What's you stance on the cloning debate?

Nin, with therapeutic cloning, these cells NEVER see a womb. Eggs are taken out of the ovaries. Fertilisation takes place in a petri dish. The cells are cultured in a dish, and the stem cells extracted in a dish. There is no implanting.

Your argument that it doesnt matter what stage the cells are in while they are in the womb doesnt hold, because there is no womb involved.

Only with reproductive cloning is there a womb. The eggs are fertilised in a dish, and then implanted into the womb.

Perhaps you dont know the techniques behind therapeutic cloning. Perhaps you dont quite grasp the differences between therapeutic and reproductive cloning.

Its fully understandable, there is a lot of misinformation going around. I know because I am a scientist. I have made a point of finding out. Most who dont have my background wont know the deal.

 

Perhaps, Dagsy. But we do not need a degree to recognize when something is wrong. When something "unnatural and unkind" becomes the refrain of our society.

The truth of the matter is, curiosity DOES tend to kill the cat. By poking our insatiable little noses in genetic alteration, we pave the way for rogue doctors to start taking liberties with their knowledge. For the right price, many ex-genetiscists will start to perform highly illegal operations. As I've said, it's so relatively easy and has so much potential for making serious bank!

The scientists have used animal egg cells to create human embryos.
I don't like the path we are treading one little bit.

Agreed, Uruk. It seems to me that many people are in the dark as to the nature of these inhuman (literally) operations that are going on. I've researched the issue and read articles about pigs induced with human DNA and other by products that mutate them. This has ALREADY come to pass... it is still going on as we speak! It's called PHARMING; that is, using animals as drug factories by growing distinctly human parts in them.

 

Perhaps Dagsy can enlighten me on this issue - I don't understand how a cloned heart will be accepted into the body without rejection problems.

All cells have mitochondria which come originally from the mother in the egg cell. Now, if I'm going to use a cows egg or a human egg to clone me a new heart (I don't have any eggs coz I'm a guy) the mitochondria will be different, therefore the cell is not identical to my original cells which opens the way towards rejection doesn't it? Am I right or am I right?

 

I cant claim to know much about how the cloning using animal cells works. I havent looked too much into it yet.

Uruk, you touched on the answer to your own question. Mitochondria are inherited maternally. This means from mother to child. All children of a woman wil have the same mitochondria.

Hence, you only need an egg from your sister, your mother, your mothers mother, your mothers sister, your mothers sisters daughter etc etc etc in order to be able to be cloned.

Your somatic cells can be put into an enucleated egg cell from one of these relatives, and this can be cultured (completely in a petri dish) and the 'cloned' blastocyst has the stem cells removed. These cells are cultured and nudged down the pathway to become a certain tissue.

Note, of course, that we are not able to grow a fully working heart at the moment, however, heart tissue can be made from stem cells.

 

Cloning can be scary, whats next genetically alter people so they can run faster, or perhaps can't feel pain.

Lets say they genetically alter these clones not to feel pain, then we put them in the army, and so does China, and Japan, and everybody else, suddenly we have soldiers who are hacking at eachother and once theyre wounded they dont know it.

Without pain there is no sympathy, without sympathy there is death.

however I can support organ cloning.

 

I totally agree with cloning embryos for stem cell research and cloning of organs, etc. Although I read somewhere that scientists (in Japan I think..?) have discovered a form of stem cell in adults which could be harvested for the same purposes.

Genetic modifications in humans could lead to bad things, but they could also lead to an incalculable number of good things.

Who can argue with eradicating heart disease, cancer, etc, etc?

I'm sure people were just as scared of electricity, etc at the turn of the last century.

 

I did an essay paper on cloning a couple of years ago. Now I wish I had saved it. Alot has happened since then though.

I must say that cloning is essential to the advancement of medicine. Lots of advancements are stumbled upon while looking for something else. If we totally ban cloning so much will be lost that we might never learn any other way. As far as cloning entire humans, I would rather not. My opinion however will not stop those who are determined to do this. I believe that this is more of a who will do it first to get their names in history rather than anything that will be useful. This is beacause any forseeable technology could not increase the growth rate of a human being. Therefore if you cloned your best soldier it would still take the normal amount of time to grow up. Also don't forget the whole nature/nurture debate. How much of the super-soldier would be in a clone?

IF a human is ever cloned it will most likely stop very quickly, as it would be very expensive, time consuming, and frowned upon by the majority populace. It might be done, as I said, by someone just wanting to get their name in history but it would serve no purpose that parts cloning wouldn't cover.

Over the long term I believe that cloning will be as instrumental to medicine as anitbiotics has been. Don't forget that the same genes messed around with to create a super-soldier could also get rid of your sister's cancer, or your fathers alzheimers, or your heart disease. And if your kidney's fail and you can't find a donor you might wish that you hadn't asked for a ban to be put on cloning.

 

Genetically altering people for certain traits is difficult, because most traits are a result of many genes interacting. Hence, many genes would have to be altered in order to make someone run faster. This could result in many different problems. Hence, I dont think cosmetic alterations to the genome will be something that will happen for a long, long time.

Gleng, you are talking about isolation of Adult Stem Cells. This is another form of stem cells that will hopefully also be able to be used for treating disease.

Many people want to tout adult stem cells as more promising the Embryonic Stem (ES) cells. They say that more can be done with them.

While adult stem cells are promising, they are nowhere near as promising as ES cells. ES cells are much much more plastic and can be turned into many many different cell types. Adult stem cells are already somewhat differentiated (you get haematopoietic stem cells, blood precursors rather than absolute stem cells), and it is much more difficult to make haematopoietic stem cells become nerve cells or organ cells etc etc etc.

Hence while adult stem cells are promising and should be explored, research should still be allowed and encouraged into ES cells too.

 

Hey sis, lend me some of your eggs will ya? I'm starting an Uruk-hai heart farm.

Hey Dagsy, do you think it could be theoretically possible to create a female Uruk-hai by removing my Y chromosome and replacing it with another of my X chromosomes, and then cloning that cocktail of chromosomes? If that could happen, you could theoretically create some ovaries from cloned stem cells that I could use to garnish some eggs from that will be compatable with me? Yeah? Am I crazy?

 

So you want to make cells you can use for cloning?
Why wouldnt you just do a major harvest of your sisters eggs? Much easier.

 

No, I've found a fatal flaw in my reasoning. I can't just create an ovary from my DNA, coz you still need an egg/mitochondria donor to start the whole shebang going.

Still, if I could create a female me, I'd be happy. I think I'd ask me out on a date, after all I'm a REALLY great person.

 

Oh look, something shiny!

 

Its fully understandable, there is a lot of misinformation going around.

Dagsy, that is not the problem with my argument.
Ok, forget the womb. I know that there is no womb involved when you just need a blastocyst to work on.
In two years I'll be a biologist, so I'm not that misinformed.

But that blastocyst, for me, is as human as a foetus. I still don't care if it's a wombless bundle of cells. It's human and it's diploid and it's got the ability to develop into a foetus.

If I'm making any mistakes, please correct me. I just got initiated in genetics.

 

Nin, you should go to one of those abortion debates. They go round in circles arguing the same thing.

 

Nin, I can see that argument, although it is one that I personally dont agree with.

My question is, if it is never going to be implanted, can it ever really develop into the foetus that you want to see?

 

Uruk-hai, I think I'm debating the use of human embryos in therapeutic cloning, not abortion itself. So I think it's alright to debate this here.

Dagsy, I think I said this before, I'm pro-abortion and I believe in the use of human embryos for research.
So I'm sort of doing the backwards opinion debate on myself.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't find your argument of "it's just a wombless blastocyst" strong enough when supporting the use of human embryos.
I heard the argument that I'm presenting in a conference in my university. I always end up in a dead-end whenever I try to argue against it.
But this is being quite a fun experience.

if it is never going to be implanted, can it ever really develop into the foetus that you want to see?

It would, if it was implanted.
And doing the backwards thing again, who am I to say if I want to see it or not?

 

For Nin, this is an excerpt from a paper I wrote a while back:

Many Pro-life activists emphasize that fact that growing life merely to end it is not a direction that society should be heading in, which would be crossing the line and using humans as tools. Nancy Gibbs explicates how the anti-cloning stance tends to coincide with strict pro-lifer views, ?An embryo at any stage of development is a human life, worthy of protection, and any kind of
research that entails destroying an embryo to harvest its cells is immoral, no matter how worthy the intent. It involves using people as a means; it turns human life into a commodity and fosters a culture of dehumanization that we accept at our peril? (Gibbs 3) Essentialy, we have reverted to using humans as slaves that work towards our benifit. Any potential for a life, robbed from them.

 

any kind of research that entails destroying an embryo to harvest its cells is immoral, no matter how worthy the intent.

Exactly what I'm trying to say.
Thank you very much for that ParanoidAni.

Well, I wouldn't call it slavery, since the being itself seizes to exist once the manipulation starts (or does it? Gosh, this is complicated).
Look, I said "seize to exist". That's very PC.
It's more like we're dealing with embryos like they are a physical object deprived of any rights.
But I believe so much in the beneficts cloning might bring, I just have to support it, once it can be controlled.

 

In honor of the new "Clone War" trailer, this thread gets an "up"!

 

Society will, no doubt, be afraid of these new creatures as it is with all things that are strange and foreign to it. It merely adds another factor for discrimination and segregation, another way for people to hate each other because one deems the other genetically inferior or not as high on the
evolutionary ladder. What is to become of those from previous generations who?ve remained genetically unaltered like you or I? Are we to be forgotten about as the world paves the way for a new age of homo-superiors?

 

I really do not believe that cloning technology can ever be put back into the box again. Once the pandora's box has been opened, it is very hard to close.

To ban cloning, or research into this new technology would be like the Catholic Church attempting to silence Galileo...once the technology is there---once the light bulb has been turned on---it CANNOT be shut off.

Just imagine living in the 15th century, you're entire worldview has been drastically altered by a scientist who has concrete proof that the solar system is heliocentric and not earth-centered as official Church doctrine declared.

That was probably earth-shattering to many people back then. I believe cloning is treated like that by many in today's society. Once again, the scientific discovery tugs at some fundamental questions, this time on basic concepts of what we are...but fear has not stopped science, and I don't believe that, in the age of the internet, it can be stopped here either.

That said, I would thread cautiously around cloning technology. We have a chance to dictate the path that humanity should take in this new venture, and we shouldn't shun it because we are afraid of what it may cause. If that was true, modern science would never gotten off the ground.

Cloning technology is here to stay and I believe we should deal with it. Regulate it, not ban it.

My personal belief is that once cloning technology has been around for a while, people will not be worked up against it. New technology takes time for people to get used to.

A personal note: my mother is a biologist, and I remember when Dolly the sheep and the concept of cloning became the latest news craze, my mom said to me, "I don't know what you everyone's so worked up about...the technology has been around for a long time...I've been doing (cellular) cloning for years" LOL, I thought that was funny...but the moral is:

If my fifty year old mother can accept the technology, I think children who grow up with this new technology will accept it as a potentially dangerous, but very powerful tool to be used in modern medicine.

My two cents.

 

Society will, no doubt, be afraid of these new creatures as it is with all things that are strange and foreign to it.

Are you afraid of the "new creatures" who were born through artificial insemination? I am old enough to remember the first test tube baby and can can see all the same 'playing god', 'frankenstein', 'huge armies of artificial people', 'subhuman slaves' etc arguements that were raised at the time being raised again for cloning. You don't get backstreet IVF clinics do you?

 

As to the comment that we won't be so worked up about the technology once it's been around for a while, look at abortion. That's been legal for decades and there are still heated debates on the subject.


My personal belief about cloning is that it is another form of abortion, just at a very early stage in embryonic development. After all, the process involves fertilizing an egg, using electric shock to halt the growth, and then removing that unique nucleus and replacing it with the nucleus from a cell of another person. Because I believe that live begins at fertilization, I believe that cloning is wrong because it aborts that life.

 

As to the comment that we won't be so worked up about the technology once it's been around for a while, look at abortion. That's been legal for decades and there are still heated debates on the subject.

I was stating that cloning technology will be slowly accepted into society as a fundamental part of science, just like any other new technology. The technology, and its applications does not have to be as controversial as abortion.

And the debate about abortion isn't about the technology itself, but around the question of when a fetus should be considered a person---certainly, if a women was to use a clothes hanger to perform an abortion, the abortion debate will still be there, even if the technology is not.

My mother used cloning technology in some of her research, but it has been limited to the cellular level, and has not involved any usage of human cells, and I know after a few years of doing this, she doesn't get very worked up about the term 'clone', because it does not have to involve humans. Is what she is doing controversial or "playing god"?...perhaps the latter (she does help to develope drugs and thus save lives), but hardly the former.

Cloning technology encompasses a great deal of things, including fetal cells, but that does not mean that the entire science will always stay at this controversial juncture. In time, with understanding, I believe people will come to accept the less controversial aspect of cloning technology, and perhaps even accept some of the more controversial aspects of it as well.


My two cents.

 

It needs to be strictly controlled, and "proliferation" should be monitored. We don't want cloning technology being used as the next-generation nuclear weapons - i.e. mass production of an unstoppable army. However, within these constraints, we should learn to exploit the promising medical potential that cloning can offer.