Stuco said:
Ok this may come across as ubsurd to some but bear with me.
Im guessing that at least half or more of you have seen the new star wars films. From just that I beat you can guess what I am geting at. Keep in mind that a lot things that use to be science fiction are now science fact. If we started cloneing humanbeings then there will be people who want to make them stronger smarter and faster than a normal humanbeing. They might also want ot control them. This would lead to armys of super soldiers being built by countrys and people you would not want to have this capabilty. Some of this we can already do and it wouldnt take long for someone with enough brains time and money to come up with the rest of the tech requiered for it. Some of you may have played Hitman. Personally I would like for Agent 47 to stay in his world and not come to mine. Cloneing organs would be ok but must be watched and monitered very very closely. If anyone tries perfecting this type of human cloning they should be treated with the utmost hostilaty and taken out by anymeans nessecery.
You cover several fields in this and your subsequent posts.
Cloning is a very narrow field. It is taking the genetic information of a living creature and using this as the genetic information in a new creature.
Thats it, period, end of story.
Genetic Engineering has nothing to do with cloning other than genetic engineering is what allows cloning to be possible. Genetic engineering allows us to take DNA from an organism and change it, either by adding DNA from another organism, or editing and recombining the organisms existing DNA. This is the field that will one day allow you to customize your body to be resistant to all disease, be stronger, more intelligent, etc.
Then you want to add accelerated growth into the mix. This is something which is barely(if at all) hypothetical at this point. Currently developing an organism takes the exact same time as nature does, so for a human, 9 months of gestation, and then whatever age you want.
You are taking multiple different fields and lumping them all together because thats what Hollywood has told you. Stop getting your science knowledge from Hollywood, and try asking an actual scientist or reading a book written by a scientist.
We currently do everything involved in cloning every time a couple heads to a fertility clinic and has in vitro fertilization done. The only difference between that and cloning is that instead of genetic material from two people, you just use material from one.
Perhaps an example will help dispel these myths.
So, I decide I am unhappy in my current line of work, and figure I best get my resume in order.
So, I sit down at my computer, load up a standard resume template(existing organisms genetic information), add in my specific details(genetic engineering-mixing information from two sources), and then I have my resume.
I send this off to one company, but I also need to send it too a second. So I can either go back to the beginning and load the template and fill in all my information(current methods of making multiple organisms, from scratch each time), or I can simply send a copy of the resume I just wrote(cloning).
Cloning doesn't change anything, it doesn't add some new level of potential evil to genetic engineering. All it does is allow you to make copies of an organism without having to build it from scratch each time.
