First human clone!!??

[WalkerInTheWoods]

Why would someone want to make a clone anyway? They would have the same genetic material as the other person right? Why would one want this? Nature has the perfect plan so that the genetic material is always being placed in different combinations. It weeds out those that are not useful and those that are desired are refined in the offspring. Cloning disrupts the natural coarse of evolution, in the long run hurting humans as a race by not letting us evolve and change to suite our environment. Cloning is by no means needed for reproduction. We have enough people already being produced by natural means without science doing this. Plenty of children do not have parents that would love to be adopted for those that cannot have their own. Clones also have defects, even those that seem healthy so why put a person through unforseen problems. Forget religious reasons, cloning just does not seem logical on any level.

[Nate]

I hear ya man. Full human cloning makes little to no sense. It's one of those things where we can do it so why not? Stem cell cloning and such is all well and good because if anything it grows into little clumps of tissue not people. The cloned mammals have have defects that wouldn't be good for anybody. I'm pretty sure Dolly has DNA older than she is so her cells are more aged than they should be.

Although as far as evolution goes we're not doing much these days.
With all this medical stuff we're mostly working off genetic drift and chance. Takes all the fun out of it if you ask me. Now small rodents! Those suckers have all sorts of stuff going for them. collectively anyway. taaa!!

-Nate

Do you have any idea how BORING immortality can get?! -Defalco

[Bhikku]

I don't agree with cloning either, but I don't think cloning "disrupts the natural course of evolution" and fallangel had said earlier. This cloning IS our evolution to a certain degree.

"Look within, thou art the Budda"

[cainam_nazier]

It's the movie Gataca (SP?)  playing out in real life.  Kinda scary.



"I think I'm a clone now.  There's always 2 of just hanging around."
- Wierd Al Yankovic.  Song, "I think I'm A Clone Now"


David Rogalski
cainam_nazier@hotmail.com

[WalkerInTheWoods]

I only watched the first few minutes of Gataca (SP?) but from what I gathered they were not cloning people but rather they were, not sure about the word, geneticly enhancing the population to weed out the genes that cause problems, heart disease ect. Cloning is different in that they are using the same genetic code to make an exact genetic copy of a human. In other words they would take my genes and use it to create another human with the same genetic make up so the person would look just like me, like identical twins.

Bhikku, I am curious as to how you see cloning as our evolution. The study of genetics I can understand so we can know what all the genes do, and possibly weed out bad ones, though I think that could be dangerous without intensive study. But simply making a copy of another human I see as pointless, especially when that copy is not as good as the original and has defects. Just because we can do something does not always mean that we should do it.

[cainam_nazier]

fallnangel77

I see it like Gataca because of this.
When they first begain to do cloning they ran into numerous problems.  More so when they went for whole animals.  Gene manipulation and therapy was used in order to weed out the genes causeing the side effects.

The cloning of a human person will lead to this as well.  And if they are goinf to clone eggs so that say infertal people can have kids would you not assume that certain genes would be changed so that the child has the best chance for survival?  And so they all don't come out looking he same?



"I think I'm a clone now, I can send myslef for pizza when I'm out of town." - Wierd Al.



David Rogalski
cainam_nazier@hotmail.com

[Bhikku]

Ok I'm not to sure how much everyone knows about genetic engineering, but my mother works in this field and has explained to me why clones, will not work today with the knowlage avalible. When making a "clone" what is done is the DNA is removed from the cell to be cloned. It is inserted into the neuclus of the "blank cell". The blank cell reads the DNA and becomes the same as the donor cell. Now the problem is that the "blank cell" still has part of it's orginal genetic code left in the cell membrane. The DNA that was inserted still takes over and changes the cell to what the DNA reads, but with variations due to the orginal DNA still left over. I hope I explained this well, but this is the reason why there will be many genetic "defects" in cloned people/animals. The technology used, as advanced as it seems, isn't all the way there yet.

Fallenangel- I believe that everything we do, technically and spirtually, physically and mentally is part of our evolution. IMO we cannot evolve wrongly, and nothing can stop evolution. Evolution is change, and change is different. We can't really predict what aspect of evolution will be our next, until we get there and look back. Whatever we do is part of our evolution, regardless of how wrong or immoral it may seem.

"Look within, thou art the Budda"

[WalkerInTheWoods]

quote:
Ok I'm not to sure how much everyone knows about genetic engineering, but my mother works in this field and has explained to me why clones, will not work today with the knowlage avalible. When making a "clone" what is done is the DNA is removed from the cell to be cloned. It is inserted into the neuclus of the "blank cell". The blank cell reads the DNA and becomes the same as the donor cell. Now the problem is that the "blank cell" still has part of it's orginal genetic code left in the cell membrane. The DNA that was inserted still takes over and changes the cell to what the DNA reads, but with variations due to the orginal DNA still left over. I hope I explained this well, but this is the reason why there will be many genetic "defects" in cloned people/animals. The technology used, as advanced as it seems, isn't all the way there yet.

Fallenangel- I believe that everything we do, technically and spirtually, physically and mentally is part of our evolution. IMO we cannot evolve wrongly, and nothing can stop evolution. Evolution is change, and change is different. We can't really predict what aspect of evolution will be our next, until we get there and look back. Whatever we do is part of our evolution, regardless of how wrong or immoral it may seem.

"Look within, thou art the Budda"

I see what you mean now. I was talking purely in the physical/genetic sense of human evolution. You were talking about human evolution as a whole. Probably better to view the whole process.

[PeacefulWarrior]

Anyone heard anything in regards to this??

fides quaerens intellectum

[cainam_nazier]

In regards to what?  The mutation of cells because of DNA incerting?  Yes.  That is actually how viruses also mutate.  That is how they predict the next flue chain as well so they can make flue shots.  They take hundres of samples from people who have been through ERs and DRs offices and incubate them and make a flue shot based on the most likely form of mutation.  But even then some times they get it wrong.  That is why its mutation, its random but at times a predictable random.
We can not currently totally eradicate the host DNA and hence the mutations.   Even one minor variation in the DNA chain can cause a multitude of side effects given  it's relation to the rest of the chain.

David Rogalski
cainam_nazier@hotmail.com
I am he who walks in the light but is masked by the shadows.

[PeacefulWarrior]

I'm sorry I didn't explain myself better, I mean regarding this italian doctor who claimed to have imprgnated a woman with a cloned human fetus.  It was supposed to have been done about 3-5 months ago for a rich middle-easter sheik or something.  Anyway, I have heard it wasn't true but there was info. floating around in the media (news tv, internet, etc)

fides quaerens intellectum

[cainam_nazier]

I have heard about this.  It is either fake or  case of the mad scientist.  I can not remember if he thinks he figured it all out or if he believes that given the adaptability of the human it will not effect it's growth under normal cercomstances.

David Rogalski
cainam_nazier@hotmail.com
I am he who walks in the light but is masked by the shadows.

[PeacefulWarrior]

Mum pregnant with clone: doctor
                   Sunday Telegraph
                   07apr02

A WOMAN is eight weeks pregnant with the world's first cloned human
baby, it was claimed yesterday.

A controversial Italian doctor made the remarkable announcement at a
genetics conference. Professor Severino Antinori told the meeting in the United Arab Emirates:"Our project is at a very advanced stage. One woman among thousands ofinfertile couples in the program is eight weeks pregnant."

Professor Antinori's office in Rome refused to confirm or deny the reportlast night. The claim prompted scepticism among other experts, who said ProfessorAntinori continually sought publicity by making wild claims never backedup with scientific evidence. But if he has succeeded in implanting a cloned embryo into a woman, it
will prompt worldwide revulsion.

Professor Antinori, condemned for helping a 62-year-old woman to bear a
                   child in 1994, has been shunned by fellow scientists, who see cloning an
                   embryo for reproductive purposes as unacceptable.

                   Experts around the world – including those at the Roslin Institute in
                   Edinburgh, who in 1997 created the world's first cloned mammal, Dolly
                   the sheep – have condemned his project as scientifically flawed. Cloned
                   animals, such as cattle, have had many developmental problems.

                   Professor Antinori counters that "religious fanatics" are orchestrating
                   opposition to his work.

                   Unlike British and American scientists, who are working to produce
                   cloned embryos purely as a source of "spare-part" cells to treat disease,
                   the Italian sees no ethical bar to creating a cloned baby.

                   Professor Antinori, of the International Centre for the Study of Physiopathy
                   of Human Reproduction in Rome, and his colleague Dr Panos Zavos, a
                   Kentucky infertility expert, first announced plans for human cloning last
                   year.

Professor Antinori acknowledged there was evidence suggesting that
even those cloned animals that are born apparently healthy often suffer
from hidden defects.

Dr Ben Mitchell, of the Centre for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Illinois,
said: "If Antinori's claim is true, it is a case of renegade science pursued
at the risk of life."


fides quaerens intellectum