Sounds like a 'fun' idea, but where will we fit all the extra people if mankind is going to be living longer? Or if copies of us are made?

Mars??

I think it is the best thing that happened to mankind. Each Human a marvel. human memories and relationships too precious. I think any effort to preserve or prolong the human life can only be noble. Cloning i think is here is to stay. We can at the best only delay it. Its merits far outweigh its de merits. Instead of wasting time on debating whether its good or bad, i think we should hurry up and make and enforce legislation to prevent its misuse and to restrict access to it.It has to come with very strict population control measures. We can only be responsible for people that inhabit the earth. Science even with its inventions intended to kill man, has done far more good to him. People made catastrophic assumptions about the nuclear bomb. The first 40 years of this century saw the killing of more than 50 million people. The bomb put an end to a part of that genocide and prevented its occurance in future, by enabling a balance of power to be struck.

This latest discovery about telomeres could be the greatest result of legal cloning. It could increase our knowledge about how to preserve telomere length in people, thus reducing a major factor in aging. It may even be possible to discover whether certain foods have a direct effect.

This is exciting stuff! But I really do not think that telemere shortening is the cause of organismal ageing. If telemere shortening was the sole cause of ageing, then non-dividing tissues such as the heart and brains would not age. Since we know this not to be the case, we know that there is at least one other mechanism of ageing. I think ageing is, in descending order of impact:

1) mitochondrial DNA damage (probably due to oxidative stress) - take CoQ-10 and alpha lipoic acid

2) AGE crosslinks - these are glycogen-protein crosslinks that form during life - wait for ALT-711 to be approved, probably in 2-5 years. ALT-711 can completely purge the body of these crosslinks.

3) Replicative errors in DNA (not related to telemere shortening) during cell division. Again, take all the anti-oxidants you can get and wait for the stem-cell regeneration technology to get you over this one. About 10-20 years.

4) Telemere shortening - probably evolved in response to number 3 (see above). Limiting the number of cell divisions probably limits the pathogenic affects of DNA errors being passed from cell generation to cell generation.

5) The p21 gene - this is the wild card just discovered. I'm not sure if this is the ageing gene or not. Normally, I have never believed in the existance of ageing genes.

Stem-cell regeneration is really the ticket to eternal youth. And it gets even better. More and more scientists are suspecting that our bodies already have the stem-cells needed for rejuvenation and that its just a matter of turning them back on for a while. The significance of this is profound, because it means that an in-situ method of stem-cell based rejuvenation is probable and, therefor, will be very cheap.

In another 10-20 years, we don't have to watch ourselves become obsolete while watching those genY's (or genZ's) get all the good investment banking jobs (not to mention professional sports).

Immortality is really about freedom, life-style and financial freedom, which is the only REAL freedom worth discussing. And don't give me any garbage about how we can't live forever because of the over-population problem. Everyone knows full-well that once we get immortality, that we all will be working and playing too hard to have kids, even if your not an investment banker (I'm not).

I used to think that massive extensions to the human life span would be a bad thing because of the population problems that could result. But during the last few years I reversed this opinion for several reasons. First off, we already have a population problem and even if our life spans stay the same, something will have to be done about it in the next few decades. Especially in parts of the world that have experienced rapid development while reproductive behavior have remained similar to times with much shorter life spans and higher infant mortality. Second, and most importantly I've been thinking about how people will behave if they have substantially longer and higher quality lives to look forward too. This would tend to foster a much stronger sense of responsibility and concern about safety and the value of human life. Someone who can expect to see their 200th birthday is going to consider life in prison to be a much more dire sentence. And who would want to fight in a war with so much at risk? This change in thinking would make the world a much more peaceful, safe and clean place to live.

Kurt (in reference to post #804):

Preventing aging alone is not the fountain of youth, things such as arterial buildup and cancer cause as large a percentage of deaths as aging. So we also need some drano for our arteries and much more advanced methods of cancer detection & erradication.

Keeping the body young and healthy will allow older people to withstand more aggressive treatments for these kinds of ailments.

Other new health problems will assuredly start to appear once people get to very large ages as well.

God must be a great genetic engineer.
It does not diminish God if we learn some of his secrets.

People with Down syndrome suffer from rapid aging. One manifestation is Alzheimer's at a very young age. I have a 30 yr. old son with Down's and Alzheimer's. I would like to see this technology developed to spare further deterioration, reverse the damage, and save his life. I'm not interested, however, in developing such technology so we can have forever-young versions of movie celebrities.

I did some research on ALT-711 and found that it something like "drano for the arteries" as I mentioned above among problems to solve.

Great point of view. New one for me.

Do you think cloning of animals is unethical? I've been wondering about this and would like to hear some input from others.

All feedback welcome. Thanks.

I can't think of any good reason why not to. No person or animal is caused to suffer an undue amount, and the gains in the areas of agriculture and conservation could be very significant. The restoration of extinct species (mostly due to human impact), seems to me an very noble thing to do.

The largest fear concerning animal cloning is that it will lead to human cloning, with the eventual outcome akin to the movie "Gattica", Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" or Frank Herbert's "Jesus Incident". Generally the big fears are:

Clones would be able to outcompete 'natural' people, as in "Gattica" with the ultimate result of no 'natural' people left, as in "Brave New World".

Clones would be treated as property or abused because they were cloned. "The Jesus Incident" is a standard scenario where clones are mass produced and considered expendible.

However, the motivations for cloning people are not very strong. We have plenty of very skilled engineers and scientists, and most of their ability was learned, a clone would have fairly long odds of panning out as well as the original. Athletics would be hit or miss in the same manner that academics would be. The only gurantee from a clone will be that it will look like the original. There are very few reasons that would be worth the money to do this, and proper legislation would remove the incentive entirely.

Gene therapy and genetic engineering are a more concerning ethical question than cloning. Altering genes to produce a genetic royal flush is an intimidating thought. But in developed countries the laws of nature have been bent so much that "survival of the fittest" certainly does not apply, leaving us genetically stagnant. It may well be that further evolution of humans will have to be done purposefully by our own hands.

It is all ready under way. One of the most interesting projects is to produce an animal such as a pig that can be used to auto clone human organs.

It also looks like inherited diseases will become a thing of the past within the next 20 years in advanced countries. The single gene problems probably within the next 10.

From an engineering point of view there is a cost associated with fighting off the forces of nature. As we face less "selective pressure" it would seem that we can become more genetically complex.

Also the ease of world wide migration is causing people to reproduce with a larger gene pool thus increasing complexity.

Carl,

in my opinion, selective pressure among humans will increasingly be exerted through mate selection, rather than any inherent unviability. This may eventually become costly, though.

As all inheritable diseases are eliminated, the race will begin for ever more perfection in terms of features, and general body shape. That is, as long as one of the most intrinsic parts of our nature (like the desire to be better than others) is not modified as well.

Robert:

Mate selection may not have a large effect because the undesireable individuals will end up having children with eachother. In fact, people that are generally considered successful in our society have fewer children than those that are not, which would tend to put harmful forces on our evolution.

Pre guessing evolution. What a concept!

The idea that the very ability to select and enhance our development may lead to a "regression to the mean" of and by itself.

This has been mentioned by some Sci Fi but we are talking real close time power here.

Genetic freedom for the unborn.

So the perfect child says to his parents "How come you didn't let me be natural like the other kids?"

Next we will see the lawyers doing "wrongful perfection" law suits. : )

Seriously strange.

Carl,

I believe one would need to distinguish between evolution through mate selection, and evolution through artificial modification of the genome. The former will most likely not lead to an 'improvement' of the human genome, but the latter will (whether such improvement would be desirable is the very question that ought be be discussed here).

Ok.

There is no way that anyone can stop use of genetic engineering to prevent inherited lethal or crippling genetic defects if that technology can produce a healthy child.

A perspective parent has the absolute right to correct a severe genetic defect if possible, and some would say obligation including a legal obligation to do so.

This sets the "bottom line" for using the technology.

From here we can move into reproductive rights that involve mono sexual reproduction (cloning) and even multi biological parent reproduction. (mosaics)

Then there is the awesome concept of transgenic including the insertion of "animal" genes into humans or as has already been done inserting human genes into animals.

There is an extreme interest in modifying pigs to enable them to carry auto clone human organs until they are big enough to transplant back into the original host.

There probably genes that make it easier to survive at high altitudes or other severe environmental conditions. Some people might want those.

Then there are the "IQ", good looks, athletic ability, strength, size, skin color, bone structure, hair color, and other cosmetic or utilitarian uses for genetic engineering.

Lots of these ideas and others are now, and will continue to be opposed by various religious, ethical, moral, environmentally concerned, and other "right thinking" people.

Some countries are blindly enacting legislation to restrict lots of potentially vital, or beneficial practices, also ones that are dangerous, inhumane or insane.

Since this is arguably the most powerful technology, ever created, to influence humanity or even the concept of all sentient life forms, and indeed any kind of life, just where do you want to start?

I feel that life will become just a little less sacred once we begin mass producing replacement parts or people through cloaning for human use like a cheeseburger. Does the cheeseburger have the right to exist becomes the next ethical dilemma.

More likely it is not life per se which will become less sacred, but "body". In other words, people will become more aware of the distinction between "self" (brain/personality) and the "replaceable parts" (body/organs). Respect for life, at least human life, is liable to become greater, because people will live longer. When life is longer it is valued more. However, anything replaceable, be it heart, liver, bone, etc, will not really be considered "alive" any more. Not akin to a cheesburger, but akin to a car tire.

Also remember this: "When it is illegal to have genetically engineered, superhuman children, only criminals will have them."

When people have the financial ability and desire to have something, the law will not prevent them from getting it. Much like drugs are now, and abortions were before Roe Vs. Wade, genetic engineering will still be available if it is illegal. Also there is nothing stopping people from traveling to other countries with more relaxed laws and having procedures done there. These factors would tend to make genetic engineering available only to the wealthy. By enhancing their genes while everyone else remains the same, these people would gradually take bigger and bigger pieces of the pie, while viewing the rest of the population as subhuman labor.

The only possible way to keep a scenario like this from occuring is if these services are legal, cheap and available to everyone. I don't want to see us losing "the war on genes" 20 years from now.

Well you might get the majority of earthlings to submit to control of their reproduction rights, like the people of China have done with forced abortion and punitive sterilization for violations of the "One child" policy, I don't think that people living in outer space will care to in any way limit their reproductive choices.

The conditions in low gravity areas pretty much mandate a quicker solution to things like calcium loss than any "natural" selection can provide.

While I totally agree it is also true that a very large number of religions have absolutely no way to accept that mankind has the right to exercise this kind of power.

For instance in a semi literal interpretation of Genesis we now find mankind after being kicked out of the Garden of Eden lest he eat of the fruit of "The Tree of Life", now beginning to do exactly that.

The Sci Fi "Clone wars" were originally thought to have started in the mid 1990s but your 2020 seems like a much more historically accurate date. That's certainly when I can project the various pro and anti cloning and other genetic engineering forces colliding.

Your observation about the psychology of people who can afford "superior" children seems right on the mark also. That mentality existed over most of the "advanced Western world" a scant 200 to 400 years ago.

The combination of financial and religious forces has always provided humanity with really good excuses to justify killing each other.

BTW how do you loose "the war on genes"?

Much like the Amish choose not to use technology. But moderate religions have a way of bending to accomodate reality as time progresses.

Simply by engaging in it.

The most reliable way to prevent social problems is to administer the technology such that existing groups of people (economic classes, geographic distributions, race...) and not easilly divided into "haves and have nots". This would maintain the status quo and perhaps even serve to even up the playing field a bit in some areas. For instance giving american indians gene therapy to raise their immunity to alcoholism would help them dramatically.

Hmmm. Social engineering via genetic engineering. It might help and it might also be opposed by people in that it would encourage alcohol consumption.

In a perfected state I suppose we could also use genetic engineering that doesn't necessarily pass to the next generation as we now use vaccination.

Ok :) then how do you "win the war on genes"?

Actually there is no way not to be involved in genetic matters any more. Even the knowledge about specific genes you possess has huge ramifications for individuals and if others possess your genetic information, for many government and private concerns. Insurance companies as they use to be constructed seem to have numbered days. Even discarded skin cells that naturally flake off can be used to "type" someone.

What really scares me is the following scenario: should we be, in a few years, able to recreate any living animal, and some of the extinct as well, we would most likely loose much of the incentive of preserving endangered living species and their habitat. Why preserve, say, Siberian tiger, who needs thousands of acres of tundra? We can just keep some "in the fridge" and bring them back to life at our will…

Good question. We could perhaps reduce the requirements by genetic engineering, but we would then have a different animal.

I think what Karl is getting at is that genetic conservation might replace true conservation. This could possibly be used to justify the extinction of the animal in the wild.

As an example, people worry about wild elephants, although I don't think anyone has any expectation that they may be altogether extinct soon because there is a stable breeding population in captivity. Keeping a captive population is much like keeping genes in the cooler so these scenarios are similar.

The people that care, care about wild populations of animals. I can't imagine anyone being sated by the reassurance that the animals will be reinstated after a needed, "temporary" extinction. Hence I don't see this as a threat.

Cloning offers considerable assistance in severely decimated populations that are under the minimum needed number to propagate indefinitely. By reintroducing lost genes the animal can be better preserved.

Give or take another dozen years and I suspect a large number of species will be extinct. The Killer Whales are well suited for storing PCB's and that is just the start of a rather terrifying list of creatures that cannot handle chemicals that were never priorly in the environment.

Genetic storage may be the only way to ensure that vast numbers do not go the way of the dodo bird but that does nothing to solve future problems. I'd like to see an engineered Killer Whale that can eat PCB's with no side effects even if that means they're all clones. Given the problems with Grizzly bears why not make them smart enough to read signs and obey regulations like the rest of us.

A bit far-fetched maybe but I find it hard to believe that large animals are going to get respected if it costs millions to preserve less than a sustainable population. That would be a slow death. Imagine an African safari where the park rangers are the animals. Technically its possible and you would have to clone up a cloud of animals. It is really hard to watch animals survive in a tiny zoo that is like a prison and I know the chances of so many of them are not there in the wild.

As I said in another board, if we are not going to cure ageing, then we might as well shut-down all the funding for medical research.If we were to cure cancer without curing ageing, the human life-span would increase by only one year, and you would still have to suffer the physical and mental decline (not to mention the reduction of career opportunities and life-style freedoms, see the current Time article "Twilight of the bommers") caused by ageing.

Trying to cure deseases without curing the ageing process is the biggest, dumbest waste of tax-payer's money.

The real question is 'Why would we want to cure ageing?' Imagine if you lived forever, and never changed at all. Would that be pleasant? There is a reason for ageing, and it is to provide for change in the experience of life. Living without ageing is like eating the identical meal every day. So, God created man to age. Simple. iyhwh.com

Hindering or preventing aging would not prevent people from being able to change. It just keeps some of the bad changes from happening.

God created diabetics to die of insulin shock. God created iron ore to be a rock, not a car...

God made EVERYTHING. To argue that something should not be changed because god made it the way it is, is to argue that NOTHING should be changed. Doesn't it seem much more reasonable that if God didn't want us messing with something, he would not have given us the ability to?

Many characters in the Bible lived for hundreds of years. Why doesn't God want me to live past my four score and ten when he was fine with Noah getting to 600 something? Why didn't Abraham come down from the mountain with a third slate that read: "Thou shalt not receive aid to live past 60!"

How can God be benign if he opposes preventing someone from getting arthritis (part of aging) and living in pain for the rest of their life?

Jesus gave vision back to the blind, God must not have minded that Jesus change the way that God made them if Jesus was willing to do it.

Your argument can't be true without some hypocracy on God's part. Since God is perfect, he cannot be a hypocrite. Thus your argument is invalid.

No one will force you to live longer if you don't want to, so don't force others to live shorter lives if they don't want to.

Personally I don't buy the 'god created ageing' idea either. On the other hand, curtailing the ageing process without curtailing the reproduction rate would be suicide soon enough.

I answer this question in the second chapter of my book. If there is interest I'll mark it up in HTML and put it on my site. Basically, some laws are in your genes and others are not, so the latter must be given in writing.

Jesus broke many laws and for that he was punished. Yet, though he knew he would be punished, he needed to break the laws to make his point. Today, it is called protesting. God doesn't mind if you protest.

The laws written in your genes force you to obey them. The hand written laws can be broken, no one forces you, there are only warnings given. iyhwh.com

Peter Jack, anyone who would ever use god and religion to limit individual liberty has got to be a totally twisted human being. Religion was never intended to be used as a weapon against individual liberty. I would never sacrifice my freedom for a religious belief system. I have complete, utter contempt for anyone who would ever do that.

Do you actually like the idea of growing old? You talk about the need for new and different experiences. Do you want to climb Mt. Everest, scuba dive in Palau, start a high-tech business in silicon valley? Tell me how the ageing process increases my ability to experience these things. If anything, the ageing process limits and ultimately destroys your capacity for new and interesting experiences.

Your arguments are completely non-sensical.

Kurt, if a man believes he is free, he will not fight for his freedom, because he has it already, in his mind. If you believe that having contempt for others who recognise and hold any particular religious view makes you free, then you'll always be in chains. You'll believe that you have something they don't, something that liberates you from what imprisons them, but all you have are views and opinions.

Yet, you still have two feet and two hands and have to walk around on the ground just like they do - both chained to the human form. Both believing different things, but conforming to the same reality.

In fact, we grow old and we die. Thank God for that. To live forever, and always be the same would be prison to "me". If it's freedom to "you" , then you are welcome to that freedom if you can obtain it by science.

Essentially, my belief is that we die and are reborn. So, I live forever already. I am already immortal. I just don't want to wear the same clothes every day, and submit to the same constraints of two hands and two feet for all eternity. But, like I said above, these are views and opinions. I just don't hold any contempt for yours. Since, its nice to believe that there are people who can believe they are free while others are not.

The idea of extending ones life through cloning is a bit odd to me since there are already technologies that show more promise. A better avenue might be a discussion of stem cells and therapies to rebuild telomeres.

Cloning as I understand it allows you to make unlimited copies of creatures and that factors big if you spend a lot of effort to genetically engineer something. The agriculture concerns are really close to releasing things that will subtly change the world by the combining say jellyfish and plant genes and propogate this by cloning. I can laugh about mice that glow in the dark but crops that wipe out an entire species of insect sound frightening.

Jack, freedom to me is to have the ability to transform myself into anything that I want to, eliminating the need for the death/rebirth cycle. If you really do believe that you are reborn, then why put up with growing old? Why not off yourself when you are 50 or 60, or whatever age you no longer can live whatever lifestyle pleases you? If I truely believed that we survived death of the physical body like you do, I would not bother to have kids or save money or do any of the other things that people do. Rather, I would party it up , travel, and do whatever I wanted to when I wanted to, then simply dump my physical body when it no longer was of use to me, them move on to the next life.

Is this your life strategy? It seems to be the perfect life strategy for me. Tell my why, prey tell, why people who believe in religion (and surviving physical death) do not encourage this life style?

Maybe we do survive physical death, and that living forever is a form of imprisonment. But as long as your in a physical form, wouldn't you want it to be in youthful form.

The idea of extending ones life through cloning is a bit odd to me

I think people consider cloning "organs" to replace damaged ones when talking about extending life with genetic cloning technology.

Kurt, The I have for you question is, since you say you want to be young - what age of youth? 10years old? 20, 30? What age or age range do you want to be forever, and why that age? I have already said it's not my desire to be young forever, but I'd like to understand better why you think its so desirable. iyhwh.com

What does the length of a persons life have to do with its quality or the development of an individual?

What does the length of a persons life have to do with its quality...

It depends on your "memory."

If you go to a great restaurant, and eat a fantastic meal, and "forget" it right after, tomorrow you can "enjoy" the meal again, it has the same freshness. But, if your memory is excellent, and you have to eat the same meal 365 days a year, you no longer appreciate the food. That's what it's all about. iyhwh.com

An obvious concern is that certain anti-social people will be cloned:O.J.Simpson, W.J.Clinton, Gary Graham, Chuck Manson, etc. IF we could gaurantee that pro-social people would be cloned, THEN there might be an argument. Unfortunately, the forces of evil will always have their say.

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