What do you people think about the prospect of human cloning? Can it actually be done? If it could, should it be allowed?
An article on CNN, plus my boredom, is the fuel for my question.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/06/16/britain.cloning.ap/index.html
The problem with the debate on human cloning is that people makes statements and impose restrictions that don’t make sense (for example, “when does ensoulment” occur was a main topic of ‘debate’ when the topic was reviewed by the government, which is a topic that can’t be approached scientifically and therefore should be void).
Human cloning is good for a very simple reason: stem cells can lead to the generation of new tissues to replace damaged tissue. It just so happens that very few parts of your body will actually regenerate when damaged so if you need 'em, you typically have to wait for a donor that matches a variety of criteria with the recipient and its complicated as all hell. Cloning has the same problem that genetically modified foods has: uneducated people are telling other uneducated noncritical thinkers propaganda they like to hear in order to spread their bs. People aren’t about to grow human beings out of test tubes any time soon. Scientists aren’t out there trying to create “perfect” human beings (what’s perfect is highly debatable from a biological perspective). They’re actually highly idealistic people that actually want to do something good from time to time :P. The point to cloning is to be able to create cells and tissues from other cells and tissues and help save people’s lives doing it. The problem right now (and there are long term problems) is to figure out how to work the cells, test for expression, create lines, etc… People are just really starting to get into working on these things and it’ll take a few years to figure out all the details of how even to get a single tissue type to grow and work normally.
I’m pretty sure it’s already been done…they aren’t allowed to be publicly revealed because they’d be scrutinized by the media. And they age a little bit faster than regular humans.
So I hear.
We already have SOME cell lines in the US, but there are a lot of problems relating to the fact that there are so few and that people aren’t allowed to make more. The South Koreans recently made some development a few months ago. Some group managed to isolate embryonic stem cells and maintain them.
I don’t think a human has been cloned. I’m sure the technology required would cost many, many millions, maybe more. I can’t think of anyone privately and secretly funding such an amount without getting any attention.
That’s cuz you associate the term “clone” with Dolly. Cloning is much more general.
my science teacher taught a unit on cloning and yes, human cloning has been done before.
Yeah sinistral, I guess I do, a little. What I meant is, I don’t think a human has been cloned, nurtured, and matured past the embroyonic phase. Who knows, though.
No that hasn’t happened and it won’t happen for a while. Dolly was the result of hundreds of experimental failures and she aged prematurely and was plagued by a variety of health issues for reasons people don’t understand right now.
By associating cloning with Dolly, anti-cloning propaganda gives people an image analogous to that of the institution in SW Ep 2 where people are grown for a purpose while that’s not the point. If you want to make a case about why we shouldn’t do something because it could be bad, I’ll tell you the Nazis found out smoking was bad and point you to visit a site on dihydrogen monoxide (www.dhmo.org).
The problem is the stem cells needed to clone an organ or something are in short supply in an adult body because every cell is already specialized. The debate is whether it’s ethical to take stem cells from an embryo or a fetus at a stage when the cells haven’t begun to specialize.
I think the cloning your teacher is talking about was actually a monkey. They took a monkey embryo and forcibly cut it while it was dividing. The result was an ‘unnatural’ set of twins.
Actually what they did was take cells that were early enough in the initial divisions and split em from one another at a point where they would individually give rise to new embryos without any changes. Bah , I’m just being nitpicky.
Well its not like cloning people would be very useful anyway, I think we’re crowding th planet up enough as it is.
WUT ABOUT TEH RALIENS?!
Kidding… Kidding…
I knew someone would bring that up :P. And X countryguy misses the point to everything I’ve said :D. Good job!
No, she was talking about a human being…she even gave out articles and whatnot…
If they had, I’d know about it. The only “cloning of a human being” that’s potentially occured is the joke 984 mentionned, which is the case the Raelians tried to put forward a pregnant italian woman was holding a clone of herself in her uterus. People thought it was interesting for a bit and we haven’t heard anything since because it was most likely a hoax.
I’ve also heard of two (or maybe three) supposed in utero clones, but they were still in utero and that was like three years ago.
I remember her mentioning something about Italy and how it was legal there or something. But I also remember her telling us about a little girl who was cloned, and she was around 4 years old (this was about 2 years ago) who lived in the United States; her identity wasn’t revealed (that might be an excuse for a hoax). Since you can’t confirm it, I find it odd that my science teacher, one who is well known and respected around the province, was spewing facts like that.
If a human being had actually been cloned (or the cloned embroyo matured), it would be all over the news and the article I posted would be moot. And my science teacher swore that she saw an aircraft carrier fly over her house once.
I would’ve had it confirmed by at least a half dozen highly respected researchers in a variety of classes, which includes an upper division development class (how do cells organize into structures and organisms). I also would’ve heard about in some of the staff meetings I attend (our lab is part of a couple groups, one being a transgenic mosquito engineering group, the other being -mostly- a stem cell research group). The claim that a 4 year old has been cloned, without any supporting evidence is meaningless, just like the Italian thing.