espression Vectors--Without Subcloning." Shesh! I got to have one of those, right? : )

Please tell me if I'm way off base here, but isn't there a big difference between a cloned cow and a genetically modified cow (cloned or not)? I don't believe genetically modified food and cloned food are the same thing. By the way, technically they use cloning in the US in the forestry industry as part of the effort to replant a forest after logging. Not too many people complain about 'cloned wood'. I suspect we also have to deal with 'cloned fruit'. This is also somewhat controversial because a genetically identical forest/orchard can be more prone to total destruction from disease, etc., because there's no variation in the tree's genes.

Cloning may have it's benefits -- like reforestation, but it's biggest threat comes when people decide to play God. Who are we to judge whom or what to bring back to life or propagate? We can clone physical materials but what about the conscience and the soul?

Also, if humans get cloned ... technically that other person is a perfect copy of you. Does this include the fingerprints and DNA traces? If it does then it would make forensic science obsolete.

I suppose it would depend on how widespread the cloning became, and how many clones someone wanted to make of themselves. Forensic medicine may already have trouble with identical twins for the same reasons you've stated.

You bring up the point of a conscience and a soul. That aspect of cloning has always fascinated me. From my perspective I think a clone would have the same access to a conscience and a soul as a naturally born person as I believe that the presence of a soul is not related to how you were conceived. Of course, this belief is probably not a majority point of view.

Cliff,

I am pretty confident that once cloning has become more or less routine practise, for at least some couples (as I hope it will not - but it will), the next step will be improving upon the cloned genome.

This is the reason I reject, except for the purposes of recreating human organs for transplants, tinkering with the human genome.

The problem is that once one starts in that direction, there is no return. All of this will of course be done with the best of intentions, both on the side of the prospective parents, and the doctors advising those parents.

So a routine screening will have established a prospective child to suffer from Downs. 'With this little intervention, we can get rid of that'. So far, so good. 'We have also found, purely as a result of our routine screening, that your child will be of slightly less than average intelligence. It is really no trouble at all to get this corrected.'...'Oh, and you prefer blonde hair, you said. We can fix that too'.

The trouble is, if it can be done, who would deny the parents such a possibility ? But what about the child ? Can it ever hope to fulfill the high expectations its parents burden it with ?

It should also be noted that intelligence, looks, all that makes some individuals more successful than others, are defined in a relative, not an absolute, sense. If you make all people look good, then no one will look good. If all are intelligent, then that is the end of brilliant thought.

In practise, what it will lead to is a self-perpetuating (genetic) self-imrpovement of the rich, at the expense of an increasingly more ugly (by comparison), and dumb (again, by comparison) underclass. We can already see steps in that direction being made at present.

"It opens the door to making modified pigs whose organs and cells can be successfully transplanted into humans -- the only near-term solution to solving the world-wide organ shortage crisis," PPL said.

You see? This is what happens when you impose strict helmet, safety belt, and air-bag laws on the population -- we have to resort to using pigs for parts! I say, "No Pigs for Parts!"

When I'm sixty-five, I want to have the heart of a 19 year old! Preferably, a healthy 19 year old who had a problem negotiating a turn on his superbike.

...OK, in case you didn't get it yet, that was satire. Sorry if I offended anyone.

What do you guys think about what the scientists are doing with the 20000 year old frozen Mammoth that they are trying to clone? I think that it might be playing with fire. We have no idea what such an old animal might do in our modern world.

Indeed! Rampig around. :)

Probably clump around in a zoo until it died. Why, did you think they'd release it in the wild? Not much point in that, especially without a mate.

Probably clump around in a zoo until it died. Why, did you think they'd release it in the wild? Not much point in that, especially without a mate.

Well they said that Mammoths will be able to mate with our elephants.

What might happen is what happened here on our continent with the killer bee's. Some unintelligent bee farmer decided to go to the deep jungles of Africa and he found a bee colony that produced alot of honey. They captured some bee queens and brought them to Brazil. What happened was that they mated with the domestic bee's and all of a sudden they had a dangerous bee hybrid that we now call Killer bee's. Since then they have spread all over our continent and thousands of people die every year.

Mammoth all over the continent!

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Magson:

Bees and other insects produce a new generation every few months. An elephant takes 20 years to reach maturity and reproduce. Your concern might be warranted with cloning of an extinct insect, rodent, or any other small fecund species. Elephants are the slowest reproducing animals on Earth. Are you really worried of them getting out of control the way killer bees did?

Ilya Taytslin - Thursday, 04/06/00, 4:27:30pm (#786 of 786)

Bees and other insects produce a new generation every few months. An elephant takes 20 years to reach maturity and reproduce. Your concern might be warranted with cloning of an extinct insect, rodent, or any other small fecund species. Elephants are the slowest reproducing animals on Earth. Are you really worried of them getting out of control the way killer bees did?

No not at all, but the principle is the same. That we simply do not know what such old DNA brough back to life might do. How ever I am aware that Elephants carry their offspring for almost 2 years. They are huge and bulky and no match for our guns and bombs to kill if it gets out of control. It might even be fun to watch in a zoo, how ever we have to be careful as well.

BTW, "thousands of people die each year" is a typical example of "the sky is falling!" scaremongering. So far exactly four people in US died of Africanized bee stings (three in Texas and one in Arizona). I don't have the figures for Mexico and Brazil, but it is certainly not "thousands", even if you add up all bee fatalities since original introduction of African bees.

Because the next step is cloning the "ice man" who was a prehistoric human. We have to be aware of the possible consequences of such action.

Not only do elephants breed slowly, but they're rather easy to spot. It's not like you hear people complaining about misplacing their elephant, especially an abnormally large and hairy elephant like a mammoth.

Of course, if you modified it's DNA so the mammoth was pink... oh well.

That is of course a dilema. I understand you now. Sorry for my jokes.

But I wouldn't worry either. This genetic engineering will eventually gave anybody 'on fly programmable gene code'.

The following rules should be obeyed:

That is. No horror any more. Today is common. Isn't it?

Lets say that we clone a prehistoric man, like the neanderthal. Is a Neanderthal an animal or a human being? If he is an human being then he has human rights. He has the freedom to breed with a homo sapien female and then make our advanced homo sapiens actually go backwards. We can not keep him in a cage either, because he has human rights. See the problem?

I think, that the 'Human rights' should be extend to all the 'self aware subjects'.

Now you have two possibilities.

The Neanderthal has no 'self awareness'. Cage him, kill him, whatever you want.

The Neanderthal has the 'self awareness'. He has full rights. To unable him to rampage around and make evil dids, you have to make some genetic changes first. Not to violate the first law. Then he is free as you and me. :)

We can not be aware of all the possible consequences.

We also can not be aware of all the possible consequences of not cloning.

As I continue to read the bio tech adds in Science Mag. is no question in my mind that all types of cloning from small segments of DNA to completely functional life forms will be cloned with ever decreasing cost and effort. The specific knowledge to produce clones will also require less and less formal education.

The situation shows every tendency to behave like computers, where the price for computation and storage of data goes down by a factor of 2 every 18 mon.

New breeds of just about all animals will be created and more extinct ones will be attempted.

As mankind travels into space many kinds of genetic modifications of humans will be useful, and perhaps required.

Yes, of course, but we actually are not so free, ourselves. We do not have the freedom to break the rules of our individual societies. We generally do not have the freedom to kill our fellow humans, for example.

Thus there are some restrictions on our freedom--even those of us who live under a democracy.

Obviously, if a cloned Neanderthal were found to be "self-aware" and, as a consequence, given the same freedom as we, and while enjoying that freedom, it chose to kill, I would suppose that that particular Neanderthal would be restrained from further killing.

Cliff!

My point is, that it would be. Even before he kills someone he could be rearrange to not to do that. An adding of a "killing behavior" inhibiting gene would have to be a standard procedure. Not only for the Homo Neanderthals but for the Homo Sapiens as well.

The following rules should be obeyed: 1. No pain (in a broadest sense) must be inflicted to any aware subject.

And the casualties will be minimized - in a future society, where the genetic engineering will be common and not limited to us only.

Sure thing -- I am sure.

ATTN: CNN elves

WRONG WRONG WRONG!

The blurb at the top of this board is wrong! PPL Theraputics did not clone Dolly the sheep. The Rosylin Institute in Scotland (now Geron Biomed) cloned Dolly. PPL mearly used Gero Biomed's nuclear transfer technology to clone the pigs in question. I hope to see this corrected soon. Contact either companies to confirm this.

From CNN Community Staff:

Thank you,

Cloning is here to stay so let's keep the discussion moving forward. I have no problem with cloning and the wonderful possibilities that are being discovered. We have no idea where this original cloning research will lead so again, we need to be discussing this subject more and more. The news media needs to continue to bring it to the publics attention but with much more frequency. Thank You.

My quick one-cent for Genetic Engineering: I believe it is a gross mistake to believe that GE can make us more advanced, etc. I'm not sure if I can eloquate this properly, though. Let me see. GE destroys the chance for any new genes to come about, killing off the evolution of humanity. For example, Einstein was not just some really smart guy, his brain was actually physiologically different from most people's (I read that on this site last summer). And the same may be true for many other of our great scientists (I don't know how many besides Einstein donated their brains to science). My point is that we need to be "imperfect" to allow nature to work it's magic. If we try to fix ourselves, we lose the chance of anything new occuring. (GE could still be allowed then in cases where the alternative is death, but it should not be standard issue) Does that make sense?

cloning's fine provided the artificial lifeforms (including genetically manipulated humans) are not introduced into the natural populations. study the process, but use the knowledge responsibly. (the engineered corn is an excellent example of exactly what NOT to do.)

regarding reversing aging, lol! i don't doubt the possibility, but that's the last thing we need right now, considering where global population is going. just what we need- more mouths that won's be properly fed. one thing guaranteed, though, is that the system will eventually restore its balance, one way or the other. humanity decides how drastic it'll be. hope to see you in 10000 years! cheers!