I am pretty surprised that there isn't a thread about this already. Maybe because it was obviously going to happen one day. Regardless, word is that there is a cloned human who was born yesterday named Eve. The political reaction to this news should be interesting. I assume that GW is going to come out against it because of the religious right, but what does everyone think. Personally I am opposed to it right now. So much so that I (I used to think I was a libertarian) think the government should outlaw cloning until more medical research is completed. I don't think we have any idea of the ramifications of clones entering our gene pool. I think we won't know for at least 2 generations. I am probably overly paranoid, but does anyone know how to undo contamination of our gene pool? From my understanding, outside of several difficulties involved in the cloning process (which I don't even really consider as a major stumbling block because I think Science will overcome), several of the cloned animals have died prematurely or have had various defects which have affected their lives. Truth is I don't know too much about the science of it all. I haven't read as many articles about it as I would like. But I for one am a bit on the skeptical side right now. Oh yeah, not to mention the women that pulled this off is a nut job. Which makes me more concerned. Sure if it is a scientist who has done everything in their power to go through and do this the right way, I am less concerned. But this was like some kind of race for publicity. It scares me. For those that don't know the CEO of the Clonaid corp believes that we are all the result of clones. In other words, Alien scientists cloned us and put us on this planet. I don't know if there any Raelians (sp?) who would like to clarify their religion. If I am misspeaking, I apologize in advance.
I'm a member of the religious left, and know lots of people in the irreligious left, and I don't think GW has a corner on the abhorrence market on this one. This scares the s*** out of me. Because it shows how little gvts can do in the face of determined, well-funded psychopaths.
Our technical tool-using abilities have far, FAR outstripped our wisdom and maturity as a species. Maybe - just maybe- it's time to leave some areas of knowledge be until we have learned how to handle them intelligently and with wisdom and not the usual myopic, self-destructive stupidity.
All right, what am I not getting? Clones have been in the gene pool for untold millions of years - known as identical twins. Fertility research has put this particular genie out of the bottle for a couple of decades now. The world didn't end when the test tube baby was born, and if it ends now, it won't be because of clones.
Umm, she's one day old. I know this is just a message board, but dude, you're mentally ill. I don't think pedophilia is a joking matter.
If nature wants to clone something, that's fine. I don't trust people, especially those in power, enough to make smart decisions about something so technical. It's not just "Oh boy, we can make a baby", it's the potenmtial for abuse. Like trying to clone a master race. Not to mention the other assorted genetic tampering we're doing that can be misused in enough ways to have kept sci-fi writers in material for the past century with no end in sight.
Allegedly born yesterday. Remember, this Dr. is the same one who claimed he was visited by aliens who told him that all life on earth was genetically created by them. There is no 2nd party verifacation of the existence of the baby and only the audio interview with the supposed mother. Most, including those in the field, doubt this is anything real. The subject is still worth discussing though, of course.
I'm a little torn on this one. On one hand, I'm generally against the government "banning" too many things outright. Regulating it, once it's been verified and proven to be a viable science seems like it could be good enough. I just hope people won't start cloning for the sake of cloning. The damn planet is overpopulated enough as it is. To the people trying to bring religion into it, religion cannot and should not have an effect on government. If the scientific community can make this work, cloning can be done in a way that can help alot of people. Clones can be created without brains for the use of organ donation. I for one would hate to be down the road 20 years from now and have someone tell me that my wife is going to die because they can't find an organ donor, and they can't grow one, even though they have the means, because it might make one of the worlds many spiritual figures unhappy.
Anyone can claim to have cloned anything. I reserve judgment until it has been independently confirmed that she is in fact a clone. Otherwise, this religious group sounds like a bunch of wackos to me and I take everything they claim with a grain, no make that a ton, of salt.
Yep. Note that this is a bunch of wierdos who claim that the entire human race is cloned extra-terrestrials... I'll beleive this when I see some good science behind it. For the record, I'm agaisnt cloning humans.
I fail to see what the big deal about this is, from a medical or from an ethical perspective. No one is splicing human genes with, say, a race horse's in an effort to create a superfast human. She's a baby, she'll probably be a normal kid physically and mentally. I'm more concerned about her caregivers who think that life on earth began with space aliens.
Dolly the sheep? What was wrong with Dolly the sheep that was radically different from other sheep? I know she had some ailments but they were everyday sheep things, not likely related to her DNA.
Going to the moon and playing God are two different things. When are we going to realize that just because we can doesn't necessarily mean we should?
Then you avoid the fact that there where a few hundred "mistakes" before Dolly was perfected and presented to the public. I can't remember the exact words on CNN today, but they called these "mistakes" something like genectic error sub-races of sheep.
Gene defects emerge in all animal clones A REVIEW of all the world's cloned animals suggests that every one of them is genetically and physically defective. Ian Wilmut, co-creator of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, published his findings this weekend. Dolly, the sheep cloned by Wilmut five years ago at the Roslin research centre in Scotland, has already shown defects. She was born with chromosomes that have shortened telomeres the DNA tips that protect the end of chromosomes. Wilmut concludes: "There is abundant evidence that cloning can and does go wrong and no justification for believing that this will not happen with humans."
OK, didn't know. It appears that the biggest issue is an accelerated aging process, which brings up some thorny moral issues. I can see why the govt would oppose this, at least for now. Interesting problem for pro-life religions such as Catholicism, I'd guess. If life is precious and all life comes from God, should the Church actively oppose a process that creates life? I'd guess that they do under the assumption that artificially-created life is an aberration against the way that God intended, but anyone out there closer to the situation care to provide more info?
So Dolly will age faster? Well, makes some sense considering they used adult (older) cells which already have shortened ends. IIRC, each time a cell reproduces the ends get shorter, thus age is shown. This solution could also help find a cure for cancer as the telomeres don't shorten and keep reproducing and reproducing without end, thus tumors develop. Keep scientific research going.
As with any new scientific field, its very unlikely they get it right the first time. There would be a lot of failed experiments before things worked out OK, but each of these "failures" would shed light on what went wrong and why. I imagine there were quite a few "failures" of artificial insemination and other "test-tube" babies. But they seem to have worked out the problems with them. Are cloning debates/discussions the same as the artificail insemination discussions of the past? Is cloning "unnatural"? Doesn't nature do the same? Don't some species reproduce by splittting off from the parent creature? I'm thinking stuff like coral, sponges, starfish, maybe other stuff like that? So it is not itself "unnatural", but a process that mammals do not use to reproduce. Is the whole argument BS anyway? Unless you believe that your whole identity, personality, etc is determined solely by your genes, then a genetic clone is not a mirror image. If environment has any effect on development, then the clone would just be a new person with similar genetic tendencies as the parent, but would not have the same personality because it wasn't breast-fed/beat as frequently/taunted/sexually abused/joined the same wacko french cult as the parent. If environment has any impact on human development (and I think it has the majority impact), then a clone would be a distinct person with the same DNA, similar features, but a completely separate personality and humanity than the "parent"
The problem is that these clones have the potential to grow up and mix in with the rest of us and infect our gene pool by reproducing etc. We won't know the end affects until it is too late.
Drop the "infect our gene pool" nonsense, Jerry Fletcher. There are over 6 BILLION humans on the planet. It'd take a heck of a lot of defective clones breeding into the population to cause widespread genetic problems. And, frankly, I think we'd notice defects far earlier than you think we would. Natural selection will weed out any serious defects anyways. That said, this whole thing makes me jittery, but mostly because of the beliefs of the people in charge. I think they are far less likely to do things "right" than most of the scientific community. Finally, a reminder for most folks out there - every genetic twin is a clone of the other twin.