Talk: Human cloning
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"Groups such as the Raelites? and the Las-Vegas based Clonaid, as well as Dr's Antinori and Zavos verge on fundamentalism in trying to achieve their aims."
I'm unable to figure out where the "fundamentalism" comes in here, so I took it out for the time being. Can we make this clearer or more NPOV? Thanks.
I used the word fundamentalism because these groups seemed to be determined to clone humans despite all the risks involved - which the wider scientific community recognises. This maybe wasn't quite the quite word, but I think they are certainly extreme.
Regarding personality and genetics,
- On the other hand, some studies, notably those by [David Lykken]?, have purported to show that "30 to 70%" of a person's personality is due to genetic factors [see links below]).
I do not think this the accepted scientific viewpoint. Even in the introduction to the link by Lykken it says:
- scientists, psychologists like Leon Kamin, biologists like Steven Rose, even the odd geneticist like Richard Lewontin, or the odd paleontologist like Stephen Gould, continue to believe with John Locke that the infant human mind is a tabula rasa
These seem to me to be a lot more well-known and reputable than Lykken.
That's a second-hand report; no respectable scientist today--including at least Lewontin and Gould (I haven't read much of the others) would ever argue that human minds are tabula rasa. The evidence contradicting that is overwhelming, and has been coming in consistently for decades. On the other hand, no one but Lykken would be so bold as to speak about simple percentages. That too is a gross oversimplification, since learning interacts in a complex manner with predispositions. There is a valid point to be made here; perhaps a wording like this: "While a clone shares only DNA with its predecessor, and not any of the knowledge, experience, or environment that shaped him, studies such as those on identical twins raised separately show that DNA does have a much stronger influence on personality than previously believed." --LDC
Articles is quite NPOV, buth there is serious problem with the last statement:
- However organisations devoted to clone humans, such as the Raelites and the Las-Vegas based Clonaid, as well as Dr's Antinori and Zavos, are very hard to control. Many think these groups would shift their operations to other countries, where a lack of regulation could bring dangerous results.
Certainly not everyone shares the belief that it may be any dangerous. --Taw
Referring to the scientific community, from what I've read, the vast majority of people think that attempts to clone humans at this time (which these groups are attempting to do) would be dangerous. The birth of children with genetic disabilities is what they are afraid of. I guess not everybody does though. Could you explain a bit further what the problem is.
--sodium
You (or they) mean that The danger is that experimentators won't find all possible problems during zygote phase, and a child with genetical problems will be born, right ? Or are there some other possible problems ? --Taw
- Isn't there also some problems with the genes of cloned animals (some aspect of them called the telomeres, or something like that) being old and damaged, hypothetically leading to faster aging and risks of cancer? --Robert Merkel
- I.e., the "dangers" or "risks" we're discussing here are risks to the cloned individuals?
Yes the dangers to cloned-individuals is the problem. Scientists such as Zavos say that they can deal with all the disorders that we know so far. This is debatable, but the real problem is that we don't yet know all the problems that they could encounter. This is why it is dangerous.
This is what I know about telomeres: Telomeres become shortened every time a cell divides, until they are so short that the cell will no longer divide. Some scientists think that clones will have a shortened life because they will inherit already-small telomeres. However other scientists seem to have discovered that under certain circumstances in cloning the telomeres can be 'reset' - and the clones will have normal or even extended life spans.
--sodium
- Yes, the telomeres are getting shorter with every cell division. Some organisms have telomerase, an enzyme that can reconstruct the telomeres. Theoretically, it could be inserted into the cloned human. I'm not sure what would happen, though. Also, AFAIK, "Dolly" managed quite well, considering it was the first attempt on such a comlicated organism. --Magnus Manske
- Dolly wasn't the first attempt, was she? She was the first succesfulattempt. (Do I remember this right?) Also isn't the general ratio of unsucessful attempts to clone mammals to sucessful attempts something like 4 to 1?
"If the remaining gene is also turned off then 'large offspring syndrome' (LOS) occurs. However Jirtel claims that it is a case of your LOS, my gain."
Ouch. :-) Maybe Wikipedia needs a general guideline: Keep the puns in / Talk.
FYI all, Human cloning originally said that Dolly the sheep was cloned at the Roswel Institute, should read Roslin Institute. (Roswell is something else. :-) )
Magnus seems to think this isn't quite correct, and I don't at the moment know how to phrase what they really did:
- After that, an international team produced a clone by accident. The results of the experiment were published in the [1] but didn't receive any atention.
-- sodium
- The information was published in a portuguese newspaper. One of the members of the team told the newspaper that 3. The newspaper article says: "Só que noutros três ovócitos injectados com ADN de uma célula adulta, a redução a metade dos cromossomas não aconteceu - e começou a desenvolver-se um embrião, até às quatro e seis células. " That's portuguese. It means: "But, in the other 3 ovocits injected with the DNA of an adult cell, the reduction of the number of cromossomes to half didn't ocour - and an embryo started to develop to 4 and 6 cells." From the newspaper article, I was unable to understand if this information was published or omited in article. Joao
I just got my first edit conflict ever! Here's what I wrote:
From what is described on that page, they made an oocyte with the nucleus of a skin cell, then fertilized it.
- A human born from that procedure is not a clone, as half of its DNA is from the father, half from the mother (the nucleus donor).
- Without fertilization, the oocyte probably would have died.
- If it would not have died, it would have sooner or later turned into either a skin cell or some weird tumor.
Only if you make that oocyte "believe" it has been fertilized, it will develope into a human, which is a clone. That's the key point. Just exchanging nuclei has been done before. --Magnus Manske
- Please don't consider this as edit conflict. I agree with number 1. Number 2 is problematic. The scientists claim that 3 of the cells started embryonic development without fertilization (this information comes from the portuguese newspaper, not from the abstract). So, maybe number 3 is correct. But how do you know that the embryo from Advanced Cell Technology is a true embryo. It only divided 2 or 3 times and then stopped. That may be an indication that something was wrong. Advanced Cell Technology was not the first to produce an embryo, but the first to produce a weird tumor calling it an embryo. The following is a comment from a Science article about the Advanced Cell Technology announcement:
The fact that the embryos died so early in development suggests that the inserted nucleus wasn't working properly, says developmental biologist John Eppig of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. In normal human embryos, the nucleus begins to express its genes between the four- and eight-cell stage. The embryos' failure to survive to eight cells "strongly suggests that you're not getting gene activation" in the transferred nucleus, he says. "And if you're not getting that, what have you got? Nothing."
First, I was referring to the "technical" edit conflict, with someone saving a change here while I was typing!
Now, I was just trying to answer the question wether the [2] experiment could have possible resulted in a clone, which IMO it did not. I don't know anything more about the ACT experiment than I know from the news (shame on me!), but they actually tried to make a clone and failed. That makes it even more likely that the three oocytes from the prior experiment weren't clones either.
Whatever ACT made there, it is not too unlikely that they made the clone die after some divisions, just in case the publicity gets too bad...
Anyway, if they (or others) continue on that path, we'll see if it works (which it probably does, we're not so different from sheep, especially in herds;)
Thanks for clarifying Magnus, I should have originally quoted what you said. This technique doesn't really then belong on the human cloning page because it produces embryos with genetic material from the father as well as the mother. It would be relevant under somatic cell nuclear transfer. I should have read the abstract properly, I assumed I would misunderstand it though with my limited AS-level biology :) -- sodium
I believe this is incorrect
Reproductive cloning is currently illegal in the US also.
Note
Current in-vitro fecondation success in animals is about 40%. In humans, 15%.
Argument of biological nature against reproductive cloning : calling into question genetic mixing. It would imply a reduction in genetic diversity (ethnic diversity). It would damage the human genome as a common heritage.
Also, introducing asexual reproduction (i.e. not-gametic) would undermine the genetic lottery of which the unpredictability would have an intrinsic value for the individual, helping unicity and freedom.
The children would not be "given" any more, but selected. It would lead to an instrumentalisation of a human being (the clone) by others which created it for them. Many refer to Kant, for who a human being should never only be used as a means but be an end in itself.
The clone itself could suffer from feeling a negation of its autonomy, of its self-determination (by knowing he is a copy of another).
Plus incertainties in terms of filiation.
Is no one as disturbed by this as I am? Pellaken 06:49, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- I'm not. Anyway, I'm already attempting to choose my offsprings' DNA, by dating brunettes, preferably on the taller side. --Charles A. L. 16:17, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)
- You're attempting to influence your offspring's DNA, which is not the same as controlling it. I too am worried about all this -- put me down firmly in the Fukuyama/Joy/Kass camp!
POV additions by 198.94.182.12
198.94.182.12 has just added some (worthwhile) content but a large amount of it is POV and the grammar isn't particularly good. I'm not wanting to revert it because of the positive contributions but there is now some text I don't think belongs here. Other opinions? violet/riga 22:55, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I assume you mean this part:
- The Whitehead team, however, conclude that reproductive human cloning is not a good idea but they are not telling us why is not a gooid idea. They did suggest, though, that therapeutic cloning of organs should be safer, without offering a good rational. according to their beliefs, this is because the imprinting experienced during culture is less important when cells specialize and start to grow in to specific tissues, which may not be very convincing argument.
Do we have a link to this report to know whether this is even factually true? For example, does the report offer any reason for suggesting that human reproductive cloning is not a good idea. If it actually does, we can resolve this as a factual question. --Rikurzhen 00:20, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)
I was going to mention this in my section below, but realised the rot was further spread than Ethics and there was a Talk section here. I'd include the following gems in our newcomer's list of POV accomplishments (I'll highlight his additions, probably in bold; forgive me if I mess up a few punctuation marks).
- Wilmut quoted the low survival rate of cloned animals, which has nothing to do about humans, as evidence that human cloning would be dangerous.
- Don Wolf, a researcher at Oregon Regional Primate Research Centre and who knows little about the subject of cloning and screening procedures, disagrees.
- This is disputed by scientists who say that large-offspring syndrome is just one of many problems that result from cloning. Controlling this gene would not prevent many other genetic disorders which have yet to be fully understood or discovered.However, as one realizes, there is nothing to be said about the safety of cloning that could please the opponents of cloning since their opposition has nothing to do with the technique and the science but rather their religious, political or personal beliefs.
- Zavos points out that reproductive science is actually more advanced in humans due to the widespread use of treatments such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF), and therefore cloning in humans is not such a large step as animal cloning was and remains as such today. Professor Zavos has been involved in human reproduction for the last 26 years and has been a true pioneer for a number of new technologies and products in that area.
- Dr. Panos Zavos being the most reliable and capable scientist from all of the scientists working on cloning today, claimed on January 17, 2004 to have successfully produced a four-cell stage embryo and transfered it into a 35 year old woman. ... He, since then submitted his findings from this case for publication in a very highly reputable journal for their publication.
- Some religious groups defend their anti-cloning stand by saying that it is taking reproduction out of the hands of God. However, Professor Zavos founder of the Zavos Organization (www.zavos.org), claims and very rightfully so, that God never has instructed us to use one mode or another (natural coital method vs IVF)to reproduce. "God gave us the god-given gifts and abilities to think and explore the universe to use them to reproduce and proliferate and make this a better World for all of us" he claims.
- Professor Zavos, Director of the Adrology Institute of America, thinks that the world can never agree on banning cloning because no one agrees of the relegious and political definition of cloning and its incredible potential that it has that can change the World, itself.
I've reverted the whole lot. There's too much rubbish (both POV and spelling-punctuation-grammar) in there: if any of it is good stuff, hard cheese. People should learn to write sensible editions, or risk getting the whole lot reverted. If you take a peek at his other contributions, you'll see that he's gone round making highly POV edits elsewhere (like on the page about Zanos, for instance). We have, by my deductions, a nationalistic Greek Cypriot on our hands. He's in no fit state to edit controversial topics where there's national pride and ethics at stake. Wooster 15:27, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC) (Can you tell I'm rather annoyed?)
Ethics: can we have a look?
It's gonna seem an odd question, but is this really the way the debate progresses (taken from the Ethics section)?
- An argument given by 'pro-life' groups is that because they believe embryos are already human, destroying them is tantamount to murder. Most scientists protest that this is irrelevant - sperm also have the potential to become human, but millions die during intercourse.
It makes the scientists sound as though they (a) didn't listen to the argument being put forward and (b) don't understand it anyway. Perhaps it's just me being a bit sensitive to how things sound (actually, I come from the pro-life side on this, so "go figure") but the scientists' alleged protests are pointless because pro-lifers claim that embryos are human, sperm merely have the potential. So pro-lifers will agree that sperm have the potential, but will make a distinction of quality between sperm and an embryo. The person who added this either doesn't understand the ethical issues, doesn't understand ethical reasoning or is attempting to construct a straw scientist.
And then these straw scientists claim that because millions of sperm "die" (not the right word, but hey...) it's all right to go an slaughter a few embryos. Are they stupid and heartless? Even I don't believe that. I think most scientists involved in cloning protest that it simply isn't their belief that embryos are already human (if it were their belief, they'd have to arrest themselves for murder). Wooster 15:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Right-ho. The Ethics section was deleted by someone else, so there's no real need to continue this, er, lack of discussion. : D Wooster 19:22, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Strangely the idea that clones are essentially Monozygotic Twins (but for the mitochondrial genome) was not absorbed in discussions by ethisists and scientists until nearly a year after Dolly's birth. I've put in a citation which essentially put a stop to the prexisting misconceptions. which might be better moved to the references--Daedelus 10:07, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC). Its worth noting these as we probably still labour under other misconceptions in the field which - when pointed out will become so obvious that we will all say "but I know that all along".
--Daedelus 10:07, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
