First Human clone supposedly born

DiscoStu

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/topstories/story/0,4386,163029,00.html

Kind of disturbing when you think about it.

Personally i dont really put much faith in their claims, because of the alien cult and the fact that they belive that aliens created life on earth by cloning etc. but there si another italian doctor who has a lot more credability claiming that a number will be born in january.

What kind of precedent will this set? eugenics? a servant race genetically engineered to do the stuff we dont like, like working in fast food restaurants or should we stop progress because of the potential for abuse of the technonogly?

this is going to be a BIG one for the world to swallow if it turns out to be true.

Gordon

It was undoubtedly going to happen. There is no human force on earth that can stop genetic evolution. (or maybe you think of this as devolution)

I am amazed that "the world" honestly thought they could prevent it, especially after they wondered at Dolly the cloned sheep.

As with every new creation, it is impossible to stop it from getting out into the world, what should happen afterwards is careful governing of the new.

GreenHell

Just a thought but isn't cloning stagnation and not evolution?

Gordon

Ye, I guess it's how you view it - Evolution or Devolution as I said.

Biffa Bacon

Originally posted by Gordon
It was undoubtedly going to happen. There is no human force on earth that can stop genetic evolution. (or maybe you think of this as devolution)

I am amazed that "the world" honestly thought they could prevent it, especially after they wondered at Dolly the cloned sheep.

As with every new creation, it is impossible to stop it from getting out into the world, what should happen afterwards is careful governing of the new.

Of course you can prevent it. You can pass laws banning it and arrest those practising it. You can ban research into it, deny intellectual property rights protection to any discoveries arising from it, place sanctions on nations that allow it. It's just the political will that is lacking.

Typedef

The only thing about cloning that is really, really wrong, is that the organism that is created will be as old in cellular terms as it's progenitor organism or at least there is ambivalent evidence to suggest that, that is the case.

By that I mean, you take a cell from me Typedef, my age is 23, and you make a clone of that cell, to make a cloned baby Typedef.
That clone will only live as long as I will live, give or take, because instead of having (n) trillion cells of a just born baby, cloned Typedef will have (n) trillion cells of a 23 year old progenitor, so cellularly speaking the clone would have an age of 23 as rumour has it, Dolly (the clone) exhibited genetic as well as physiological signs of being older, then she appeared.

Daf-2 genes are the genes that control ageing of your cells, but if your cells have all been cloned from me, would you not have daf-2 gene's conducive with a 23 year old?
Thus a cloned organism would age quicker. Is it ethical to condemn a clone to a radically shortened life in this manner?

http://www.ifa-usapray.org/Biotech/Biotech1_5_02.html

Dolly was grown from a single cell removed from the udder of a 6-year-old ewe. Early studies astonished scientists by hinting that, on a genetic level, she seemed to have "inherited" those six years of age at birth. Specifically, the tips of chromosomes inside her cells appeared to be shorter than usual, evidence that those bundles of DNA, which typically shrink with age, had retained a degree of senescence from their former life.

Subsequent research has suggested that Dolly's chromosomes may not in fact be abnormally truncated. But many cloned sheep, cows and other animals created in recent years have exhibited a range of developmental abnormalities, such as deformed hearts, lungs and blood vessels.

Gordon

Originally posted by Biffa Bacon
You can pass laws banning it and arrest those practising it.

Not internationally.

JustHalf

Originally posted by Typedef
The only thing about cloning that is really, really wrong, is that the organism that is created will be as old in cellular terms as it's progenitor organism or at least there is ambivalent evidence to suggest that, that is the case.

That and the fact that there's bound to be a ton of malformed foetuses required to get us there.

Sorry, but I don't think we should be doing experimentation like this on embryos, which later develop into malformed foetuses.

I am not getting my point across very clearly, and for that I apologise.

seamus

Originally posted by JustHalf
That and the fact that there's bound to be a ton of malformed foetuses required to get us there.

Sorry, but I don't think we should be doing experimentation like this on embryos, which later develop into malformed foetuses.

I am not getting my point across very clearly, and for that I apologise.

No, I get your point, and agree. There's a few problems. At what point does it cease to become a scientific experiment, and become an in-utero human being? And with that, who gets to decide if the experiment should be terminated, if they discover abnormalities? The woman carrying the child? The scientists? Does this child even qualify as a proper human foetus and as such, it is subject to the normal rules of abortion?

If it is, will we suddenly be left with hundreds of people born with genetic defects and physical abnormalities, simply in the name of experimentation. How would a child feel to be told "because you were just an experiment gone wrong" when they ask why they're blind/deaf/malformed.

It's all just a bit deranged tbh.

MiCr0

Originally posted by Typedef


By that I mean, you take a cell from me Typedef, my age is 23, and you make a clone of that cell, to make a cloned baby Typedef.
That clone will only live as long as I will live, give or take, because instead of having (n) trillion cells of a just born baby, cloned Typedef will have (n) trillion cells of a 23 year old progenitor, so cellularly speaking the clone would have an age of 23 as rumour has it, Dolly (the clone) exhibited genetic as well as physiological signs of being older, then she appeared.

no - that doesn't follow
when you reproduce (as humans always have) the sperm and egg cells are coming form the parent. are these as old as the parent genetically? are the baby's who are born the same age as their parents?

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

MiCr0

Originally posted by daveirl
The whole thing is massively irresponsible. I'd have no problem with cloning, if it wasn't so risky for the clone. The animal cloning took 100's of aborted and babies killed at brith. Human beings IMHO aren't that disposable!

this is why they test on animals and not humans.
i science there is always trial and error - thats what makes it science. You start with an idea, test it and take it from there.

how could cloning evolve if they didn't do testing?

MiCr0

told to me by an expert in the field (genetic phd)

Earlier up people were talking about evolution.
Cloning is defn not evolution, because evolution requires meiosis to
occur. And for the genes to be shuffled about.
Cloning does not progress evolution, neither does it devolve, it just
puts everything into stasis.
There would be no IP arising from cloning as it is the same as the IP on
the original person, which is legal.

There are 100's of genes controlling age in an individual, not just
daf-2 cells.
Dolly has been thought to have shortened telomeres (the end of the
chromosomes, which may or may not shorten in old age naturally) but she
is still alive and that is a normal age for a sheep. And she sees to be
healthy, may have some arthritis, but that is normal for her breed.
There has not been enough research into it to work it out.
And they would have to look at clones of dolly's clones etc.
And PPL, the company where dolly was cloned in the Roslin Institute in
Scotland are NOT publishing their results.
And a single gene has no age! It is transcribed and translated into
protein when needed.
The studies at PPL, show that the animals MAY exhibit early old age.
But that hasn't happened.


Normal telomere lengths found in cloned cattle.

Tian XC, Xu J, Yang X.

Department of Animal Science and the Biotechnology Center, University of
Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut USA.

Success of cloning using adult somatic cells has been reported in sheep,
mice and cattle. The report that 'Dolly' the sheep, the first clone from
an adult mammal, inherited shortened telomeres from her cell donor and
that her telomeres were further shortened by the brief culture of donor
cells has raised serious scientific and public concerns about the
'genetic age' and potential developmental problems of cloned animals.
This observation was challenged by a recent report that showed calves
cloned from fetal cells have longer telomeres than their age-matched
controls. The question remains whether Dolly's short telomeres were an
exception or a general fact, which would differ from the telomeres of
fetal-derived clones.


Nature 399, 316 - 317 (1999)
Analysis of telomere lengths in cloned sheep.

Shiels PG, Kind AJ, Campbell KH, Waddington D, Wilmut I, Colman A,
Schnieke AE
It is not known whether the actual physiological age of animals derived
by nuclear transfer is accurately reflected by TRF (the mean terminal
restriction fragment) measurement. Recent veterinary examination of the
nuclear-transfer animals has confirmed that they are healthy and typical
for sheep of their breeds, despite having a shorter mean TRF length.
Furthermore, 6LL3 has undergone two normal pregnancies and has
successfully delivered healthy lambs.

Telomere-based models of cellular senescence5,9 predict that the
nuclear-transfer-derived animal 6LL3 would reach a critical telomere
length sooner than age-matched controls. However, considering the large
size distribution of sheep TRFs, it remains to be seen whether a
critical length will be reached during the animal's lifetime. The
experimental inactivation of murine telomerase produced a phenotype only
after five generations10, and similar observations have been made in
telomerase-deficient yeast cells11. Mice have also been sequentially
cloned by the transfer of adult cumulus-cell nuclei without any adverse
effects12.

mayhem#

Isn't it just great, science advances to a level where we can clone human beings and what do do?
We allow ****wits to clone themselves!!

E.

Snowball

suposed to be bull**** now, hope it is, kinda ****ed up ppl cloning them selves. What ever hapend to survivol of the fittest and getting rid of the ****wits of the race???????

MiCr0

[ot - thank god for ****'s or i'd ban you all]

clipper

thank feck someone cleared up that evolution thingy and the age question. eloquently so, as well.
i reckon people are getting all too frantic and worried much too soon. there's no way there's a human clone knockin about the place at the moment, and it'll be a hell of a long time before there is. i agree that appropriate legislation needs to be in place to prevent misuse of the technology (easier said than done, i know) and i'm not entirely sure that cloning an entire human being
is going to do us any good as a race. you never knoe though..
and, the cloning of cells is a pretty nifty thing to be able to do, particularly if we can become competent at xenotransplantation, or even for less(?)controversial stuff like growing our own organs/tissues.
there are potentially very many lives to be saved or improved by cloning technology itself. people immediately imagine the world been taken over by clones of themselves, and our whole societal structure changing for the worse. might just happen...but for the moment don't be so hard on cloning. if you or a loved one needed an organ transplant, limb replacement, complicated skin graft, it'd be nice if it could easily be done.

Gordon

By the way an interesting point the "Raelians" made about Dolly.

Dolly got arthritis at the age of 6 so people naturally assumed that cloning caused the arthritis. It turns out that the cloner of Dolly had arthritis - at the age of 3. Maybe under the care of doctors they prolonged her health.

Anyway back ot

Mad_Patrick

It is a terrible thing that probably happened to the first unsuccesful clones but now that it has happened and people apparantly have the ability to do this why can't we use it for our own good? How many kids and sick people are waiting for liver and kidney transplants?? A lot. The possibility is that we can actually make a new liver that is genetically perfect. We can't just throw away this oppertunity coz some people think it's immoral

Stark

no - that doesn't follow
when you reproduce (as humans always have) the sperm and egg cells are coming form the parent. are these as old as the parent genetically? are the baby's who are born the same age as their parents?

DNA in cells is covered at the tips by a special coating (rather like the plastic on a shoe-lace). This is worn out everytime the cell reproduces through mitosis and causes cellular ageing and cancer in certain cells. For some reason when a cell reproduces by meiosis the coating is restored, but scientists don't know how it happens. In cloning because the dna is taken directly from a cell without going through meiosis (ie: normal body cell) and then inserted straight into an ovum, the coating doesn't get re-generated, and so the offspring ages a lot quicker.

Stark

there's also the issue of restricting the gene pool. the whole point of sexual reproduction is to have a wide vareity of offspring, so if a virus etc. was to strike, there will be some of the population who will have resistance. (case in point, specially cultivated crops, which can be all wiped out at once by a single infection, as opposed to normal growth which can survive).