cloning.html

updated 2003-04-26

It seems to me that many popular accounts on cloning are not completely technically accurate and use inflammatory language. Things seem to be slowly improving as we come to a better understanding of what is (and is not) possible.

cloning

• cartoons about human cloning http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/cloning/ some of them are pretty funny.

US Senator Tom Harkin, (D) IA has a very eloquent statement that closely reflects my (current) opinion. Who says Christians can't be radical ? Galileo was.

From: Lee Daniel Crocker 
Subject: Re: Yea, Harkin! (was Cloning)
To: extropians@extropy.org
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 23:07:31 -0800 (PST)
Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/)
Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org


 "This has enormous potential for good, There should be no limits on human
  knowledge, none whatever. To those like President Clinton who say we can't
  play God, I say OK, fine, you can take your side alongside Pope Paul V who
  in 1616 tried to stop Galileo, they accused Galileo of trying to play God
  too. [...] I don't think cloning is demeaning to human nature, to attempt
  to limit human knowledge is demeaning. It's not legitimate to try to stop
  cloning. What nonsense, what utter, utter nonsense to think we can hold
  up our hand and just say "stop". Cloning will continue, the human mind will
  continue to inquire into it. Human cloning will take place and it will take
  place in my lifetime, and I don't fear it at all. I want to be on the side
  of the Galileos and those who say the human mind has no limits, rather than
  trying to stop something that's going to happen anyway."

--US Senator Tom Harkin, (D) IA

KGO radio replayed part of that speech in the news tonight.  Until now, I
was beginning to despair that libertarian voices on this issue would be
drowned in the flood of anti-tech I'd been hearing.  But the facts not
only that he said it, but that it got airplay, encourage me.  Among the
rarest events humans may occasionally witness, like solar eclipses and
bright comets, you may include hearing me praise a Democrat: your cousin
done good today, John.  Of course tomorrow he'll want me to pay for the
reasearch, but hey, the quote will always be a good one.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker 
http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html

See also nanotech.html#dna

see also christlib.html

• ``The Cloning of Dolly'' by Dr Jamie Love 1997-11-27 http://www.synapses.co.uk/science/clone.html is an excellent, easy-to-read explaination. Even high schoolers could understand this.

Please note that cloning is *not* genetic engineering.

• non-profit groups concerned about genetic engineering: http://www.sage-intl.org/links.html
• "To clone or not to clone?" article by Hugh Ross, Ph.D. http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/clone.html "Like any tool humans develop, cloning can be used for good or for evil." ... "It may be helpful to consider that God invented cloning. ...identical twins"
• **** All purpose cloning tool discovered? - The Why Files http://www.scienceguide.com/News/News_Articles/12698Article_12.html
• [???] Keep human cloning legal! Use the CSS LetterWizard to write to Congress! http://www.umich.edu/~alexboko/css/bioclonefrm.html
• CLONAID® http://www.clonaid.com/ the first company in the world to offer human cloning ... CLONAPET® ... This service will also be offered to the owners of racing horses, a very promising market.
• ``The fact that life begins at fertilization is the main reason that human cloning is wrong. Such experiments would inevitably cause embryos, i.e. tiny human beings, to be formed and intentionally destroyed. ... human cloning treats one class of people as disposable. ... Twinning may be a form of asexual reproduction, where one embryo divides into two, but this doesn’t mean that s/he wasn’t an individual before then. Rather, s/he was one of those rare individuals with the capacity for asexual reproduction. As usual, the point can be clarified by substituting teenagers for embryos, a morally valid substitution if the embryo is human, and positing a world where a small percentage of teenagers split into two identical ones on their 16th birthday. Then it would be less plausible to argue that the teenager wasn’t alive before s/he split, or that life didn’t begin till 16.'' http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/stem_cells.asp#f15
• http://news.bmn.com/hmsbeagle/109/notes/feature2 ``"Back from the Brink; Cloning Endangered Species" - "Abstract: Now that efforts to clone an endangered species have succeeded, it's time to consider whether cloning can be used to bring a species back from the brink of extinction, or even beyond. In this article, Pamela Weintraub highlights recent efforts and controversies." (BioMedNet)''
• ``What I think about human cloning'' by Nick Bostrom 2001-01-15 http://www.nickbostrom.com/views/cloning.html
• http://reason.com/rb/rb080601.shtml is a debate over stem cells and cloning. Seems to be well-reasoned. [FIXME: read]
• Should Cloning Be Banned? REASON's cloning and stem cell resources http://reason.com/biclone.shtml ???
• ``Ten Myths About Human Cloning'' by Professor Gregory E. Pence 2001 http://www.reproductivecloning.net/open/myths.html has good explainations of why these myths are just plain wrong:

  	1. Cloning Xeroxes a person.
  	2. Human cloning is replication or making children into commodities.
  	3. Human cloning reduces biological diversity.
  	4. People created by cloning would be less ensouled than normal humans,
  	or would be sub-human. 
  	5. People created by cloning could be
  	used for spare organs for normal humans. 
  	6. All people created from the same genotype would be
  	raised in batches and share secret empathy or communication. 
  	7. Scientists who work on human cloning are evil or motivated by bad motives.
  	8. Babies created by cloning could be grown in artificial wombs.
  	9. Only selfish people want to create a child by cloning. 
  	10. Human cloning is inherently evil:
  	it can only be used for bad purposes by bad people. 
  	

• ``Cloning Gina: What cloned pets mean for us.'' article by Charles Murtaugh, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department at Harvard University, where he studies developmental biology. February 20, 2002 8:50 a.m. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-murtaugh022002.shtml argues that cloning pets is harmless, but cloning people is ``evil''. Quotes Isaiah Berlin 1951 as saying,

  . . . all "moulding" is evil, and . . . if human beings at birth had the power of choice and the means of understanding the world, it would be criminal; since they have not, we temporarily enslave them, for fear that, otherwise, they will suffer worse misfortunes from nature and from men, and this "temporary enslavement" is a necessary evil until such time as they are able to choose for themselves — the "enslavement" having as its purpose not an inculcation of obedience but its contrary, the development of power of free judgment and choice; still, evil it remains, even if necessary.

• ``Cloning Opponents Haven't Made Their Case'' article by Glenn Harlan Reynolds February 21, 2002 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,46102,00.html claims that there is, so far, *no* good reason to ban cloning. The article lists 7 reasons for banning cloning, and explains why each one is inadequate.
  • 1. Cloning doesn't work well enough. It's too dangerous and is likely to produce deformed babies. Deliberately producing a child that will suffer serious genetic problems is unspeakable. ``This is the best argument. But it's not an argument against cloning, just an argument against cloning with poor technology.''
  • 2. Cloning will work too well. It will produce so many successful clones that it will replace sexual reproduction, leading to a loss of genetic diversity.
  • 3. Cloning will produce soulless zombie tools of the corporate power structure.
  • 4. Cloning is "playing God." [see name.html#like_God ]
  • 5. Cloning is against God's will.
  • 6. Clones are unnatural.
  • 7. Cloning gives me the willies.
• the Life Extension Foundation http://www.lef.org/ is strongly pro-cloning.
• ``Body and Soul: The first great bioethics debate began 2,000 years ago with a clash between the scalpel and the cross.'' article by Hillary Rosner http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.01/cadavers.html [OK, this is more bioethics in general, rather than cloning in particular]
• cloning a mammoth

  ``A mammoth undertaking: Can genetic science bring extinct species back to life? And if it can, should we let it?'' article by Katharine Mieszkowski http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/03/mammoth/

  ``Richard Stone ... [says] We could see a cloned mammoth within a generation, within 20 years. But there'll be human clones before there are mammoth clones, probably in the next five years.

  ...

  Do you think that some governments, like the United States, will try to stop the resurrection of extinct species, as they have with human cloning?

  I don't think any of the governments are going to step in and say: "How dare you! Don't clone the woolly mammoth!"

  Animal cloning has taken place, and the only regulatory issues that it's triggered have been animal care, in ensuring that the clones are treated with the same standards as any other research animals. I think that would extend to mammoths as well. ''

  ``Mammoth Clone: Science, or Simply Fiction?'' article by Bill Gasperini http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/landofmammoth/dispatches/clonezone.html

  [fixme: future history]

  ``DNA Yes, Clone No: Extinct Mammoth Likely to Remain Extinct'' article by Willow Lawson http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/mammoths000313.html

• In fiction, many people find it entertaining to show the worst-case scenario http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=991025&mode=weekly
• "I predict that exact reproduction through cloning will not become popular. Too many people already find it difficult to live with themselves." -- Jeanne Dixon

• Looking further down the road, once the genes that promote disease (Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cardiovascular problems) and those that promote longevity are identified, it will become possible for parents to select favorable genes for their progeny. Already, more than 1,000 healthy children have been born after their parents used pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to select among eight-cell embryos to find the ones that were free of disease genes. In the future, parents might also select embryos that bear longevity-promoting genes and implant those. Further in the future, parents will be able to add genes that improve their progeny’s immune systems, mental acuity, and athletic abilities by installing artificial chromosomes.

  http://www.reason.com/0208/fe.rb.forever.shtml
• "DON'T bring in the clones" article by Montgomery Kersell http://www.opinion-pages.org/thinksideways/clones.htm

  ... the best reason for _not_ cloning human bodies. ...

  If we have human clones, law enforcement goes down the tubes. ...

  With different people (separate souls, if you will) possessing identical bodies, one could commit a crime, leave fingerprints, palm prints or DNA samples and there's no way to prove which clones actually did the deed.

  DAV: this is silly, for 2 completely different reasons: (a) We already have this problem now with identical twins. To solve this problem, one would have to ban clones *and* ban identical twins. Are you willing to go that far ? (b) Yes, DNA samples cannot distinguish one clone (or one twin) from another -- but fingerprints can easily tell them apart, as can palm prints, bare footprints, iris scans, and retina scans http://www.forensic-evidence.com/site/ID/ID_Twins.html | http://www.aprint.com/ | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/jgd1000/ | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/jgd1000/genetics.html . [FIXME: crosslink #biometric]

• [humor]

  Cloning Man

  One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. They picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.

  The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."

  God listened patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well! How about this? Let's have a man making contest."

  To which the man replied, "OK, great!"

  But God added, "Now we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."

  The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

  God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"

  http://www.upway.com/interesting/cloning.html
• "Does God approve of cloning and genetic research?" http://www.raptureready.com/faq/faq448.html ( ... a rebuttal would say something about how sin led to the destruction of the walls of Jerusalem; but it wasn't wrong for Nehemiah to try to fix the problem -- and he succeeded, at least temporarily ...)
• "It's a Lucky Thing for Stem-Cell Research That the Following Passages Aren't in the Bible" By David Ng http://mcsweeneys.net/2005/1/12feature.html
• "First Cloned Dog Raises Issues of Science, Ethics and Policy" article by Robert Roy Britt 03 August 2005 http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050803_cloned_dog.html
• "Cloned Cat Sale Generates Ethics Debate" article by Paul Elias 24 December 2004 http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/cloned_cat_041224.html
• "Scientists Aim to Revive the Woolly Mammoth" article by Bill Christensen 11 April 2005 http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/050412_mammoth_effort.html "... Scientists with the Mammoth Creation Project ... Woolly mammoths ... Although only about a hundred specimens have been found, as many as ten million mammoths are believed buried in permanently frozen Russian soil."

  "Woolly Mammoth Resurrection, "Jurassic Park" Planned" article by Stefan Lovgren, April 8, 2005 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/04/0408_050408_woollymammoth.html "Many mammoth experts scoff at the idea, calling it scientifically impossible and even morally irresponsible. ... An alternative method would be to clone a mammoth ..."

• (cloning humor) http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/004342.php

Started 1999-09-27 David Cary http://rdrop.com/~cary/html/cloning.html