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First Cloned Human Embryo 355

Posted by timothy from the pregnant-moment dept.
Human cloning, or at least the production of human embryos, is no longer hypothetical; a company called Advanced Cell Technology claims to have successfully done just that. DivideX0 writes: "The Scientific American has this article. Note the research was conducted in the U.S. although there are bills pending in Washington that will ban this research." There's also a story at MSNBC. Update: 11/25 16:07 GMT by T : Here's ACT's press release as well.
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First Cloned Human Embryo More

First Cloned Human Embryo

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  • And i wonderr what defects theis cloned embryo has... It's a known fact that cloned DNA is weaker and ages faster than the actual original DNA.
    • This is of course one of the first human cloning successes (that we've been told about). Let's remember that there are bound to be mishaps in early development, but at present methods and reliability have improved greatly with cows [bbc.co.uk]. More human successes can't be too far off.
    • Well, actually, this cloned embryo isn't going to be implanted into a woman's uterus with the intent to let it develop into a fully-grown human/mutant/whatever. The stem cells are going to be harvested for therapeutic purposes, like regrowing heart or liver tissue. The Scientific American article made it pretty clear that they were still very much against cloning for reproductive purposes, at least until the technical and ethical problems were worked out.

      /* Steve */
    • It's a known fact that cloned DNA is often (but not always) weaker and ages faster. This may not be the case with human DNA however [duke.edu].
    • There is a report on CNN [cnn.com] that has a little more info.
      In the study, which was published in the Journal of Regenerative Medicine, scientists removed the DNA from human egg cells and replaced it with DNA from a human body cell. The egg cells began to develop "to an embryonic state," according to a press release from the company.

      Of the eight eggs, two divided to form early embryos of four cells and one progressed to a six-cell stage before it stopped dividing. This breakthrough occurred October 13, 2001.

      So it sounds like it wasn't very viable to begin with. But the fact that the egg started dividing at all indicates some progress.

      Random side thought: I can just see the efforts to implement copy protection in the world of clones. The DMCA and the rest. And the ethical debates involved.

      feh

  • So this means that... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The human embryo will get patented if I know american researchers....

    Sad sad sad
  • Sadly, the public have this fun and harmless view of cloning, as brought forth by some movies such as Multiplicity. The dangers of birth defects and other pregnancy problems are still very high. Acceptable to test animals, but not to humans and human babies. Now would be a good time for a film to be made detailing the hazards of cloning.
    • Oh, you mean like the 6th Day?

      Jaysyn
      • re: 6th day

        No, that's great sci-fi fodder, but what I'm refering to is the human toll.

        A man and woman (or either alone) want to have a child and are unable to naturally

        They consult a specialist who does this sort of thing

        They have egg cells, sperm, other cells taken

        Either the woman or volunteer hosts the embryo

        Failure by stillbirth, premature birth, defects, etc. happen.

        Illustrate the emotional cost of dead or ill formed and living children

        The chief problem as I still understand is that the practice of cloning is still crude, with high failure rates. And by failure I mean all outcomes other than healthy with ten fingers and toes and will live to be 75 and have average intelligence and lead a normal life. For animals it's been easy to push past the public, except for PETA and others sympathetic to animals.

        Have a birth mortality rate of one in two and you'd think there's a major problem, since even the worst rate in the world is better than that. Then there's when the lawyers get involved...

        I think a well done example of how Cloning could not work out would be a service. Too bad nobody does these kinds of films in Hollywood anymore. Maybe an independant, but try to get your local cinema or ABC, CBS, NBC, etc. network to carry it.

        • Also, I think Hollywood needs to do a film that illustrates the danger of the car. The plot could run something like this:

          * A man and woman want to buy a car

          * They consult a greasy salesman who sells it to them

          * An accident by distraction, bad tires, mechanical failure, ice, etc. happens

          * Illustrate the societal cost of dangerous machines.

          The chief problem as I still understand is that automobile safety is still crude, with high accident rates. And by accident I mean all outcomes which result with dead, crippled, or maimed humans. It's been easy to push past the public, except for Ralph Nader and various environmental groups.

          Have a driving mortality rate of one in a thousand and you'd think there's a major problem, since even the worst rate in the world of pedestrian traffic is better than that. Then there's when the lawyers get involved...

          I think a well done example of how automobiles could not work out would be a service. Too bad nobody does these kinds of films in Hollywood anymore.

        • A man and woman (or either alone) want to have a child and are unable to naturally

          They consult a specialist who does this sort of thing

          They have egg cells, sperm, other cells taken

          Either the woman or volunteer hosts the embryo

          Failure by stillbirth, premature birth, defects, etc. happen.

          Illustrate the emotional cost of dead or ill formed and living children

          Did you plan to write that list so that it didn't mention cloning and could apply to nearly any assisted-fertilization effort by the parents? If not, maybe you should think about just what the fundamental difference is anyway.

          And by failure I mean all outcomes other than healthy with ten fingers and toes and will live to be 75 and have average intelligence and lead a normal life.

          So we should ban any kind of reproduction altogether, because entirely natural methods haven't even come close to hitting that target.

    • There have been a few [scifi.com], but they don't do a very good job of helping anyone's cause.

    • They're not going to grow a living person from this. The aim is to use the cells after they've multiplied a bit and use them medically.

      Whether that is better or worse than producing a person is up to you.
      • Sounds like Stem Cell research, if so then this is old and was covered relentlessly during the debate before Bush made his stand on the issue.
        • Sounds like Stem Cell research, if so then this is old and was covered relentlessly during the debate before Bush made his stand on the issue.

          It's not old. Stem Cell research in the past has involved embryos that were created in the old-fashioned egg-and-sperm-in-test-tube way. Generally in infertility clinics. That involves creating a "new" human life (or at least, a new combination of DNA that could become a unique human), then turning it into stem cells. The stem cells in question will then contain this DNA, which might cause the body to reject them if they're implanted into a recipient.

          This technique involves creating a cloned cell, from an individual's own DNA. There's no conception, no unique DNA (essentially, the embryo is as unique a "life" as the cells in my big toe). And the stem cells derived from it can be implanted into the donor without the worry of rejection.

          This is really the future of stem cell research. Bush's proposed solution is to prevent the use of existing (non-cloned, leftover from fertility research) embryos for stem cell research (instead the leftovers will be destroyed in an incinerator.)

          Unfortunately, there's no Federal law on the creation of cloned embryos, and no real notion of whether a cloned embryo has special rights as a unique person-- it is after all, the donor's DNA, which has been activated and made to divide.

    • Well, luckily George Lucas will be filling the gaps come next year!!

      In May 2002, the world will finally see the dangers of cloning and the disasterous effects it could have on The Republic!!!

    • Re:Need Bad PR For Cloning (Score:5, Insightful)

      by localman ( 111171 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @03:27PM (#2610707) Homepage
      You obviously didn't read the article. They aren't cloning humans.

      What they are doing is human cell cloning, which is hardly unethical. This is on the same ethical level as commonplace tissue transplants. They are not making embryos, but simply cells that can then be used to patch up damaged tissue in aging or diseased adults.

      I think this sounds like a great idea - and with further research will beat the pants off the barely successful Frankenstein-like system of transplanting tissue between humans that we use now. The person instead gets their own copied cells.

      Please take the time to really think about what this mean before jumping to conclusions.

  • We've been doing it for years... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kypper ( 446750 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @12:08PM (#2610134)
    Can you tell me any biological difference between clones and twins? (besides the fact that they were done at the same time)

    Identical twins are the same person at birth who have different events in life that alter their personalities and responses to shape a new individual.

    This doesn't frighten me at all. No 'soul' bullshit, because if there are souls, then it's a new one in the clone, not the same one. This has a lot of potential for good, and I don't know of much that doesn't have it for bad too. So let's all relax and think before we cry 'OH DEAR GOD SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN'.
    • Damn right we've been doing it for years. Look at MTV's audience...though that might be more accurately referred to as "cloning sheep".
      • "cloning sheep"

        this is seriously offtopic but it reminds me of a bbspot (i think) bit i saw about anthrax:

        Q: Why are Americans likely targets for Anthrax attacks?

        A: Anthrax is a disease found primarily in sheep and cattle. Americans share many similarities with sheep and cattle as they are easily herded and frighten quickly.

    • reproductive cloning, yes (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      We've been doing reproductive cloning for years, true. However, I fail to see how reproductive cloning "has a lot of potential for good". Instead of one kid, you get identical twins. Sweet! If you wanted two kids, you could have just had another kid.

      It sounds like what they're doing here is therapeutic cloning, which doesn't really equate with identical twins. When you have identical twins, you don't harvest cells from one of them for the other. In this way, what they've done truly is new.

    • The biological difference is that they (claim to have) cloned an adult. In identical twins, the blastocyst (small bundle of cells) divides before the cells have a chance to differentiate. Once a cell has differentiated (i.e. picked what its "role in life" is to be: muscle, brain, bone, etc), neither it nor its 'children' ever become anything else.

      There's something screwy about this whole thing, though. Scientific American isn't really a peer-reviewed journal, and the journal they claim to have published in (e-biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine) sounds pretty iffy as well.
    • but you have to understand that people have to have something to complain about. They don't ever look at the positives of anything.

      It is a political stance and people always have their sides.

      I say that it is a great thing for the world. Just b/c someone is cloned (as the root author said) does not mean that we are going to have 1 million little Hitlers running around.

      Genetic research is already going on to make the perfect children. No birth defects, whatever eye color you want, whatever. I don't see how this is very different.

      For the countries of the world that could support this kind of research I don't really see any "mad scientist" type creating an army of super-humans (as is the general public fear it seems). China still hasn't had a manned space launch and they were quite a ways behind in the nuclear arms race. Russia only had the bomb built b/c they borrowed much of the information from their allies.

      I say let it go on. There is nothing but good to come from this. Stem cell research as well.
    • So, you're telling me with all of the people going hungry, our lack of ability to deal with population control (even in the US), our lack of ability to parent our children, and with thousands of children WITHOUT parents in orphanages(sic), that we need to start artifically making them?
      • We need to stop producing them "naturally" too. Tubal ligations and vasectomies all around! Have you eliinated your reproductive faculties? If not, then you're rather hypocritical, aren't you?
      • Wow! I sometimes hear crap like this from people who don't think it through, but on Slashdot? Really, now! Individuals who make decisions solely because of society are not thinking things through. If you were against cutting down the forests in the US, would you freeze to death, rather than start a fire if you were stranded in the wilderness?

        Heck, your argument is the same kind of argument that says, "Why develop the integrated circuit, when I have a slide rule?". Can you SEE how the argument you are using has NO BEARING on the issue you are arguing against? Why advance science when people lived just fine in the stone age?

        Slashdot would be much nicer if people would please please please please please use their minds just every once in a while.

        • Re:We've been doing it for years... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by tshak ( 173364 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @02:22PM (#2610523) Homepage
          Thank you for insulting my intelligence.

          There are millions of ways of advancing science. I'm arguing that there are better areas to focus our engergies - studies that will actually further society. I'm arguing that in this area not only would we "not benefit" from this, but that it would "add problems" because of the reasons I mentioned earlier. Just because we CAN doesn't mean we SHOULD. Your "forest" analogy has nothing to do with my statements. Humanity is more important then Science - period. Our decisions MUST be human centered, not "geekocentric".

          "Why develop the integrated circuit, when I have a slide rule?".

          You should review your debate tactics. It is intellectually dishonest to take an argument against a particular scientific advancement and generalize it as an argument against any scientific advancement. It is ludicrous to assume that I, a Computer Scientist, want to hinder scientific advancement.

          Please focus on my core contention. I'm not necessarily against cloning specific cells or the research behind it. I'm against cloning humans as a species. It's called Responsible Science(tm).
          • I'm arguing that there are better areas to focus our engergies - studies that will actually further society.

            I am strongly in favor of furthering society as well - as are most people. But I think it is a fallacy to assume that the research being described in the article is somehow taking away from our resources for social research and improvement.

            These people are specialists in biology and medicine. They are trying to find cures for disease and the maladies of aging. I think this is noble research.

            I don't understand how cloning got such a bad rap. This research is for cloning individual cells - which is mirrored naturally every time a cell divides. This is how our body repairs itself. These scientists are trying to give us the ability to help heal things that our body wouldn't naturally be able to heal.

            Imagine if you had liver disease and needed a replacement. Would you rather some other person's semi-compatible liver cells were removed from their dead body to be put into you or that some of your own cells were grown in a petri dish and then put back. Well the first is commonplace, the second is about to become illegal. I find this disturbing.

            Peace
          • I'm arguing that there are better areas to focus our engergies - studies that will actually further society.

            We're talking about therapeutic cloning here, not reproductive cloning. No humans will be made from this embryo. But let's face it-- preventing this research won't do a damn thing to stop reproductive cloning. There are a ton of great reasons for therapeutic cloning, all of which have enormous benefits to society. On a purely objective level, you have to balance those potential benefits against the primary objections: the "destruction of embryos is wrong" argument, and the "this is a slippery slope to reproductive human cloning a la A Brave New World" concerns.

            The objection to the destruction of human embryos is an understandable reaction, but it's debatable at best. Clearly, embryos don't suffer in any way that we recognize-- they have no nervous system. Destroying a cloned embryo doesn't even destroy a unique combination of DNA-- it simply destroys one special cell out of a billion non-unique cells in the donor's body. A cloned embryo certainly has the ability to become a person, but then so does every cell in my body if I insert it into an egg cell. Does trimming my toenails equate to the destruction of millions of potential lives? Meanwhile, thousands of conventionally fertilized, "unique" embryos are incinerated every day by fertility clinics, but this destruction goes unmentioned (because, presumably, babymaking advances society.)

            The slippery slope argument has us believe that creating a cloned embryo sets us on an unavoidable path to human cloning, and all sorts of horrors beyond. Therefore we must blanket-outlaw all cloning of human beings, regardless of the consequences. This assumes three things, of course:

            One: cloned human babies can't be created if Congress bans all cloning research, including therapeutic cloning.

            Two: if reproductive cloning does come to pass, it will somehow lead to monsters or second-class human beings

            Three, that a cloned human is in some way "less" than a non-clone.

            Reproductive cloning can't happen if we ban therapeutic cloning. This is ridiculous, of course. The cat is way out of the bag, and has been since Dolly. When ACT cloned this embryo, they stipulated that it wouldn't be implanted in a womb. Somebody less "scrupulous"-- perhaps outside of the reach of our laws-- could easily replicate ACT's work, and proceed with implantation. Outlawing continued work on therapeutic cloning now isn't going to make that possibility any less real. If you really feel that cloned human beings are dangerous, then make it illegal to implant them into the womb-- don't screw us all by outlawing therapeutic cloning.

            If reproductive cloning does come to pass, it will somehow lead to monsters or second-class human beings. It would seem to me that allowing some non-reproductive cloning research actually reduces the chance of some horrible reproductive-cloning accident. We probably should outlaw reproductive cloning, given the potential birth defects we already see in animals. But if somebody somewhere's going to try it despite such laws, outlawing therapeutic cloning is only going to make their attempt less well-guided, and more likely to end in disaster. As to the "second-class" citizens worry... Well, as far as I know we outlawed slavery and indentured servitude years ago. If we're so unethical as to create (expensive) cloned human beings just to enslave them or raid them for organs, then there'd be nothing to stop us from doing it to non-clones. I can only hope that we're better than that, or there's little hope for us.

            A cloned human is in some way "less" than a non-clone. A lot of the fear comes from the religious belief that life (and therefore the soul) arrive at the moment of conception. Given that there are millions of indentical twin "clones" walking around, thinking for themselves, and otherwise having souls, this belief seems somewhat questionable (yet is rarely brought up.) However, if the religious argument is left out, the main fear seems to be that we will allow the creation of clones with limited rights (see above.)

            There's also some rather silly fear that cloning will take over from "conventional" reproduction and destroy the American Way of Life (tm), or that people will unethically begin to clone my DNA without my permission. Again, if the law is the only thing protecting us from such things, then let's write laws that specifically protect us from those possibilites, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

            So to get back to your point, I must question your whole premise that this sort of therepeutic cloning won't "further society". I doubt that you could find a single area of research that has more potential to "further society" than this one-- that is, cure disease, increase quality of living, create new resources as yet unimagined.

            In fact, if "furthering society" is primary goal, I would imagine that billions of research dollars would be redirected into this area. Why are we spending millions developing acne medications when instead we could be developing a technology with the potential to repair spinal cord damage and repair damaged heart tissue?

            Yes, there's some possibility that it could lead to reproductive cloning, and if that's not a useful area of research than I imagine we won't pursue it too far. And of course there are going to be those who object to any sort of cloning, but there are millions of lives that could be saved and improved by this technology. I find it hard to believe that we should hold those people hostage just because some people selectively object to certain aspects of the research.

          • How you got +5 Insightful is beyond me, at least in the context of the original discussion. What a waste of mod points. You ought to be slapped down to -1 Offtopic.

            Apparently very few people chose to read any of the linked articles, evidenced by Chicken Little here crying about the more pressing problems of the modern age. I'll agree with you that couples attempting to have a child by cloning is "silly", but the need to reproduce is a biological imperative hard-wired into our brains. As a species, our reproductive priorities probably fall in the loose order of:

            immaculate(God)
            natural(you and me baby)
            invitro(you, me OR someone else, and a test tube)
            cloning(me, possibly you or someone else - but not neccesarily, and a test tube)
            adoption(maybe you, maybe me, maybe neither of us)

            Folks, the article is about therapeutic cloning, not reproductive cloning. You can get off your soapboxes and stop warning us about the End of Man. Read the Scientific American [scientificamerican.com] article before you start clucking, OK?

            In a nutshell, for those of you who are too mired in ignorance/sensationalism:

            At our current stage of tech, a mature female egg can be stripped of it's nucleus, and a donor cell (skin in this case) is implanted itno the egg. This "embryo/zygote" is then encouraged to divide. Alternatively, they managed to get a mature female egg to divide without the introductionof any foreign material at all. (Guys, we are no longer needed ;)

            The point behind all this was not to implant these embryos into a uterus and bring to term. The point is to supply stem cells, for therapy of autoimmune diseases and spinal injuries.
            My spine cells, used to create more of my spine cells, to be re-introduced into my damaged spine, to grow an undamaged spine.

            I don't see an army of cloned soldiers or designer babies here. Now move along.

      • Re:We've been doing it for years... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by john@iastate.edu ( 113202 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @01:27PM (#2610380) Homepage
        ... our lack of ability to deal with population control (even in the US)...

        Actually, the birth rate in the U.S. and in much of the 'first world' is below replacement level (and in some places, is precipitously low -- Italy for one).

        Population increases will continue for a couple of decades due to inertia, imigration, and lengthening lifespan, but if the trends continue, the population will decline.

        Of course, this isn't all rosy news, as it means a world with many old people and few children -- in some countries the median age may well approach 60!

    • The difference between a clone and a twin is that one of them has been artificially produced in a lab.

      That's what it boils down to. The problem isn't in having a couple of identical humans running around, the ethical problem is should human beings artificially engineer human beings.

      Don't start with your "potential for good" bullshit. We've seen that literally hundreds of times. This time, the point at stake is so crucial for human ethics that we should actually take the time to bother tho think of the ethical consequences beforehand.

      • Re:That's not the question (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mangu ( 126918 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @01:23PM (#2610370)
        The difference between a clone and a twin is that one of them has been artificially produced in a lab


        You know, we have been artificially generating human beings since human life began on this planet. And the "potential for harm" is tremendous. Just think of this, every criminal that ever lived was created by an action of two other human beings, that is, by definition, an "artificial" creation.
        Interestingly, not a single one of those criminals has ever been produced in a lab. So, the ethical problem is not "where and how will we create new human beings", the TRUE ethical question we must face is "how do we raise the human beings we create".

    • How about this solution to the cloning "problem":

      Congress passes a law that makes it illegal to clone a human that doesn't give consent to be cloned. That way, if you are against being cloned, you can't be cloned. If, on the other hand, you'd like to be cloned then you can. It seems pretty simple to me. Everybody wins.

    • Can you tell me any biological difference between clones and twins?

      Twins are produced naturally at the same time. Clones are produced from cells not intended for reproduction, and there are unknown consequences to this. It's entirely possible that a human produced through cloning will have severe developmental problems, even beyond simple genetic errors.

      That is my argument against cloning -- that we simply don't know enough at this point to say that it's safe. It's hugely irresponsible to produce damaged children through these early experiments.

      Once we know a lot more, I would personally have no problem with cloning.

    • Yah, except they didn't actually produce a cloned embyro, they produced a ball of cloned embryonic cells, right? I know it doesn't sound as controversial as making a viable human embryo clone.

      Reuters has a bit less sensational headline: U.S. Company Says It Cloned Human Embryo for Cells [yahoo.com]

      A U.S. company said on Sunday it had cloned a human embryo in a breakthrough aimed not at creating a human being but at mining the embryo for stem cells used to treat disease.

      Advanced Cell Technology said it had used cloning technology to grow a tiny ball of cells that could then be used as a source of stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are a kind of master cell that can grow into any kind of cell in the body.

      I think the headline 'First Cloned Human Embryo' is slightly misleading. If one were to read only that, one might draw the conclusion that they were making a human 'Dolly'. A more accurate, if less attention-grabbing tagline might be 'Scientists produce cloned embryonic cells'.

      Doesn't have quite the same ring, though.

    • technical differences between clones and twins (Score:4, Interesting)

      by myc ( 105406 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @02:07PM (#2610483)
      1. in vitro vs. in vivo fertilization. There are so-called maternal effects, such as placental-embryonic interactions, that have profound but as-yet not completely understood effects on embryonic development. an in vitro fertilized embryonic clone will be no different genetically from a clone, but there are epigenetic effects that must be considered. This is not to mention materal effect genes, where a gene that acts embryonically is provided from the mother's, rather than the zygote's, genome.


      2. genetic imprinting. Fertilized zygotes have DNA contributions from two parents, whilst cloned embryos only from one parent. DNA is often covalently modified (e.g., methylation) in a process called imprinting, where the modified allele is silenced. Modifying these silenced alleles often has deleterious consequences.


      3. Telomere length. Chromosomal ends are maintained by special DNA structures called telomeres. The lengths of telomeres are often different between different cell types, and usually reflects the state of differentiation of the cells. Telomeres are known to affect life span and this is probably one of the main reasons why cloned animals have poor life spans.


      There are just some factors that I can think of off-hand, I'm sure there are many others. Just because organisms have identical DNA sequences do not mean that they will develop identically, even if you do not take environmental effects into consideration.


      Don't get me wrong, I am all for cloning and stem cell research, but it is prudent to think through ethical concerns before plunging ahead.

      • You're citing old, old data. Much has come forth since Dolly.

        1. Children created through IVF turn out plenty normal. You're confusing embryos *created* in vivo with those *brought to term* in vivo. There's still no substitute for a human womb---these artificial embryos would need to be implanted into a regular ol' uterus to become children.

        2. You have genes from both of your parents. The genome in the embryo is the same as the genome you had *as* an embryo. The only difference is, the first step---that of recombination---has already been done.

        3. Wasn't the telomere question still up in the air? I thought most clones animals had normal lifespans, and it wasn't even shown conclusively that Dolly was aging prematurely.

        Please try to keep up-to-date. These questions were all answered months ago.

        -grendel drago
  • Read this (http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011123/tc/bizcl oning_dc_1.html) story [yahoo.com].

  • Watching "Meet the Press" right now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jspaleta ( 136955 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @12:23PM (#2610181) Homepage
    Meet the press just spent 30 minutes on this issue.
    Unfortunately it looks like the debate in the US senate is going to be very one sided, and the senate will vote like the house did and pass a bill banning cloning research in broad strokes...including the research that was just announced, which is not meant to clone entire human beings, but an effort to conduct stem cell research to produce transplantable organs by taking dna from a patient and cloning compatible organ cells, to reduce the risk of rejection.


    The long term plan for this company is to be able to use a synthetic process and skip the reproductive cells altogether, but to get there there needs to be intense research on how the stem cell process works, so that a organ specific process can be developed, which doesn't run the ethical risk of creating a whole person if some cells were quickly stolen from the lab and placed in a womb.


    I find it somewhat ironic that so much research goes on with materials that have the potential to kill large amounts of human life...but research with the potential to create human life is so strongly opposed.

    -jef

    • "I find it somewhat ironic that so much research goes on with materials that have the potential to kill large amounts of human life...but research with the potential to create human life is so strongly opposed."

      People are worried what this will bring us in the future.

      Neatly tucked away in a separate article was a discussion on the ethics of cloning humans, particularly cloning humans for research purposes. I found this paragraph disturbing. Here, they try to explain the rectitude of seeking "human eggs for scientific research". Their response was disturbing:

      "First, a substantial market in human eggs for reproductive purposes already exists. Young women are being paid substantial sums to provide eggs that can help single women or couples have children. If women can undergo risks for this purpose, we asked, why should they not be allowed to undertake the same risks to further medical research that could save human lives? And if they can be paid for the time and discomfort that egg donation for reproductive purposes involves, why can't they receive reasonable payment for ovulation induction for research purposes?"

      In just the paragraph before, they were rebutting a "slippery slope" argument. Meaning, we'll do one thing, become desensitized to it, and then we'll move on again. Before you know it, we'll be cloning humans for all sorts of unethical reasons, the argument goes.

      In that paragraph, the clearly are following that slope -- who said that selling eggs is ethical? These women are mostly poor, and some of them go through quite a bit of pain so some rich couple can buy their egg. Is this ethical? Furthermore, is it a basis for a rational?

      I fear were this will all lead us.
    • Not surprising at all if you think in the mindset of Christianity. God is the Creator, so anything involving the creation of life should be banned, because only God should do that. However, killing people is just fine, because after all, God spends the first several books of the Bible telling the Hebrews to wipe out every town they come across during their journey to the Promised Land. (No wonder Jews get so much crap -- they, apparently, wiped out half the Middle East on God's orders!) So killing in God's name is okay, but creating in his name isn't.

      Once again, thank you, Religions of the Book.
      • Damn, you hit that straight on.

        Religion is so convenient when it's in your favor, and a burden when you are killed because you don't agree with it. The ironic thing, before I read this I just had a long talk about genetic duplication/cloning (in the sense of breeding two genetically identical people in a hypothetical situation).

        I don't regularly vote becuase seldom do I get to vote on issues I care about, like this. This will never hit the ballots, neither will a lot of anti-terrorism laws. The problem with a republic is the representatives are not the voice of the majority, just a less-evil choice. You get a bible thumping ex-reverend senator who doesn't understand that if his God didn't want us to create ourselves than he wouldn't have given us a mind to do it.

        Don't blame the scientist, blame God.
      • God is the Creator, so anything involving the creation of life should be banned, because only God should do that.

        These "moral and ethical" Christians are also wondering right now whether a child that isn't created "naturally" by God even has a soul.

        Given that human cloning will take place somewhere, probably sooner rather than later, the implication is of course that it'd be fine to butcher these babies old-testament-style, since they aren't really human and are an affront to God.

  • I can't see gigantic problems arising from cloning per se - after all, as is already pointed out, identical twins are more or less the same biologically. The real problem is the gigantic risk of birth defects and other problems pregnancies is extremely high. Further, quite a lot of mothers who have lost children feel that by cloning they'll be able to "regain" those that they lost, even when the child is older. Can you imagine being a child that is expected to be identical to another child that came before? That'd be horrible for the poor kid; not only that, but the mother who wanted to have her child cloned may not realise that she'd have to try as many as forty times to get a living child, and furthermore even then the child may have strange genetic ailments and other problems. The problem is not the thing in and of itself; let's face it, despite what movies tell you, having a clone of yourself is pretty much a worthless thing in (nearly) all cases. (Excepting, of course, for the obvious applications in espionage and related fields where the identity ambiguity is useful.) Dave Dave
    • The real problem is the gigantic risk of birth defects

      At the moment the real problems are ethical, not scientific. Researchers are not cloning humans to make babies, they're doing it to use the embryonic cells.

      One side sees this as a way of advancing medical knowledge. The cells are just cells.
      The other side sees it as killing. The cells are already a person.
  • It seems to me that this doctor's intentions are very misguided. He essentially, from watching Meet the Press, wants to use these cloned eggs to create personalized stem cells for any human in need of a new organ. In other words, create a new human life, and then destroy it for someone else's use. This reminds me way too much of scifi body part harvesting farms. Think about it for a minute.
    • Well one might say that it's the same human life, since it's DNA is identical to your cells, and it's never offered the chance to develop into a fully independant life form (in this research). Regardless of which I have trouble buying the body farm argument in this case.

      They intend to make stem cell lines, which is a far throw from making another human for harvesting. Stems cells can generate nerve or heart or bone tissue, but that's not the same as growing a person with a working brain, heart, or skeleton. A small collection of undifferentiated cells is a long distance from having full body floating in a tank.
    • The question is, of course, where to draw the line between human life and a clump of cells. There is no natural barrier, only artificial ones created by science, i.e. the trimester division of pregnancy.

    • Re:Body farms (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jilles ( 20976 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @01:10PM (#2610326) Homepage
      You shouldn't mix up science fiction with reality. There's nothing scary happening here. By definition, cloning does not create something new but merely duplicates something existing. The debate when something becomes 'human life' is a pure relegious debate. From a scientific point of view however, there were never more than just the cells. You have one cluster of cells, you split it and you have two clusters of cells. If it happens under natural circumstances you call the end result a twin. If you help nature a little, some people suddenly think of it as Frankenstein's monster.

      Apart from all the technical details, the cloning process is somthing like: take an egg, replace DNA with DNA of choice, grow the embryo, split the embryo, proceed using mother nature's own processes. From a religious point of view this is not even supposed to be possible but the end result is kind of hard to deny (challenging the assumptions that underly some religions). However, most relegions rely on ignorance anyway so I doubt that this development will affect them in anyway.

      In any case, when my liver/kidney/heart/whatever fails I would be very pleased if a backup part, constructed from my own cells, would be available rather than having to rely on third party provided parts. Everyday lots of people die because there are no donor organs available. And even if there is a donor organ it is uncertain whether the transplantation will succeed. This technology could be a great contribution to a solution to this problem.
  • The press release reports that a successful growth of needed cells was achieved from stem cells. This is what the people are pushing for. It shows that it can be done, although it may have certainly been done before this. IANAB.

    This issue is hot. I think the government will continue to get more and more pressure to allow stem-cell research to go forward (with new, uh, material) based on successes like this.

    I'm having trouble making up my mind on stem-cell research.

  • While everyone is whinning over the issues surrounding human cloning, look back a bit at human history. Everything we've done has cost lives for the sake of progress. This is no different, it must be done and at least somewhere it will be.

  • Don't ban the research. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @12:42PM (#2610240)

    Why should research be banned that could allow you to "grow" a new heart (or liver or whatever) if yours breaks somewhere down the line? If this research ONLY allowed people to get heart transplants without waiting on infinitely long waiting lists for someone to die, imagine the benefit to medicine.

    If the U.S. bans this research, it will simply move to other countries. Imagine having to live in China or Russia for a while to get your heart transplant because saving your life this way in the U.S. is illegal.

    In my opinion, the U.S. should ban cloning an entire human for whatever purpose, as this could be used for some very evil things. But banning research is stupid.

    • Therapeutic vs. reproductive cloning (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TekkonKinkreet ( 237518 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @12:55PM (#2610281) Homepage
      If you can get your representative to draw a distinction between therapeutic cloning (make young healthy cells to repair damage in the host) and reproductive (make a baby), hats off to ya. Want to go for the jackpot? Explain it to the satisfaction of the religious right. I agree with your position, but adopting it would lose a congressman votes among the enormous "no attention for an argument longer than a bumper sticker" constituency.

      As for the posts which talk about the weaker DNA and shortened life of clones, RTFA! There's a difference between cloned embyonic cells and cloned adult cells. But try explaining that to Slashdot. Much cleverer to say "Three thumbs up for cloning!" or the like and move on to other matters.
    • In my opinion, the U.S. should ban cloning an entire human for whatever purpose, as this could be used for some very evil things.

      And so could normal child-rearing.

      If you clone a human and bring the cloned baby to term, you have... a human baby, like any other.

      Why not sidestep most of the debate arguments, and just rewrite parenthood laws to define parents as people who directly caused a child to come into existence? This will cover cloning and any other technologies that come up that could cause humans to be born in any but the old-fashioned way. It would declare clones human ("duh"), and would ensure that responsibility for these humans would be placed somewhere.

      This doesn't even have to touch the abortion issue (the question of where in the line between zygote and baby a child becomes a human under the law). That can be left for the courts to fight out.
    • Why should research be banned that could allow you to "grow" a new heart (or liver or whatever) if yours breaks somewhere down the line?
      In the US, whenever you hear "religion" or "ethics" from a politician, they really mean "money". Their real fear is the po folks having any chance at this technology once it gets cheap. High-level officials paid lavishly on the public dole (I hesitate to call it "payroll") aren't affected as they can travel overseas to where such procedures are legal and (will be) well-developed, or provide appropriate legal protection to their domestic cloners, a la abortion pre-Roe.

      I'd like to see either a total ban or a complete lack of restriction. The hypocritical prunes in public office don't deserve to extend their lives beyond the public they ostensibly serve, not a single one. Except maybe Tom Campbell, but he's not in public office anymore and certainly isn't hypocritical.

      Imagine having to live in China or Russia for a while to get your heart transplant because saving your life this way in the U.S. is illegal.
      Are you red-baiting? The only things wrong with Russia is that it's cold and has gangs. It's indistinguishable from Chicago except the media hegemony doesn't control what software you can write.

      -jhp

  • Imagine a beowulf cluster of cloned me's.

  • for the Attack Of The Clones!
  • ...to get rid of the M$ monopoly. Clone Bill Gates! Make five or ten Billies from him, wait twenty years and watch them pushing each other out of the market.

  • "How Close Are We To Cloning Time?" by Frank Miele (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jamie ( 78724 ) <jamie@slashdot.org> on Sunday November 25, 2001 @12:49PM (#2610263) Journal
    Skeptic magazine [skeptic.com] had an excellent issue [skeptic.com] in 1999 regarding cloning. Unfortunately the only article they have online is Frank Miele's How Close Are We To Cloning Time? [skeptic.com] It's about half discussion of the scientific facts, and half an overview of the ethical issues.

    It's a shame Michael Shermer's article on ethics isn't online. Shermer finds most objections to cloning to be variations on "that's God's provenance and we shouldn't go there" which he finds absurd. "If God meant us to fly, we'd have wings" and such. Very thought-provoking, whether you agree with him or not.

    If you find cloning interesting, I recommend getting the back issue [skeptic.com].

  • ...we should all probably watch this [scifi.com]. It has a very enlightening view of cloning, and what can go wrong. Parts is parts, you know.

    Ben

  • This is not reproductive cloning (Score:5, Informative)

    by SymphonicMan ( 267361 ) <drich.symphonicman@com> on Sunday November 25, 2001 @01:11PM (#2610331)

    According to the Scientific American article (which you should read now), the company, Advanced Cell Technology [advancedcell.com], is not pursuing research on reproductive cloning. What they are pursuing is research on therapeutic cloning. Without going into details (go read the article), what this will eventually allow researchers to do is grow organs, tissues, etc. from the intended receipient's own stem cells. The stem cells are created using cloning. If this becomes reality, the benefits will be huge. It's called "regenerative medicine" (quoting their CEO) for a reason.

    Reproductive cloning is more difficult. While the first stage is the same - insert new DNA into egg, prompt the start of division - reproductive cloning has many more steps required to create a baby. First of all, as far as I know, babies can't be grown in vitro, so you have to implant the cloned egg into a mother. There is massive potential for danger here, not only to the growing embryo but also to the mother. Furthermore, there are issues that have yet to be resolved, such as the possibility that cloned DNA is already "aged," leading to shorter life for the cloned person or animal. Neither of these absolutely critical issues is even touched by this research. Reproductive cloning is a long, long way off.

    On the other hand, it appears therapeutic cloning is making much progress. I for one am excited by the possibilites, and I think that any legislative reaction to this research is purely reactive and would ignore the facts. I see no ethical problems with this research whatsoever, and neither did the ethical board overseeing this research.

    -SymphonicMan

  • Read this essay by Gregory Benford (Score:3, Interesting)

    by novastyli ( 450003 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @01:34PM (#2610401)
    It is a quite interesting read that begins with a sentence "I am a clone."

    "SELFNESS" [reason.com] by Gregory Benford

  • Read the paper, not the SciAm story (Score:4, Informative)

    by Apogee ( 134480 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @01:36PM (#2610408)
    The original publication by the authors describing their methods and partially also their motivation is available for free. You can get it here [liebertpub.com].
  • Of the eight eggs we injected with cumulus cells, two divided to form early embryos of four cells--and one progressed to at least six cells--before growth stopped

    This is fairly typical for any cloning experiment. Frankly, six cells aren't a whole lot, and going from a six-celled embryo to a 100-celled one that can actually produce stem cells is no easy feat. It'll still be quite a long time before this can be used at all.
    Clones made in labs always seem to die early. The trick doesn't seem to be so much how to make them, but how to keep them alive.

    Plus, we don't know that organs grown from cloned stem-cells wouldn't have a shorter lifetime than regular ones, as clones tend to do - keep in mind that Dolly the sheep died very young.

  • And I'd really like to read the article so could the karma whores please post a mirror?
  • Many people don't realize how all this relates to each other. I actually hear people talk about farming human clones as odd as that sounds.

    What this is about is simply cloning a human embryonic stem cell, so that it can be used to grow human organs. Not human beings. That is all that anyone is trying to do. No one is attempting to use human beings are organ containers.

    What I really want to see is if they used DNA from an adult human or another embryo. I have heard that the biggest hurdle is going to be using adult DNA so this could or could not be the holy grail...
  • I overlooked the amount of corporate tie-ins and commercial nonsense that Episode I had, but actually cloning humans as an advertising ploy for Episode II Attack of the Clones, now that's just going too far.

    I mean, Lucas using KFC and Pepsi is one thing. Cloning embryos is another.

    J. Morgan
  • In thoery cloning would result in animals with slightly shorter chromosomes, and thus possibly age sooner. However now that we have been able to study the cloned animals there IS NO ACCELERATED AGING. It is believed that the cloned fetus produces telomerease in its cells and from what we can tell, turns back the clock on aging. Secondly the more recent cloning trials have led to a 80% success rate, which is far better then the dreadfully low rate with dolly and other earlier clones. While you may object still to even 80%, natural birth itself is full of failures. All cloning has to do before it is medically ethical for humans is to match the failure rate of normal reproduction. To get a better understanding of why cloning and stem cells is important, you need to realize where these medical breakthroughs will lead us. Simply put, stem cells/theraputic cloning can slow down and even reverse aging. Now aging is not as inevitable as you might think, for the most part aging is caused by your chromosomes getting progessively smaller every time your cells divide. The older you are, the shorter your chromosomes are. When the telomeres(ends of the chromosomes) reach a certain point the cell engages into a dormant stage where it stops dividng and alters its behavior, causing you to get old. The reason the cells stop dividing is because if they don't the telomeres get too short and your chromosomes can unravel, become massively mutated, and then become horrible cancer. MOST of your cells stop at the right time and simply age naturally, the other cells become mutated and cancerous and you die. In addition to some of your cells becoming cancerous with old age, your immune system which plays a HUGE part in stopping cancer and tumours also wears out and begins to shut down. Aging would be slowed down by inserting into your body healthy stem cells which would move around your body and fix up anything that is beginning to wear out, this would include keeping the immune system in working order. Having a healthy immune system, living and eating healthy, and making use of the latest in cancer treatments means you have an excellent chance of preventing cancer from killing you. Now the big question is how do we get a supply of stem cells. Prefferably we would extract a small amount of marrow from your bones, and then remove the stem cells from the marrow. After genetically engineering them to increase their resistance to cancer, and decreasing the rate at which they age a culture of them would be kept, from which you would get periodic injections. However reversing the aging of the stem cells may not work very well, and they also may have mutated over time. If this proceedure for harvesting stem cells fails to work, inserting your DNA into a surrogate egg and then growing it in vitro to subsequently harvest would be a viable alternative. Because stem cells are sooo powerful and have so much promise, we need to keep our options open as for how we can create stem cells. Just because aging has occured ever since animals have existed doesn't mean it has to be mandatory.

  • parts (Score:2)

    by zephc ( 225327 )
    does noone remember 'Parts [scifi.com]: The Clonus Horror [http]'???

    But really, I think this is great, and I pity the legislators that can't tell the difference between bad (sometimes TERRIBLE) Hollywood visions of horror and evil, and real-life scientific purposes and benefits. I guess that happens to people raised in an environment of blind, unquestioning religious faith, trained to believe in fairy tails and some sca-a-a-ary man in the clouds that loves you but makes it hard not to get sent to some land pain and (literally) hellfire. I just find most near-sighted, child-like religions have 'moralities' that are anything but moral.
    • Oops, damnit, the 2nd URL is supposed to be http://us.imdb.com/Title?0078062 [imdb.com] I guess whats what 'Preview' is for

      *sigh*

  • Think outside the box (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nil5 ( 538942 )
    So many of the comments on the thread come from two discrete sides: those who feel that cloning is awful, approaching the topic from a long-term ethical standpoint, and those who feel that we must not stand in the way of scientific research and progress.

    It seems to me that those who are in favor of this stem-cell research and so forth should really take a look at the long term effects of what could happen. Not necessarily a zombie race or something, but what major changes in our society will result from these new scientific/medical methods. Now I don't think it's unsafe to say that an embryonic stem cell is going to do you any harm, but furthering research in this area will certainly advance research in other related fields, and it's asinine for anyone to deny that human cloning will not be furthered by further research into stem cells.

    We know exactly what will happen, the scientists in a few years will run out of things to research in stem cells, and focus energy on the challenge of cloning humans and things.

    One must recognize the linkage between these objects, and notice that any changes in one will most certainly effect change in the other. Furthermore, we must scrutinize any new work that we do that involves these issues since they have the ability to vastly change the future, and we must decide if it is for better or for worse. I also don't think that we can ignore the feelings of religious groups or incite bigotry as a few others have, since as fellow humans, their beliefs are just as valid as ours, and it is their world, too. Certainly there are questiosn that a religion can answer only with faith, but there are just as many that one might pose to an unbeliever and yet he could not answer them at all.
  • We're talking the dark age of genetics here, Lucas. Scientists playing God. Desperate to get into the genetic soldier business.

    Dr Wendy Smith
    SeaQuest DSV

    Is it scientists playing God that's so dangerous? or why they are playing God in the first place?

  • Sparkling cider is for chimps (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:31AM (#2612377)
    If we ban cloning does that mean monocellular life will be against the law? Cloning is something readily done in nature, your entire body is constructed of cloned cells. They've all got your DNA and act just like the other versions of themselves.
    What cloning won't do:
    1. Allow you to make a clone of someone and replace them in society with an exact replica. A clone of me made tomorrow would still take a normal amount of time to grow up and may or may not be anything like me. Genetically we'd be identical but unless he traveled back in time to live my life for me he probably wouldn't end up anything like me.
    2. Allow me to create an army of super clone warriors to take over the world. Said soldiers would have to be gestated and raised like a normal army of soldiers.

    What cloning embryos WOULD allow:
    1. Do gene mapping and stem cell research with a very large subject base with little genetic discrepency. Every wonder why fruit flies and a few simple plants have been used for the past whatever years for biological experimentation? There's little genetic diversity and they're plentiful.
    2. Figure out how to regenerate cells by cloning them so you can repair almost any part of the body damaged by just about anything. There's not a whole lot of a chance for rejection when you're your own oragan donor.

    Cloning research doesn't require an embryo to be gestated. Then of course there are those holding to the notion that life begins as an embryo and all that jazz. That is just picking at straws because you don't have enough understanding of the process to make a logical argument against it. If you want to save a baby stop jacking off and ovulating but don't harrass somebody trying to make you and your kids have a better life.
  • I don't inherently oppose reproductive cloning, though I'd be pretty suspicious of the reason for doing it. The first principle (as in Gregory Benford's article in Reason) is that a cloned human being is entirely human, every bit as much as an identical twin. (Or anyone else.) If the reason for doing the cloning is compatible with that first principle, then fine.

    But what I vehemently oppose is producing 50 or 100 deformed babies for every healthy clone, or even for the first healthy clone.

    Before it is proper to even consider any arguments about why a particular cloning should be done, those doing the clones must:

    1) Demonstrate that they can clone orangutangs with a rate of birth defects comparable to natural births, and show that those orangutangs live out a normal life span without significantly more health problems than normally produced orangutangs.

    2) Having done this, demonstrate that they can take their results with organgutangs and, on the first attempt, achieve the same results with chimpanzees and gorillas.

    Then, and only then, is it appropriate to attempt reproductive cloning of human beings.

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