[OT] Claim of first clone birth

[Mark]

...but these guys even have their own theme park.

I'm thinking of joining up, if only to get an extra body out of the deal.

You'll be able to share a car with yourself on the Raeller Coaster...

 

[The Sigil]

1) This proves the inevitability of knowledge. Laws or no laws, the world will make these 'abominations,' and they are full fledged human beings, whether those who oppose cloning see that or not. It truly makes me revolted that people who are often so quick to defend human life are so quick to denounce these as sub-human.

It's a point well-taken. I object to cloning on moral grounds, but not because the clones are sub-human. But because the people who are DOING the cloning are reprehensible and have what I consider "sub-human" morals. IOW, the cloners, not the clones themselves, bother me and are reprehensible.

2) Personally, this scares me more because of who is doing it. As quick as I am to defend the right of something like the Raeliens to exist, I don't really like the idea of entrusting important, world-shaking scientific advancements to people who believe that their leader is descendant from an extraterrestrial. I do think these aren't the most rational, levelheaded people out there, and that putting this in their hands (as a ban would) makes the future lives of those cloned children very...iffy.

One too many X-Files episodes for them?

--The Sigil

 

[mmu1]

Coming into this a little late, but I want to say a few things:

1. The kind of "cloning" they're talking about doing right now has jack to do with being able to grow organs. For that, you basically need a) A complete understanding of human embryonic development b) A way of simulating various stages of this development in vitro, and c) Access to stem cells with DNA matching that of the person receiving the transplant.

2. Rich people making full-grown clones for harvesting for transplant purposes... If people were able to get away with things like that and were ruthless enough to do it, there's no reason they can't be doing a very similar thing right now: Have a child (or several children) with someone with compatible blood and tissue types, then harvest it for organs. True, not nearly as good as making a clone, but still much, much better than hoping to get lucky with the national donor list.

3. Brain-Taping - And how exactly does that make someone immortal? Sure, you make a near-perfect copy that might even think that it's you, but last time I checked, that still leaves the original you up the proverbial creek. (Since someone brought up Sixth Day, anyone remember the scene when the big bad guy activates a new clone of himself while still alive, to find out that, as far as he's concerned, he's still dying, and his "new self" doesn't care?)

Not to mention that, in scientific terms, (a lot of bad sci-fi nonwithstanding) your mind is not a bunch of electrical impulses you can somehow decant into a storage medium and then stick into a new body. It is, at least in part, the very real, and very physical arrangement of billions of nerve cells and the connections between them. So unless you have a way of mapping billions of cells making God knows how many connections, making an exact replica, down to things like neurotransmitter levels, and then getting the exact same kind of electrical activity going on as in the original, you'd better think again about copying your mind. And that's if we assume it really is as simple as that and that there aren't things going on we still don't even know about, never mind understand.

4. The only way I can think of that could extend life without replacing you with a copy would be the use of nanotech to maintain your present neurological pathways indefinitely. Not that there aren't problems with that, since, presumably, you'd change slowly and without realizing it as old structures dcayed and new ones were built to keep you going... Also, according to people who studied the whole nanotech issue, the little buggers will have a tendency to generate huge (irreducible with our current understanding of the matter) amounts of heat when used in large numbers, making the use of them in living beings questionable.

Edit: Of course, there is the whole "Stop the biological clock" thing, but keep in mind that even if you do it, wear and tear will occur, and even if your cells won't be programmed to die after x number of years anymore, a lot of them - like your brain cells - aren't programmed to divide and replenish, so they will deteriorate...

 

[Zappo]

Brain taping, assuming that it's possible and that's a big assumption, doesn't technically "make you immortal", but it's the best approximation I can think of. Even if you had a way to stop aging and cure any disease, you could still die in an accident - and as time passes, statistics will get you eventually.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Growing an entire body will probably become excessive and unecessary as technology develops. Why would they bother?.

The operative phrase in this is "will probably become." While it is in the process of becoming unnecessary, that doesn't mean people will wait until it actually does. At least, that isn't consistent with the way humans act on Earth.

I have no moral qualms about growing a transplant organ in a pig. Heck, I raise and kill pigs (by proxy) for a tasty breakfast so I certainly wouldn't mind doing it to save my life.

I don't have any moral qualms about this either. I never indicated that I did.

The brain still ages. Alzheimer's and other diseases will kick in. Nanotechnology is also approaching and being considered to solve some of the same problems. This might never even be an issue. History has shown that our predictions of the future usually look really funny when the future actually arrives, so I don't think there's just cause for getting carried away by speculation. World's Fair 1950's-60's visions of the future, anyone? If something like this becomes even an inkling of a possibility (I mean, *brain* transplant?) we can deal with it when it does. There's no need to be paralyzed by fear of wild speculations of the future.

I'm not paralyzed by fear, and neither am I going to be blithely naive. So, do we need not argue the issue, because somehow or other these things won't come to pass? Why are brain transplants unlikely in the next several decades or the coming century? Work is being done on reconnecting the brain to severed spinal cords; how much of a leap is it beyond that to actual brain transplants, especially with a genetically identical donor body? Go back 60 or 70 years, and someone could easily say, in all seriousness - "I mean, *heart* transplants?" and label it as wild speculation on the future (and remember, we can only say now that the differences between transplanting a heart and putting one's brain in another body are vast; back then, both would have seemed equally improbable, if not impossible). But here we are.

While there certainly have been wild speculations about the future in the past, many of those speculations have been wildly short of what actually came to pass. There were strong arguments made as to the impossibility of heavier-than-air flying machines. There was scientific debate with the advent of steam trains as to whether the human body could withstand sustained speeds of 35 miles an hour. Planets were thought to be a rarity outside the Solar System. Science fiction and most futurists totally missed the impact that computers would eventually have on the world. The human genome was supposedly not going to be mapped out for decades, if not centuries. And again, here we are. Discussing the possibilities and ramifications of something like cloning seems better than simply expecting things to work out on their own.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

By the way, kenjib, don't take it as I'm flaming you; try to read what I wrote as having as friendly a tone as possible. Just to be clear.

 

[kenjib]

By the way, kenjib, don't take it as I'm flaming you; try to read what I wrote as having as friendly a tone as possible. Just to be clear.

Certainly. I read no flaming and thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt as well. I didn't mean you specifically when I said "paralyzed by fear." I can see now that it looks that way though. I meant it more generally. My apologies!

Edit: Of course, there is the whole "Stop the biological clock" thing, but keep in mind that even if you do it, wear and tear will occur, and even if your cells won't be programmed to die after x number of years anymore, a lot of them - like your brain cells - aren't programmed to divide and replenish, so they will deteriorate...

I believe that the biological clock there is to prevent errors in replication which lead to cancer. My guess is that without this clock our bodies would still deteriorate, but just in different (and possibly worse) ways. Do I have this wrong? Nanotech might be an answer some day, but who knows?

 

[mmu1]

I believe that the biological clock there is to prevent errors in replication which lead to cancer. My guess is that without this clock our bodies would still deteriorate, but just in different (and possibly worse) ways. Do I have this wrong? Nanotech might be an answer some day, but who knows?

Yes and no... Most cells are programmed for death, basically because the wear and tear accumulates, and the room needs to be made for new, healthy ones. This is the aspect of the biological clock we definitely want to keep intact, because uncontrolled cell division without cell death is cancer.

The other aspect of the biological clock is the mechanism that first slows down this cell division, causing us to age, and then stops it altogether. This we definitely could do without.

 

[Erik Mona]

>>>
The movement has not only been fueled by books that Rael has authored, but also by various seminars around the world which have helped to promote the movement. "Awakening Seminars" have introduced many to the "Sensual Meditation" techniques that presumably "our parents from space taught Rael" <http://www.rael.org/English/e-digest/raelmsgZB.html>. The stated effect and purpose of these techniques is to "decondition oneself, uninhibit oneself and appreciate the present in a much deeper way, enjoying every sensation with a maximum of pleasure and love without the paralysis of societies [sic] guilt" <http://www.rael.org/English/e-digest/raelmsgZX.html>. Ostensibly, these techniques are related to what has been reported as the main tenants of the movement: "masturbation, communal orgasm, sexual freedom and pleasure…" (Reuters New Service, August 6, 1997).
>>>

This is sounding better and better.

Hail Rael!

--Erik

 

[Winterthorn]

Seriously, the one thing that I keep hearing is that the original cells of a cloned animal are not (for lack of a better term) the same age as a newborn's would be. This means that a 30 year old who clones themself is going to have an infant made up of cells that are already advanced 30 years. This isn't the best idea in the world. By the time the clone's age is 30, the cells will be the same as a 60 year old's. Does this mean rapid aging? Shorter lifespans? More diseases like cancer showing up in younger people? Probably. That is the reason that I'm against cloning people until the process can be studied more.

This is very important. (I was going to speak of DNA 'age' myself--but was beaten to it!)

Here's a relevant 'tale': I know from my own laboratory experience that healthiest outcome for any population is full genetic 'mixing' that comes from sexual reproduction. The cladocerans daphnia magna and ceriodaphnia dubia are examples of organisms that reproduce parthenogenically (mothers producing daughters--no sex) during environmental 'good times'. The daughters are genetic copies of their mothers--clones in the most 'natural sense' one could think of--but there are only X many generations before the entire gene pool collapses and the population dies out! Basically the DNA in these small multicellular organisms 'wears out'... The population's gene pool ages. (Now think of the cell populations replicating mitotically in your body, 'carbon' copies one cell generation after the next...)

Fortunately, more often than not there are environmental pressures on these organisms, and a generation of both males and females will emerge. They have one last frolic and the females produce zoospores encased in a mantle that will slough off to lie dormant until environmental conditions improve--usualy this means over winter. Then we start all over again when the 'eggs hatch'.

The moral of my story: genes get tired if you push your luck. Cloning a highly complex multicellular organism, such as a human being, is an extremely difficult endeavor right now. And even if we succeed in producing a new generation or two of ourselves--it really won't last... We are far better served by sexual reproduction and the assisting technologies that support it. Our survival, as a species, depends on sexual reproduction.

Over the next while there will be much talk about theraputic cloning verses reproductive cloning. Be careful, there is, as it stands today no technical difference with respect to generating a clone! The only differences lie in the intentions regarding what is being done to the cloned organism (harvest stem cells or allow the 'tampered' egg to 'come to term')... (I would be concerned about 'old DNA' in the stem cells for tissues grown to, say, replace a diseased liver. If that extends a person's life a few years that could be a worthwhile pursuit--but what are the costs? Consequences?) The distinction is subtle but important--watch how the media and the political "big-mouths" mess up the facts to swing our opinions one way or the other...

Wow... That's a long post--please excuse the typos While I did 8+ years in environmental lab work, my background facts are from memory--I may have erred on some small details. I hope the above offers 'food for thought'.

-W. B.Sc. Biology (Ecology, Evolution & Animal Behaviour)

PS: I grew up in Quebec... Those Raelians are just a sci-fi cult that attracts the sexually repressed... I wonder what the Scientology cult thinks of this? My GM mind reels at the possibilities...