Human Clone?

[Defender of the Faith 777]

What are your thoughts? This goes to those who consider themsevles nonChristians.

I know it's tempting to say that you're all for it just cause we say we're all against it. I know that lots of atheists believe contradictory to Christians just cause it's contradictory. Simply because we don't agree with something, you do agree with it. I see this a lot, not as much on these forums, but universally.

But as for cloning a human child, what are your feelings? Think of how many experiments we'll have to perform. How many babies will be failed attempts and mutations that will have to be euthenized. Think of what the human life, of what you or your best friend's life will mean, when they kill babies that are mutants and failures of this experiment? It is horrific to think about how we will value human life and what it will be worth.

Do you agree with the cloning, or do you agree that it should mean capital punishment? We offer university courses in my school catalog, and my AP Biology teacher, who is an avid atheist and pro-science and pro-choice, agrees with me. In fact, she is the one who came up with the argument in the above paragraph. What do you think about the value of human life and cloning?

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

The issue of human cloning is complex and the ethics of the process are not always clear. I personally see things as somewhat of a continuum.

One end of the continuum is the cloning of individual organs or tissues. Since this harms no one and has great potential to ease human suffering, I consider this a Good Thing.

The other end would be the cloning of entire viable human beings just to harvest their organs and tissues. This concept is rather sick and frightening and thus I consider it a Bad Thing.

In the gray area between are procedures like the cloning of embryos for the harvesting of stem cells. It is not clear how much human suffering this process would cause nor is it clear that the benefits are significant. I would probably categorize procedures like this as Proceed With Caution.

 

[Blindfaith]

I was watching CNN, or FOX, or some-such channel over the holiday weekend and they interviewed a couple (faces hidden) that are going to have a baby cloned from the mother next year.

Already.

I don't think that we have any idea what the repercussions are going to be on this ~ it's totally unchartered waters.  We knew it would come to this though when they cloned the first sheep, it was just a matter of time.

I hate the thought of it, and everything about it.  Your AP Biology teacher brings up some very good points Defender.

I give human cloning a thumbs down   Bad things happen when men try to play God.

 

[chickenman]

there is no way that human cloning should be undertaken at the present time - we simply don't know enough about epigenetics and imprinting to take the DNA of an adult somatic cell and hope that it will suffice as a replacement for normal embryonic DNA

the methylomes are likely to be quite different - and thus the gene expression patterns as well

I predict birth defects or other serious problems for any cloned babies about to be born

 

[kaotic]

I agree with chickenman there is no way we can clone a human right now and get it right there is just do many defects that would happen.

 

[JohnR7]

Originally posted by Defender of the Faith 777
I know it's tempting to say that you're all for it just cause we say we're all against it.

I have no problem with cloning. I am sure that God puts a limit on things like that. Although like everything else in life, there is sure to be people who abuse it. If we did not allow things because of the potential for abuse you would have to ban everything, including finger nail clippers.

 

[David Gould]

Once we have sorted out the problems involved in cloning through animal experimentation, I do not see a problem with it. It will become simply another way of reproducing. I agree that experimenting by producing human clones before the problems are sorted out is unethical, although I do not agree with the death penalty for any crime.

I actually have my doubts that the two groups who say they are producing human clones have actually done so. They have not released any of their data or reports to the scientific community yet - at the moment, it is science by press release, a pretty good sign that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

 

 

[MSBS]

I haven't looked at the research in any depth for about a year, but at the time the results they were getting was poor....something like less than 1% of the clone attempts being successful, with many problems surfacing in even the viable attempts. I don't think they've perfected it in the last year, and even if they did, they were getting great variation in results in different animals-- there would be no guaranty that they could get good results with humans. This would mean the possibility of dead babies or dead mothers-- it seems foolish to go ahead with this now.

 

[Philostratus]

What need do we have to clone a human being? It seems like pure vanity to me. Until a problem arises, such as the need to saturate the gene-pool with a specific gene because of some horrific plague that said gene may counter, we just don't have any reason to. And, like others have said, until this process is nearly 100% free from error in animal testing, it is highly unethical.

 

[kaotic]

Heh just to be fun. What would be cool is if we could one day when we get to a age where we are about to die or going to die of something we can just jump into our clones and everything will be ok lol I can't wait.

 

[kern]

Originally posted by Philostratus
What need do we have to clone a human being?

Cloning human tissue could be helpful in diseases like cancer.

Cloning entire humans might be a way to eradicate birth defects. Now some people say this is playing God, but it's not all that new -- 50 years ago Polio was a fearsome, crippling disease that randomly struck young people. Now it basically doesn't exist any more (in the US). Was that playing God? It's pretty much the same thing as cloning; you can make sure your child has "healthy" genes. It's a bit like eugenics, except that it's voluntary and doesn't depend on killing or sterilizing anyone.

-Chris

 

[Wolseley]

Anybody ever read any Dean Koontz novels?

There's some cloning scenarios for you.

 

[JohnR7]

Originally posted by seesaw
Heh just to be fun. What would be cool is if we could one day when we get to a age where we are about to die or going to die of something we can just jump into our clones and everything will be ok lol I can't wait.

It does not work that way, the clone is always the same age. Dolly was the clone of a 6 year old and Dolly was born, with 6 years of ageing. That is one of the reasons why I do not worry to much about cloneing. I know God has it under control.

Maybe what you could do, if someone died a early death, at say 20, you could clone them. But they would be born with already 20 years worth of age. So actually, it may not be so good of an idea.

 

[kaotic]

Originally posted by JohnR7
It does not work that way, the clone is always the same age. Dolly was the clone of a 6 year old and Dolly was born, with 6 years of ageing. That is one of the reasons why I do not worry to much about cloneing. I know God has it under control.

LOL I know how it works. I am just saying it would be nice to make a clone and since it has to age you can jump into it at age 14 or 15 and just keep living your life lol. People could live forever when you get read to die just dump into the clone.

Btw show me evidence that god is in control LOL.

And remember I was only joking.

 

[Philostratus]

JohnR7, that is not true. The cloned sheep was born as a little lamb, not a six year old lamb. It then began to age rapidly and unnaturally (similar to the human disease progeria). This is one of the most serious problems with cloning something from an adult organism's DNA. They haven't figured out how age is stored in the code.

And-- this is a big misconception about clones-- they are not somehow fully formed replicas of the original. They will be, when perfected, an Identical twin of the original, born as a baby and will grow naturally as their own person-- an identical twin however many years displaced from the DNA donor.

 

[Philostratus]

Kern: cloning human beings from another's DNA is a serious query. Will we clone identical copies of another person to erradicate genetic disease? I think this apoproach is highly wrought with problems. If we only copy certain "non-defective" people, we will be depleting our gene pool from it's much needed diversity, potentially creating a bottle-neck effect. We must be careful with the frivolity of our solutions to such problems.

Possibly genetic engineering is a recourse-- but this area of research-- Eugenics-- becomes real messy-- Imagine if Hitler had this ability?

 

[kern]

Originally posted by Philostratus
Kern: cloning human beings from another's DNA is a serious query. Will we clone identical copies of another person to erradicate genetic disease?

No. My idea involves technology more advanced than what we have now. If we could identify the specific genes that cause a birth defect, we could either rewrite them or replace them with cloned cells/genes from a healthy person/baby. This would not be cloning the entire person.

I think this apoproach is highly wrought with problems. If we only copy certain "non-defective" people,

I suppose you do get into questions over what constitutes a "defect". Like a lot of technology this has ethical concerns. But I think they can be worked through.

-Chris

 

[Philostratus]

Kern, I think we are on the same page here.. I was just trying to point out that at this time we need to look at current, relevant applications for for genetic research within a contemporary framework, especially when it comes to ethics.

I would hope that through rigorous, scientific effort, genetic research will be at a place where messing around with human DNA will be of some benefit to our current health situation (above and beyond discovering meaning in the human genome). The problem to me is that you can't very well do exeriments on human beings in an ethical manner (unless of course that person volunteers him/ herself for the actual experiment.)

Anyways-- I hope the best for genetic research, so long as it stays within ethical bounds.