a poll on human cloning?

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

What is the ""Xerox effect" when it comes to genetics"?

It's a common analogy used - that of taking a copy of a copy of a copy. The final print is degraded.

So to with genetics, if you take a clone of a clone of a clone, you would expect some degredation. In fact as cells replicate, the "copy" becomes degraded, which is one of the reason that your looks change over time.

However, there are looking at doing things like rewriting the tails of cells that keep track of how many times they have replicated, regrowing your own stem cells into any particular types of cells, and other techniqes that would address this.

 

[Saem]

It'd be really interesting to see how badly societies could screw up with this. IMagine you having an offspring who unwittingly has a child with an off spring from your clone. Fun, fun.

Annonymous adotions are already some what of an issue, imagine this.

 

[Natoma]

However, there are looking at doing things like rewriting the tails of cells that keep track of how many times they have replicated, regrowing your own stem cells into any particular types of cells, and other techniqes that would address this.

Not exactly correct. They're not rewriting the tails of the cells that keep track of how many times your DNA has been replicated.

What you're thinking about are telomeres which cap DNA much in the way that plastic is used to cap shoe strings and keep them from unraveling. Telomeres perform this function. As they get shorter and shorter, i.e. through each replication, it becomes more and more difficult for DNA to maintain its cohesion. Eventually it unravels, which is when you get the problems of old age.

The technology you're talking about would reset the telomeres to their original length, which theoretically should end the aging process wrt DNA cohesion. But that's way down the line. We're talking nano-machines here. Telomeres aren't replicatory in nature. They merely get snipped in each replication. So saying "rewriting" is not necessarily correct.

 

[Silent_One]

When you make a copy of something, the image is close to the original, but not identical. It degrades in the creation of the copy. If you then make a copy of the copy, it degrades again, and so forth and so on. That's one of the reasons why Dolly the sheep, along with all the other clones that have been created thus far, have experienced abnormalities that sometimes did not show up for years

The idea that a defective offspring may result from cloning is an argument many have used to prohibit human cloning. Consider the possibilities of sucess-through technologies associated with cloning some people can have a child that is biologically their own. And what is your standard of success? That the potential risk of the "Zerox effect" outweigh the benifits of sucess? Is that reasonable? And how high a standard is it that you set? Suppose a defect were as minor as one finger being 0.1 inches shorter than its counterpart on the other hand? The only reasonable question to ask is whether the defects would be so severe that it is reasonable to expect that a person would rather not exist at all than to exist with the defect. And that can only be asked after the fact. For sake of argument lets assume that a clone ages quickly and has a life expectancy of only 30 years. Is that an failure or sucess? If cloning has no benefit to anyone or can do so only by causing the clone harm then it should not be done. But I think preliminary evidence would suggests that cloning will far surpasss these safety criteria.

What will be your decision if, after a few years of research, cloning should become safer than traditional reproduction? ie- cloning resulting in fewer defects and be a more reliable way of guaranteeing a healthy child? Would your concern with the types of defects that occur in traditional reproduction translate into a demand for a law that prohibits it?

I think the concept of the "Zerox effect" and so called concepts of "safety" are being abused.

 

[Natoma]

There is no known way to clone a human being and errors not to occur. Hell nature hasn't gotten it right. That's one reason why we age.

Your question about giving someone the chance to have a child that is biologically their own is erroneous. If you can remove the sperm or egg from a person and it is genetically viable, it can be fertilized to create a new human being that will not suffer the problems associated with cloning, due to the introduction of new genetic material.

And considering the way you're using the term cloning, I don't know if you're referring to "good" reproductive techniques such as Invitro Fertilization or splicing DNA together, or direct 1:1 cloning of an individual to make a baby that only has the genetic material of that singular individual. If you are referring to the direct 1:1 cloning of an individual, then I think that's a bad idea. There's only so far cloning can take our species in the long run. Using cloning techniques for DNA splicing and Invitro however are completely different. You can screen for genetic defects in those two procedures, but you will not have the issue of having to maintain the integrity of the genetic material from one generation to another that you would have with direct 1:1 cloning. Not to mention the problem of genetic susceptibility to disease that you will automatically breed into the line of clones.

p.s.: It's Xerox, not Zerox.

 

[Silent_One]

p.s.: It's Xerox, not Zerox.

There is no known way to clone a human being and errors not to occur.

Not yet.

Hell nature hasn't gotten it right. That's one reason why we age.

Nature has it right. Just not all the time. Ageing is a natural process.

There's only so far cloning can take our species in the long run.

What do you think I'm advocating? A copy of a copy of a copy? There are billions of people in the world. Don't you think it's likely that a clone will reproduce with a non-clone? It's not like clones are running into each other everywhere.

Not to mention the problem of genetic susceptibility to disease that you will automatically breed into the line of clones.

Diseases associated with animal cloning are both nonspecific and inconsistent. Dolly has arthritis and is fat. Some clones have neural tube defects. Some have nonspecific embryo abnormalities and die in utero. Well guess what-some people are fat. Some people have arthritis, even premature arthritis. Believe it nor not, most “peopleâ€￾ have genetic disease or chromosomal, cardiac and neural tube abnormalities. Most (65% or more) of fertilized human embryos spontaneously abort because of genetic disease in the early days or weeks after fertilization. Again, whats your safety margin? Never?

 

[Natoma]

There is no known way to clone a human being and errors not to occur.

Not yet.

And who knows if we'll ever get it right.

Hell nature hasn't gotten it right. That's one reason why we age.

Nature has it right. Just not all the time. Ageing is a natural process.

Aging occurs because DNA becomes riddled with errors during the replication process. That's why you see wrinkles in your skin. It's why cancers tend to pop up later in life. Brittle bones, Senility, skin losing its elasticity, etc etc etc. Over time, those errors in the DNA manifest themselves physically. And literally, your DNA gets closer to unraveling each time your cells divide thank-you-very-much-shorter-and-shorter-telomere caps.

There's only so far cloning can take our species in the long run.

What do you think I'm advocating? A copy of a copy of a copy? There are billions of people in the world. Don't you think it's likely that a clone will reproduce with a non-clone? It's not like clones are running into each other everywhere.

What if the clone wanted to clone him/herself? Not saying you're advocating that, but I did point that out as a potential problem in an earlier post.

Not to mention the problem of genetic susceptibility to disease that you will automatically breed into the line of clones.

Diseases associated with animal cloning are both nonspecific and inconsistent. Dolly has arthritis and is fat. Some clones have neural tube defects. Some have nonspecific embryo abnormalities and die in utero. Well guess what-some people are fat. Some people have arthritis, even premature arthritis. Believe it nor not, most “peopleâ€￾ have genetic disease or chromosomal, cardiac and neural tube abnormalities. Most (65% or more) of fertilized human embryos spontaneously abort because of genetic disease in the early days or weeks after fertilization. Again, whats your safety margin? Never?

I wasn't referring to non-transmissable diseases.

One of the reasons why species in general propagate through sexual reproduction rather than asexual reproduction is the introduction of new genetic material into a gene pool. There are people that are born with genetic resistance to HIV. They can get HIV but never contract the disease due to the way in which their DNA instructs their cells to create the markers on the surface of those cells that act as the "doorway" into the cell. In a perfect evolutionary world, they would survive while those who did not have the HIV resistance would die off after a few generations. The only way to ensure your genetic viability would be to breed into the gene pool that contains that resistance.

If you start breeding clones, and all of those clones do not contain the genetic resistance to HIV for instance, they would all die if they came in contact with the disease.

There may not be a disease today that the human species has to worry about. But what about a millenia from now. What happens if people start using cloning technology en masse to create identical copies of themselves as offspring. A new disease pops up that no one has genetic protection against. Voila, population decimation. In many ways, sexual reproduction protects against this. Some portions of the population will die off, others will survive, due to genetic drift in the species. This would not necessarily be the case if mass cloning came into vogue. We'd cease to evolve as a species.

 

[Silent_One]

There may not be a disease today that the human species has to worry about. But what about a millenia from now. What happens if people start using cloning technology en masse to create identical copies of themselves as offspring. A new disease pops up that no one has genetic protection against. Voila, population decimation. In many ways, sexual reproduction protects against this. Some portions of the population will die off, others will survive, due to genetic drift in the species. This would not necessarily be the case if mass cloning came into vogue. We'd cease to evolve as a species.

What a bunch of B.S.
"And who knows if we'll ever get it right"
"What if the clone wanted to clone him/herself"
"What happens if people start using cloning technology en masse.."
What if..What if..What if..
Please. Your objections are based on an extreme, unjustified extrapolation. There are over 6 billion people on this planet. It will be decades before the total number of human clones even approaches one million people in the entire world. On a percentage basis they would what-1/6,000,000? A fraction of the worlds popualtion. I would even argue that a some remote future date humans will not chose cloning "en masse to create identical copies of themselves as offspring" over sex. Sex is more fun
Even if one clone of every person on the planet were created, genetic diversity would be undiminished because we would still have six billion genetically different individuals. More scare tatics on your part.

 

[Natoma]

You honestly have no clue what you're talking about Silent_one. You should just stop now. Really.....

1) I never said that genetic diversity would decrease if a clone of each individual today were made. I said that we would stop evolving if cloning was used en masse.

2) I asked what would you do if a clone wanted to clone him/herself. Well? The genetic process of cloning creates myriad problems when creating copy of a copy of a copy. So, what do you propose?

3) What if we never get cloning right? Should it still be used to create new human beings? Is that ethical?

These "what ifs" are certainly pertinent questions to ask in the face of this very powerful technology and are most certainly not "b.s." as you so uneloquently state.

 

[epicstruggle]

Ok here is my 2 cents on this topic. First Ill note that Im pro-life, and am not for cloning, splicing, gene manipulation/therapy of any kind.

Now Im going to play devils advocate (I hope I do a good job )
-If abortions are legal why cant cloning also be legal? Whats growing obviously isnt alive, right? So how can it be illegal, whats growing in the tube/women currently have very little to no rights so we can do what ever we want to it.

-Xerox effect is bs. How about I take about a 1 billion samples of Michael Jordans DNA. I could just make a copy with the original sample instead of a copy of a copy of MJ. There you go no need to worry about Xerox effect. I always wondered why Star Trek:TNG, Stargate:SG1, ... and others just didnt make this point whenever they dealt with cloning. Also we could just copy the blue print and make copies based on that.

-Since fetuses have absolutly no rights (or very little). How about this fantastic scenario. I and my wife create (the old fashioned way ) a fetus which is growing in her. Then we decide that we want a super duper ultra cool and ultra beautiful and smart and athelic baby. We go to the nearest genetic clinic. Have the fetus aborted and samples of that dna taken. Then we have some super computer splice/manipulate the genes of the aborted fetus(you could even take the original fetus and apply changes and put it back in her) until we are guaranted a kick ass baby, then we put it back in here to grow. Wow isnt that a great scenario? A world full of beautiful smart atheletic people.

-How about taking the above scenario and removing the gay gene section if its found, or take out the fat gene section, or the short gene section, ....

-If a fetus isnt alive because its depended (inside the women) on the women (or whatever silly reason its not alive) how about we take that one step further. I grow a fetus(a clone of my self) in a test tube. Add a fast growing solution, so that the fetus grows very fast. We at some point remove the brain area. Have the fetus grow to what a normal 18/19 year old would grow to. Then I transplant my brain into the fetus(which isnt alive and has no rights, right?). And voila instant youth. Hope we can solve any brain diseases/problems by then.

I draw a direct correlation between cloning(splicing,manipulation,...) and abortions. Why because living things have rights so if you say a fetus has no right, then why dont you see that a clone also doesnt have any right until after being born. And after birth your stuck with what you got, same a a regular birth the old fashion way. Make up your mind, is it alive or not.

later,
epic
[edit] grammar fix.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

In a nutshell I don't think it's ok to artificially make identical copy of someone. Each being is unique and I don't think that should be tread upon.

So all women who are pregnant should be tested for identical twins, and one of them aborted to preserve uniqueness?

Not only that, but there are biological issues with making direct copies. I'm sure you're aware of the "Xerox effect" when it comes to genetics.

There are also genetic issues with combinations of genes. (Double recessive traits, etc.)

That's all there is to it, no more no less. If you're looking for a deeper answer frankly you're going to be disappointed because there isn't one.

Not necessarily a deeper answer...just seeing if you have (or claim to have?) some moral "logic". In other words, I hope you agree that if we "logically" expand on the reasons given for your moral dislike of cloning, we're going to find holes.

I still don't see how or why you're trying to make a corrolation between cloning and the combination of random sets of genetic information. One results in a genetic copy, another does not.

Can we get past this? I know one is a genetic copy, and one is not. I'm asking for an explanation of why "a genetic copy" is bad, and "not being a genetic copy" is fine.

My question is, what you you feel about cloning? Do you feel that making copies of human beings is fine? Why or why not?

No, like you, I don't think it's alright. However, for me, it's not the issue of it being a "copy" that is a problem. It's an issue of it being far to "unnatural" for me to be comfortable with it.

So I also don't think that articially splicing two sets of genes from two same - sex cells is good either. They are both methods of creating life by which nature never inteded to occur.

How do you feel about invitro and the fact that many of the techniques used for invitro are shared with direct cloning?

I'm fine with in-vitro. You might counter and say that in-vitro is not "natural." I am saying there are degrees to "naturalness." Increasing the chances of successful fertilization, and subsequent life formation doesn't cross the line for me. Genetic manipulation does.

 

[Natoma]

DNA degrades over time epic. Copying the original would fail eventually.

As for the rest of your post, why wouldn't you just take the DNA from your sperm and the DNA from your wife's egg and do the genetic manipulation from that instead of conceiving a child and aborting it to get the genetic material?

 

[epicstruggle]

DNA degrades over time epic. Copying the original would fail eventually.

I guess as usual you fail to read the post i made. I said that we can have a "ton" of dna samples from MJ. When I make a copy of MJ i'll use a very small part of the original sample. At no point am I making a copy of a copy of a copy. So there isnt a degradation issue. Unless your saying freezing the billion samples of MJ dna will degrade over time. This I couldnt answer as I dont know how freezing would effect dna.

As for the rest of your post

lets side step most of what i said right?

, why wouldn't you just take the DNA from your sperm and the DNA from your wife's egg and do the genetic manipulation from that instead of conceiving a child and aborting it to get the genetic material?

We could have decided once we found out we were expecting a child. :?

Well I guess you wouldnt want to touch the whole "pro-abortion" == "pro-cloning" points i made in the post.

later,
epic

 

[Silent_One]

I never said that genetic diversity would decrease if a clone of each individual today were made. I said that we would stop evolving if cloning was used en masse.

Evolution would continue since Genetic deversity would not decrease.

I asked what would you do if a clone wanted to clone him/herself. Well? The genetic process of cloning creates myriad problems when creating copy of a copy of a copy. So, what do you propose?

Assuming that the individual is healthy would you tell him/her that he/she could not? What about individuals in society toady that have genetic problems? Can't they legally reproduce? Can't you screen them (the cloned individual) for defects like you would for those who wish to reproduce sexually?

What if we never get cloning right? Should it still be used to create new human beings? Is that ethical?

What is right? You have yet to tell me what your level of safety is. I repeat-

Silent_One wrote:

And what is your standard of success? That the potential risk of the "Zerox effect" outweigh the benifits of sucess? Is that reasonable? And how high a standard is it that you set? Suppose a defect were as minor as one finger being 0.1 inches shorter than its counterpart on the other hand?

You honestly have no clue what you're talking about Silent_one. You should just stop now. Really.....

Your funny....

 

[Natoma]

In a nutshell I don't think it's ok to artificially make identical copy of someone. Each being is unique and I don't think that should be tread upon.

So all women who are pregnant should be tested for identical twins, and one of them aborted to preserve uniqueness?

The genesis of twins in the womb is different than artificial cloning. The DNA has not degraded with twins. With cloning DNA defects have already occurred because of aging.

Not only that, but there are biological issues with making direct copies. I'm sure you're aware of the "Xerox effect" when it comes to genetics.

There are also genetic issues with combinations of genes. (Double recessive traits, etc.)

This would be screened for.

That's all there is to it, no more no less. If you're looking for a deeper answer frankly you're going to be disappointed because there isn't one.

Not necessarily a deeper answer...just seeing if you have (or claim to have?) some moral "logic". In other words, I hope you agree that if we "logically" expand on the reasons given for your moral dislike of cloning, we're going to find holes.

I never said there weren't issues with my stance on cloning. Why is this a point for you?

I still don't see how or why you're trying to make a corrolation between cloning and the combination of random sets of genetic information. One results in a genetic copy, another does not.

Can we get past this? I know one is a genetic copy, and one is not. I'm asking for an explanation of why "a genetic copy" is bad, and "not being a genetic copy" is fine.

I've laid some of those reasons out in posts in this thread. You've probably read them by now.

As for the rest of your post, I really don't think you want to get into what is natural/unnatural again.

 

[Natoma]

DNA degrades over time epic. Copying the original would fail eventually.

I guess as usual you fail to read the post i made. I said that we can have a "ton" of dna samples from MJ. When I make a copy of MJ i'll use a very small part of the original sample. At no point am I making a copy of a copy of a copy. So there isnt a degradation issue. Unless your saying freezing the billion samples of MJ dna will degrade over time. This I couldnt answer as I dont know how freezing would effect dna.

Epic, if you take 50 billion samples from Michael Jordan's body, they are still the same age DNA. They will all degrade eventually, no matter what you do. And so will the DNA of the clones even if each one of those clones received a "fresh" copy of DNA from the original samples.

This has absolutely nothing to do with reading your post or not. :?

why wouldn't you just take the DNA from your sperm and the DNA from your wife's egg and do the genetic manipulation from that instead of conceiving a child and aborting it to get the genetic material?

We could have decided once we found out we were expecting a child. :?

Well I guess you wouldnt want to touch the whole "pro-abortion" == "pro-cloning" points i made in the post.

If you want to talk about abortion then we can talk about abortion. But I thought we were talking about cloning? :?

 

[Natoma]

I never said that genetic diversity would decrease if a clone of each individual today were made. I said that we would stop evolving if cloning was used en masse.

Evolution would continue since Genetic deversity would not decrease.

Not if people use cloning instead of sexual reproduction, which was part of the statement I made that you forget to add, i.e. en masse. Of course evolution would occur if sexual reproduction continued and cloning was not used by and large. But that was not the point of my statement was it?

I asked what would you do if a clone wanted to clone him/herself. Well? The genetic process of cloning creates myriad problems when creating copy of a copy of a copy. So, what do you propose?

Assuming that the individual is healthy would you tell him/her that he/she could not? What about individuals in society toady that have genetic problems? Can't they legally reproduce? Can't you screen them (the cloned individual) for defects like you would for those who wish to reproduce sexually?

There's a difference biologically between a cloned individual who has genetic problems due to the cloning process and biological problems due to genetically passed traits. If there were no problem with genetic stability in the cloning process, then there would be no discussion on this matter now would there?

What if we never get cloning right? Should it still be used to create new human beings? Is that ethical?

What is right? You have yet to tell me what your level of safety is. I repeat-

And what is your standard of success? That the potential risk of the "Zerox effect" outweigh the benifits of sucess? Is that reasonable? And how high a standard is it that you set? Suppose a defect were as minor as one finger being 0.1 inches shorter than its counterpart on the other hand?

Cloning would have to be at least as successful as sexual reproduction. However in the long run, the very nature of cloning would preclude this possibility for success.

You honestly have no clue what you're talking about Silent_one. You should just stop now. Really.....

Your funny....

What. You don't. /me shrugs.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

The genesis of twins in the womb is different than artificial cloning. The DNA has not degraded with twins. With cloning DNA defects have already occurred because of aging.

Please elaborate.

Are you saying that taking a just fertilized (not aged at all), is fair game for cloning then? If not, why not?

This would be screened for.

No, you miss my point. Natural reproduction runs the risk of double negative recessive traits and other genetic defects. Why do you single out whole-sale cloning as a special case for genetic issues? It's not unique to clones.

I never said there weren't issues with my stance on cloning. Why is this a point for you?

Mostly, because you seemed to make my stance on homosexuality a big issue.

As for the rest of your post, I really don't think you want to get into what is natural/unnatural again.

Why, your VERY FIRST line in your previous post commented on the artificial nature of cloning vs. natural genesis of twins....

 

[Joe DeFuria]

If there were no problem with genetic stability in the cloning process, then there would be no discussion on this matter now would there?

I don't know...you tell us.

We're saying that even if genetic stability wasn't a problem with clones...we'd still be against it. You have offered the "genetic stability" argument, so presumably you wouldn't have a problem with cloning if genetic stability was ensured.

But then, you crossed into other objections like "preserving individuality" and such...so again, it's hard to get a feel for exactly why you object to clones....

 

[epicstruggle]

@natoma, its very frustrating talking to you, as youll pick to comment on a few words and not comment on the post's general thought. I will repeat once more that clonning if fine if you believe abortion is fine. Get it. Ill say it using other words. I believe cloning and abortion are basically the same issue in different forms. So if your for one you have to be for the other.

later,
epic