Human Cloning

[CiberTHuG]

Well, the American Congress is entertaining a debate on allowing human cloning.

Pro's? Con's?

[compuGEEK]

No way - Not ever! Very scary and dangerous. I was reading an article about cloned mice and it stated that
scientists had cloned a mouse and that the clone appeared to be normal in every way. All of sudden one
day the mouse became severly obese.

Cloning humans reminds me of the last Aliens movie when Ripley finds a room with her unsuccessful clones.

Eeew - No way.

[CiberTHuG]

So you are saying if we fixed the problems such as the one that caused the obese rat, then you wouldn't mind?

[Pix]

No way should it be allowed!!!! Not now. Not ever. Who knows what sorts of mutations and diseases could be created?

[compuGEEK]

I have mixed feelings.

I think it's acceptable for stem cell research - as long as
that's all it's for and they destroy the clone after they're done. But I don't think scientists should try
to clone a human for intentions of trying to "raise" it from childhood to adulthood. NO WAY. That's where I draw the line.

[compuGEEK]

Good point, Pix.

[CiberTHuG]

Pix, I take it you are against the current genetic engineering American scientist are performing?

[Pix]

What are they performing?

[barrk]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In 1997, when the world first heard about Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult, the possibility of cloning a human moved from science fiction into the realm of reality. Now Congress is taking up the question of whether human cloning should be allowed.

In a hearing Wednesday, proponents and opponents of human cloning will tell the House Energy and Commerce Committee what they see as the likely consequences of cloning a human being.


In the past year, at least two groups have stepped forward claiming they are ready to clone a human.

Last August, a religious group called the Raelian Movement announced its company, Clonaid, would make the attempt. Former University of Kentucky professor Panayiotis Zavos announced plans in January to clone a human within a year.

Zavos repeated his announcement in Rome, with his partner, Dr. Severino Antinori, the Italian doctor who successfully implanted a fertilized egg into a 62-year-old grandmother nearly seven years ago.

"Trust me, the high risks will be taken care of because we know what we are doing," Zavos said at the Rome conference.

Clonaid's director, Brigitte Boisselier, also is confident.

"I think we have everything we need to proceed now with humans," she said.

Scientists who have cloned other mammals strongly disagree.

"It is not responsible at this stage to even consider the cloning of humans," said Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist at MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, which has cloned mice.

"At least half, probably about three-quarters, of pregnancies that are generated will be lost," predicted Jonathan Hill, a veterinarian and assistant professor of animal reproduction at Cornell University. Hill has worked with Mark Westhusin, associate professor of veterinary science at Texas A&M University, to successfully clone cattle.

Westhusin will be among those testifying Wednesday before the House committee, joining Jaenisch and Art Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, to argue that human cloning at this time is not safe. Zavos and Boisselier will testify in favor of cloning.

The mechanics of cloning
To make a clone, scientists first take an egg and remove all of its genetic material. Then the nucleus of a cell -- any cell in the body -- is taken from the individual to be cloned and inserted into the egg. The cell is then given a jolt of electricity to activate cell division, basically tricking the cell into doing what a fertilized egg would normally do. Then the embryo is implanted into a surrogate who carries it to term.

Cloning Dolly wasn't easy. It took 277 attempts before she was born. Cloning cattle has proven equally difficult.

"The biggest problem is maintaining the pregnancy," Westhusin explained. About 90 percent of the embryos die in first trimester.

And calves that make it to term often become sick.

"Their livers, their lungs, their heart, the blood vessels, their placental vessels, and the placenta are often abnormal at birth," Hill said.

He suspects that the fetus may develop normally but the placenta does not, so the fetus is essentially starving. Problems with the placenta may also contribute to another feature of cloned mammals: They're huge.

Hill believes water retention under the skin is a result of poor placental development, resulting in calves being much larger than normal. Fluid retention can also affect the surrogate mother carrying a clone, with 30 to 40 gallons building up in a cow's belly, Hill said.

Researchers have seen similar problems in mice. Clones "may be up to four times bigger than normal animals and the placenta might be up to seven times bigger than in normal animals," Jaenisch said.

Other scientists have observed weight gain in cloned mice long after they are born. Ryuzo Yanagimachi, a biologist at the University of Hawaii, found that when he cloned a certain strain of mice prone to have diabetes, the clones would look normal at birth, but upon reaching puberty -- which, in mice, is after eight weeks -- they gained weight.

Yanagimachi said he doesn't know why the mice gained weight, since they have the same food intake and same amount of exercise as the non-cloned mice.

So far, scientists have successfully cloned sheep, cows, goats, pigs and mice. But the success rate is still very low. According to Yanagimachi, "over a hundred embryos may produce one baby -- and it can have problems -- we don't know why ... we must find this out first in animals."

Zavos and Boisselier disagree. Individually they believe they have the knowledge necessary to produce a human clone now or in the very near future. When Zavos announced his intentions to clone a human, he predicted that he and Antinori could do it within two years.

Boisselier says "we hopefully will have an embryo of this baby by the end of this month or maybe next month."

Extraterrestrials
Both Zavos and Boisselier refer to the vast experience of in vitro-fertilization as the basis for their expected success in cloning a human. Zavos told CNN last month, "I think that 23 years that we've been doing IVF in the human industry we do anywhere from 5 (million) to 10 million eggs retrieved per year, throughout the world ... 200,000 babies are born from such effort yearly."

Boisselier uses a similar argument. "I don't know why we should spend more time on the cows since we already have same level of success as IVF," she said.

Boisselier is a member of a religious group, the Raelian movement, which believes life on Earth was created through genetic engineering by extraterrestrials. She said 50 members of the movement have volunteered to carry the clone of a dead 10-month-old boy. One of these women is Boisselier's daughter, Marina Cocolios, 24.

When asked about the difficulties experienced in animal pregnancies, she maintained she would monitor the embryos and the pregnancies. She admitted there could be some problems, as with any in vitro pregnancy, and if something does go wrong, she said, "we will anticipate to do an abortion."

Zavos also insists the modern techniques of in vitro fertilization will allow him to properly monitor the embryos.

But many scientists and bioethicists disagree.

Art Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, insisted "if you go to the likes of Dr. Zavos, he will give you a dead baby, a defective baby or a deformed baby. "

"We don't know how to do this," Caplan said.

Jaenisch agreed. "We do experiments with animals and we know there is a major problem, which is not solved, so one should not do this with humans because humans are not guinea pigs," he said.

Neal Furst, professor of animal science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison added, "If you read the animal data carefully, one would be reluctant to go do humans on the basis of the problems that can occur in the pregnancies."

Legally, there's very little to stop scientists from cloning a human. Only four U.S. states -- California, Michigan, Louisiana and Rhode Island -- ban any type of cloning research, both publicly and privately funded.

Currently a federal moratorium bans the use of federal funding for any research that attempts to create a child by somatic cell nuclear transfer -- cloning. Many scientists around the world are abiding by a self-imposed moratorium on cloning humans and several countries have laws that forbid cloning.

[CiberTHuG]

Well, I'm sure you could do research on the net, but...

We are engineering bacteria, looking for a strain that will eat garbage, specifically garbage that won't decay, plastics.

I've read an article on engineered flies. We were able to dictate their eye color. There is a gene in flies called something to the effect of "I'm Not Dead, Yet". We were able to affect that, causing the fly to live much longer than normal.

We've also played with creating insects that will not hurt crops or that will eat insects that do. We've also played with engineering crops.

There is simple genetic breeding which yeilded dwarf wheat. Shorter, more plentiful wheat. And there is complex genetic engineering to make apples resistant to desease or cold.

Don't forget recombinant engineering. There is the rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone). We inject it into cows to increase their mass or milk production. I don't know if that has been proven to have an effect, but the injection is meant to re-engineer the animal.

I'm sure these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. All of our research into finding cures for cancer or HIV infection rests on genetic engineering.

[CiberTHuG]

Thank you, barrk.

And I've been wanting to stay out of this conversation, just moderate, play devil's advocate, but...

The Raelian Movement scares me.

[Pix]

I'm not against genetic engineering if the result of it will a have a significant effect on improving peoples lives. For instance a cure for cancer and HIV would be fantastic. But I worry what the consequnces could be. No one can be sure what the consequences of genetic engineering will be

[Arbiter]

"Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind."

-- Sister Miriam Godwinson,
"We Must Dissent"

"We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no
tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?"

-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang,
"Dynamics of Mind"

"Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself."

-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang,
"Looking God in the Eye"

[CiberTHuG]

What is SMAC?

[barrk]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Congress opened hearings into the possibility of human cloning Wednesday as House subcommittee members warned advocates they faced a skeptical audience.

Rep. James Greenwood, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on oversight and investigations, opened the hearing by citing Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel "Brave New World" -- a cautionary tale about a world of mass-produced humans.

"The possible cloning of human beings is now not relegated to the world of fiction, and the question to the world is this -- what should we do with this science?" asked Greenwood, a Republican from Pennsylvania.

He acknowledged that there are arguments in favor of human cloning, but said those arguments "must be examined with a substantial dose of healthy skepticism."

Former University of Kentucky professor Panayiotis Zavos said in January he planned to clone a human within a year. A religious group called the Raelian Movement announced in August that its company, Clonaid, also would make the attempt. Both Zavos and Clonaid director Brigitte Boisselier were scheduled to testify at Wednesday's hearing.

Currently, 12 nations ban human cloning. Louisiana Republican Rep. Billy Tauzin, chairman of the full Energy and Commerce committee, said the process "raises scientific, medical, moral and ultimately policy questions that we as a people must confront."

Opponents argue that the science is not advanced enough to clone a human safely. They cite the high incidence of miscarriages, birth defects and other health problems in animals that have been cloned.

Rep. Bobby Rush, a Democrat from Illinois, bluntly told witnesses that "human cloning must be banned now and forever." He and others raised practical and moral arguments against it, raising the possibility of new discrimination based on genetics.


The cloned mouse on the right became obese as an adult for no apparent reason. Experts say cloned animals often develop abnormalities
"Even if cloning begins with a benign purpose, it could lead to scientific categories of superior and inferior people," said Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida.

Boisselier in particular could face tough questions from the subcommittee: The Raelians believe life on Earth was created through genetic engineering by extraterrestrials.

Boisselier said 50 members of the movement have volunteered to carry the clone of a dead 10-month-old boy. One of these women is Boisselier's daughter, Marina Cocolios, 24.

A federal moratorium now bans the use of federal funding for any research that attempts to create a child by cloning, technically known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. Leadoff witness Thomas Okarma, president of biotechnology company Geron Corporation, urged that current restrictions should be kept.

"It is simply too dangerous technically, and raises too many ethical and moral questions," Okarma told the subcommittee.

Legally, few laws exist to stop scientists from cloning a human. Only four U.S. states -- California, Michigan, Louisiana and Rhode Island -- ban any type of cloning research, both publicly and privately funded. Twelve nations worldwide have banned human cloning.

Many scientists around the world are abiding by a self-imposed moratorium on cloning humans and several countries have laws that forbid cloning.

In the more than three years since scientists in Britain cloned the sheep Dolly, other researchers have successfully cloned sheep, cows, goats, pigs and mice. But the success rate is still low.

Scientists made 277 attempts before Dolly was born. Cloning cattle has proven equally difficult: About 90 percent of the embryos die in the first trimester.

"Over 100 embryos may produce one baby, and it can have problems," said Ryuzo Yanagimachi, a biologist at the University of Hawaii. "We don't know why ... we must find this out first in animals."

Art Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, insisted "if you go to the likes of Dr. Zavos, he will give you a dead baby, a defective baby or a deformed baby. "

Neal Furst, professor of animal science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison added, "If you read the animal data carefully, one would be reluctant to go do humans on the basis of the problems that can occur in the pregnancies."

[Kzin]

Originally posted by Pix
No way should it be allowed!!!! Not now. Not ever. Who knows what sorts of mutations and diseases could be created?

Pix - are you confusing clones with genetically altered organisms? How about identical twins (which is wha clones are) - should they be allowed?

I guess no-one has objections there - I think you will find that they are just the same as clones except the human mediated origins. There is a long history of the ruling groups being against certain genetic 'subclasses' - I think we are going to see it all over again with predudice against people who happen to share genes.

[chrisjk]

I can think of one big advantage to cloning...we could clone all the fit women of the world, then there would be enough for all of us!!




BTW ladies, that was a joke. Not intended to provoke a strike or cause offense (well...only a little..hehe)

[chrismitchell]

I think that we need to do human cloning only to be able to fully understand the human body... I underdstand that people would have a problem with this but the question would more be whether the clone would have the same rights as a human.. I would like to think that they would because it would in theory be the same as having a test tube baby (no insault to any people having, thinking of having or are test tube babies), which at the time was also considered a seriousley bad idea by lots of people... The things that could be learnt from the clone, like how to stop diseases etc..

Plus the clones could be the best resource for lonely programmers who are scared to go outside but really want human company (especially of the opposite sex).. They could also be used as mail order brides! lol sorry the last bit was a joke!

[Arbiter]

I don't think cloning is too great an issue, it's when we begin to modify those clones at a genetic level that we're really going to start hitting problems.

Imagine if Hitler had access to technology which would have allowed him to 'create' his dreamed of elite super race.

We'd all be obsolete / eradicated.

Scary thought.

As modern humans, technology and social rules have prevented us from evolving further. There is no more survival of the fittest. As such, is this new technology our way of evolving further?

Nature is always going to do a better job (overall) than we are. It is simply arrogant to assume otherwise. We may well be successful, but is it a risk worth taking? Diseases will be following the natural path through evolution, we will be following our own. Who will eventually be superior?

I bet I know. That's why I voted no!

[alex_read]

I can see the good comming out of cloning human organs, but a whole human ?

a) We won't be at that stage to do this and FULLY understand the reasoning behind this for another 100 years.

b) Greed would take over, the Americans would build an army of 10,000 Arnold Swarchneggers and try to take advantage / take over the world. This could only lead to bad things !

[barrk]

Untrustworthy SOBs us Americans

Did somethin' for school on this.

Bill Clinton has banned cloning humans, and it is still banned, even though we have a new President.

The article I read was on human cloning. They can clone you when your first are born. And they can make it so that there is no human head, just the body organs. So incase anything ever happens to you, you will have an extra set of your own organs. The headless human remains on life support. Don't understand though, how can a human breathe without a head?

Well, they have cloned mice, taken out the DNA which codes the head, and the animal died instantly. They can also add stuff, weird **** .

Gross too. Any of you ever see the picture where there's a human ear just embedded into a mouse?


Poor animals too. Well, I guess it's ok though. Especially when it comes to mice. There are so many, and how will we get anywhere if we can't test it on anything?

In my opinion though, I don't think we should clone humans. The human population is high enough already and we can't afford to double the human population (6 billion now to 12 billion? How will we all fit everywhere?)

But one thing we should learn how to do is freeze our bodies, and have our bodies unfrozen 100 years or so and still remain alive. That'd be neat .

[Kzin]

Originally posted by Arbiter

Imagine if Hitler had access to technology which would have allowed him to 'create' his dreamed of elite super race.

Then if he started in 1941 by the end of the war he would have had a superhuman army of 3 year olds . . .

[Kzin]

Originally posted by Matthew Gates
But one thing we should learn how to do is freeze our bodies, and have our bodies unfrozen 100 years or so and still remain alive. That'd be neat .

You mean so that next time someone needs a kidney or heart donor there are a huge bank of them with no rights and no votes frozen and ready for chopping

(Remember after 100 years no-one will know who the corpsicle is or particularly care )

[smh]

They should not clone entire humans. I saw a show where they cloned human organs...and only the organs. It is still in a testing phase, but if you need a heart or kidney transplant, they could clone your (or a "donor's") organ, without them having to loose their organ. This would eliminate waiting lists for transplants, because they would just have to wait for their organ to finish growing. This is the only way I think cloning should be allowed though.

These people that want a dead baby cloned disgust me. The cloned baby is not the same baby that died. It may have been created from the dead baby, but that baby's memories are dead with the body. It's just wrong.

Could you image running into someone who looked exactly like you? You might see things about yourself that you really don't like, and this could really mentally screw someone up in the head!

So, I voted "NO, never", meaning never a whole human.

[Kzin]

Originally posted by alex_read
the Americans would . . . .try to take advantage / take over the world. This could only lead to bad things !

too late!! (where have you been since 1945?)

Originally posted by alex_read
the Americans would build an army of 10,000 Arnold Swarchneggers

I bet they already have more than 10,000 guys who could outfight Arnie - I bet the Nazi had too. This isn't how the world is conquered (especially since Arnie and the like were made cheaply by unskilled labor and your clones are going to have to be expensive lab or factory fabs).

Start off with say fifty times the land resources of a relatively well off country like the UK; develop a technology enriched by getting almost all the scientists who fled Europe in the first half of the 20th C; have a work ethic and free enterprise and a relatively open system- this bit is probably open to lots of discssion - but it beats clones for world domination for the forseeable future I would guess. Gee - the Yanks have beaten me to it!!


(By the way - I'd give 10,000 Arnies about the same life span as 10,000 Woody Allens if you put them in the Somme or Ypres - about 2 hours)

[CiberTHuG]

...it is so flawwed.

Originally posted by alex_read

a) We won't be at that stage to do this and FULLY understand the reasoning behind this for another 100 years.

b) Greed would take over, the Americans would build an army of 10,000 Arnold Swarchneggers and try to take advantage / take over the world. This could only lead to bad things !

Well, in notably less than 7 decades we went from the Wright flyer to the Apollo Moon landing. In less time than that we exceeded MACH 3. We are pretty fast. I give us much less than a century.

Anyway... say we clone 10,000 Swarchneggers. They still need to work out (a lot) to bulk up. And we have to make them want to fight and forget the fact that they now have 10,000 twins, no income, can't vote, no citizenship... anyway. Getting them to fight requires brainwashing. If we can brainwash 10,000 people, why do we need to clone anyone?

And there is the flaw... cloning is simply a different way of having a baby. It's notable distinction is, we already know exactly what the baby will look like, eye color, hair color, if he will have male pattern baldness, sickle cell anemia. We already know how tall he will be provided he eats well. We can basicly create twins 20 years apart.

Now, if you've ever met twins, you know they are not exactly the same. They have different attitudes, and they have subtly different bodies.

They are nature's clones.

Now, yes, we can combine genetic engineering and cloning. Once we make a person who is immune to malaria, we could make a billion of them without having to worry about mating the first one and trying to pass on a recesive trait.

'Course, now we have a billion identical people. If they mate, they will make blue bloods.

Anyway... I'm rambling.

My vote was for "not yet".

[Kzin]

Originally posted by CiberTHuG
...it is so flawwed.

If we can brainwash 10,000 people, why do we need to clone anyone?

If we can brainwash 10,000 people (to make them want to fight)? - its called the army isn't it. (Jolly useful chaps too - sooner them than me).

Good point actually we don't need clones for that.

Originally posted by Kzin


You mean so that next time someone needs a kidney or heart donor there are a huge bank of them with no rights and no votes frozen and ready for chopping

(Remember after 100 years no-one will know who the corpsicle is or particularly care )

That's what records are for. We are organized, I think. Humans I mean. They could include a few sheets explaining the person, family and all, and all that sh...stuff .

[Kzin]

Originally posted by Matthew Gates
That's what records are for. We are organized, I think. Humans I mean. They could include a few sheets explaining the person, family and all, and all that sh...stuff .

Sorry - it was irony -

What I really meant was that once you are frozen and all your friends and relatives are dead no-one is going to stand up for your rights. If over a period of time people change the way that you are regarded (i.e. from being a 'frozen traveller into the future' in 2001ad to being officially dead by 2035ad UN laws against overpopulation or officially non-existant by the 2067ad laws of the "Greater Hegemony of America" or whatever) then you may find yourself waking up a piece at a time so to speak.

Even in countries which are civilised and organised - even when there is no crisis going on - people or groups typically have to fight for their rights on an ongoing basis ( try searching http://www.nativeweb.org/ for "Treaties" for example. If you are frozen you won't be able to fight for the right to live!

Originally posted by Matthew Gates
They could include a few sheets explaining the person, family and all, and all that sh...stuff .

A few sheets of paper were going to stop the second world war weren't they? There are films of the British leader at the time (Chamberlain) smiling and waving bits of paper from Hitler saying that the would be "peace in our time". http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1938PEACE.html

Anyway - I'd think it was a great idea to be frozen and defrosted to see the future later but I don't think its what we would call 'safe'

[compuGEEK]

Dolly Cloners Abhor Human Tests

http://www.wirednews.com/news/politi...,42706,00.html

[alex_read]

sorry, sorry - I'll never post another thread !

Just giving my opinion, so does anyone here think it SHOULD be done ?

[Kzin]

Originally posted by alex_read
Yeah, I just wanted to see some arguments WHY they think so though ...

Ok - I'm not in a hurry to promote cloning, but acting a devil's advocate there are loads of reasons why you *might* want cloning. Here are a few.

1) The argument against cloning just to provide a second body for a few spare parts may be morally difficult but many people are born with tragic incurable non-genetic flaws that ruin their lives (like Spinal Bifida). If there was a treatment that allowed doctors to grow a new body to provide a health replacement (i.e. by cloning) are we all going to stand up and say - no *you* can't be healed *we* have ethics you know.

2) I know people who have tragically lost their little children and it has destroyed their lives. They can never have that same child back again - they know that - but if they could have his or her identical twin it would bring more happyness than anything else to them.

3) More people want to adopt than there are children to adopt. Some people even go as far as to kidnap babies or source surrogate parents. Would it be a great tragedy if some of these kids were Einstein or Gandhi or Mother Teresa clones (hypothetical examples)? Would the world be worse if those genes occured in the pool say one in ten million of the population instead of one in ten billion (or not at all)?

Just a few thoughts - there are loads more - I haven't got the cloning set out yet. Tell me what you think everyone who has participated so far.

The overpopulation issue should be a worldwide concern - yet another reason why cloning is wrong!

[Kzin]

Originally posted by Behemoth
The overpopulation issue should be a worldwide concern - yet another reason why cloning is wrong!

Same argument for natural reproduction. If you clone a million people the you are overpopulating. If you replace one dead child with a clone one might argue that you are not.

BTW - are you saying that childless people shouldn't be allowed fertility treatments - for example - because it raises the population? My Ph.D supervisor thought so . . .

In a way, yes. I suppose its a bit draconian to throw such ideas around - I think childless couples should be forced to think about the outcome of their decisions and then be free to make those decisions.

People generally should have more thought about things. Nothing is simply black and white. The world wouldnt be overpopulated if it werent for human's inherent selfishness.