Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Cells, Microbes & Viruses => Topic started by: Maddie Hearn on 14/11/2010 19:30:03
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Maddie Hearn asked the Naked Scientists:
Why hasn't a scientist attempted to clone a human?
What do you think?
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I think it has been a law passed prohibiting the practice.
They are having legal trouble with usage of "T" cells in organ development
Can you think of any reason that Human Cloning should be or will be permitted.
I sure do not want to look at me in the flesh anytime in the future just a mirror image.
History reveals, when something new is released, unforeseen side affect will crop up and become a dominating item.
If this where to happen here, we may have an over population of I scream Clones.
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Have a look at this chap
http://www.zavos.org/index-old.html
While he is considered somewhat maverick, and his work unethical, he has nonetheless made major advances in human cloning techniques.
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My statement was to general, the controversy is focused State side.
Like having a tire repair kit, or fix a flat, build a body for spare parts.
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Maybe so, but it still stands that despite controversy and laws prohibiting, scientists such as Zavos are still attempting to clone humans. I suspect many more are doing so in secret.
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Clone a human?!
I hope not, some sadistic bugger just might clone this unholy specimen!
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ft2.gstatic.com%2Fimages%3Fq%3Dtbn%3AANd9GcQpQgXncRiikrGhftTZc_XIwOVuo6MAtW3F3QOaWggDsZlWSPTl8A&hash=fcc821d5eaf8baea51d64ef4219d0b72)
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Maybe so, but it still stands that despite controversy and laws prohibiting, scientists such as Zavos are still attempting to clone humans. I suspect many more are doing so in secret.
Yea as long as there is private financers, covert corruption will always be a breast.
But once that cat jumps out of the bag, who knows what will happen.
Multiple cloning, can moral ethics vary, between each clone?
Or does it come with experience and growth?
That is like saying that DNA can contain memory of information from one’s experience.
No matter how unholy.
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I am not sure what I think about human cloning. For the purpose of argument and assuming we are talking about a new human being (not therapeutic cloning), and putting aside the fact that there are way too many of us on the planet already, could someone please explain what is unethical about producing a healthy baby that shares genes with someone else in a manner similar to the relationship between identical twins.
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Development of the the perfect human race was attempted by a short little Austrian, back in the WWII. That program was not attempted by cloning, it was selective breeding, but considered worse than unethical. Can this be the reason for the unethical theme?
We have enough of trouble with our already existing discrimination between us and them type ways, now let's just Shacl n Bake more.
I say support T cell research, to repair the existing medical problems.
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Steve - I think a lot of those who avoid the "moral panic" would concentrate on your phrase "healthy baby"; at present we cannot clone from an adult mammalian without risking huge complications, unknown birth defects, and longterm health risks. Even though the cloned young are genetically identical to their mothers, in every stage of life from infancy to senescence they exhibit strange and highly damaging peculiarities in the phenotype. With sheep we can hone our methodology (through multiple live births and study of entire life-history of the clones) and, thus, under differing conditions of cloning understand where to improve our processes.
The question becomes - how far along the line towards perfecting the techniques involved do we decide to produce full term births of children; because unlike sheep and cows we cannot ignore the "almost there" results? The process will require hundreds, if not thousands of attempts to understand what factors in a human cloning technique will remove the late onset risks - can we ever justify even one child born purely as an experiment, let alone hundreds?
Aside from ethical concerns that others may have (from the religious side or those concerning godwin's law) I cannot understand how we could test and perfect a process that has no essential need yet requires radical and life-effecting experimentation on live humans.
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Imatfaal:
All your concerns are about practical problems and I agree with them. What I am interested in is the pure case, that is, what is wrong with safely creating a healthy clone.
I believe that human cloning is inevitable. Once the techniques are perfected on other critters some person with way too much money will hire a biotech company to do it. There is an attraction for someone, male or female, to raise their genetic selves to adulthood. This might be especially true for people who had a difficult childhood. Also, picture some industrialist bringing his "son" into his business ventures to prep him to take over the empire. These and other cloning themes have been explored in science fiction. I just read an old one.
Steve