Talk:Human cloning

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Contents

[edit] Controversiality

Peer review This is a controversial topic, which may be under dispute.
Please read this talk page and discuss substantial changes here before making them.
Make sure you supply full citations when adding information to highly controversial articles.

[edit] Raelites

"Groups such as the Raelites? and the Las-Vegas based Clonaid, as well as Dr's Antinori and Zavos verge on fundamentalism in trying to achieve their aims."

I'm unable to figure out where the "fundamentalism" comes in here, so I took it out for the time being. Can we make this clearer or more NPOV? Thanks. -Unknown

I used the word fundamentalism because these groups seemed to be determined to clone humans despite all the risks involved - which the wider scientific community recognises. This maybe wasn't quite the quite word, but I think they are certainly extreme.
What we think is irrelevant. We are here to write a good factual article, not to express our own beliefs. Metamagician3000 03:14, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding personality and genetics

On the other hand, some studies, notably those by [David Lykken]?, have purported to show that "30 to 70%" of a person's personality is due to genetic factors and i think that your mom is a good scientist.[see links below]).

I do not think this and blah blah blah blah im bored.the accepted scientific viewpoint. Even in the introduction to the link by Lykken it says:

scientists, psychologists like Leon Kamin, biologists like Steven Rose, even the odd geneticist like Richard Lewontin, or the odd paleontologist like Stephen Gould, continue to believe with John Locke that the infant human mind is a tabula rasa

These seem to me to be a lot more well-known and reputable than Lykken. -Unknown

That's a second-hand report; no respectable scientist today--including at least Lewontin and Gould (I haven't read much of the others) would ever argue that human minds are tabula rasa. The evidence contradicting that is overwhelming, and has been coming in consistently for decades. On the other hand, no one but Lykken would be so bold as to speak about simple percentages. That too is a gross oversimplification, since learning interacts in a complex manner with predispositions. There is a valid point to be made here; perhaps a wording like this: "While a clone shares only DNA with its predecessor, and not any of the knowledge, experience, or environment that shaped him, studies such as those on identical twins raised separately show that DNA does have a much stronger influence on personality than previously believed." --LDC

These figures are pretty meaningless without a lot more explanation. The number of legs human beings have is accounted for almost 100 per cent by non-genetic factors in the sense that it is environmental factors (such as wars, industrial accidents, car smashes etc) that account for most of the variation we see in the population between people with two, one or no legs. We could accurately say that the variation of number of legs in a population of human beings is accounted for by way over 90 per cent enviromental factors and way less than 10 per cent genetic factors. Yet, it's obvious that we are, in a sense, genetically "programmed" to be born with two legs. There may be a sense in which someone might correctly say that the number of legs I have was 100 per cent determined by my genes, but it is not this sense that the figures we see in scientific accounts are measuring. Our genes control human leg number in a powerful way, but have little effect on variation within a population because they affect almost everyone in the same manner. We need to be very careful in drawing conclusions based on the degree to which variation in a population is explained by one set of factors or the other (which is all that these figures are usually trying to measure). Such figures can be very misleading if they are then offered as a measure of how important a particular factor is, or as an indication of what kind of role it plays, crucial, trivial or otherwise. Metamagician3000 02:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Last statement NPOV

Articles is quite NPOV, buth there is serious problem with the last statement:

However organisations devoted to clone humans, such as the Raelites and the Las-Vegas based Clonaid, as well as Dr's Antinori and Zavos, are very hard to control. Many think these groups would shift their operations to other countries, where a lack of regulation could bring dangerous results.

Certainly not everyone shares the belief that it may be any dangerous. --Taw

[edit] Scientific community

Referring to the scientific community, from what I've read, the vast majority of people think that attempts to clone humans at this time (which these groups are attempting to do) would be dangerous. The birth of children with genetic disabilities is what they are afraid of. I guess not everybody does though. Could you explain a bit further what the problem is. --sodium

You (or they) mean that The danger is that experimentators won't find all possible problems during zygote phase, and a child with genetical problems will be born, right ? Or are there some other possible problems ? --Taw
Isn't there also some problems with the genes of cloned animals (some aspect of them called the telomeres, or something like that) being old and damaged, hypothetically leading to faster aging and risks of cancer? --Robert Merkel

I.e., the "dangers" or "risks" we're discussing here are risks to the cloned individuals? -Unknown

Yes the dangers to cloned-individuals is the problem. Scientists such as Zavos say that they can deal with all the disorders that we know so far. This is debatable, but the real problem is that we don't yet know all the problems that they could encounter. This is why it is dangerous.

[edit] Telomeres

This is what I know about telomeres: Telomeres become shortened every time a cell divides, until they are so short that the cell will no longer divide. Some scientists think that clones will have a shortened life because they will inherit already-small telomeres. However other scientists seem to have discovered that under certain circumstances in cloning the telomeres can be 'reset' - and the clones will have normal or even extended life spans. --sodium

Yes, the telomeres are getting shorter with every cell division. Some organisms have telomerase, an enzyme that can reconstruct the telomeres. Theoretically, it could be inserted into the cloned human. I'm not sure what would happen, though. Also, AFAIK, "Dolly" managed quite well, considering it was the first attempt on such a comlicated organism. --Magnus Manske
Dolly wasn't the first attempt, was she? She was the first succesfulattempt. (Do I remember this right?) Also isn't the general ratio of unsucessful attempts to clone mammals to sucessful attempts something like 4 to 1?


It might be four to one now, but I think Dolly was the only one of over two hundred sheep cells to make it through to birth.

Telomerase typically does its work during meiosis, which Dolly, as the product of somatic cell nuclear transfer, never experienced.

[edit] Large offspring syndrome

"If the remaining gene is also turned off then 'large offspring syndrome' (LOS) occurs. However Jirtel claims that it is a case of your LOS, my gain."

Ouch.  :-) Maybe Wikipedia needs a general guideline: Keep the puns in / Talk.

[edit] Where Dolly was cloned

FYI all, Human cloning originally said that Dolly the sheep was cloned at the Roswel Institute, should read Roslin Institute. (Roswell is something else. :-) )

Magnus seems to think this isn't quite correct, and I don't at the moment know how to phrase what they really did:
After that, an international team produced a clone by accident. The results of the experiment were published in the [1] but didn't receive any atention.
--sodium
The information was published in a portuguese newspaper. One of the members of the team told the newspaper that 3. The newspaper article says: "Só que noutros três ovócitos injectados com ADN de uma célula adulta, a redução a metade dos cromossomas não aconteceu - e começou a desenvolver-se um embrião, até às quatro e seis células. " That's portuguese. It means: "But, in the other 3 ovocits injected with the DNA of an adult cell, the reduction of the number of cromossomes to half didn't ocour - and an embryo started to develop to 4 and 6 cells." From the newspaper article, I was unable to understand if this information was published or omited in article. Joao

[edit] Edit conflict

I just got my first edit conflict ever! Here's what I wrote:
From what is described on that page, they made an oocyte with the nucleus of a skin cell, then fertilized it.

  1. A human born from that procedure is not a clone, as half of its DNA is from the father, half from the mother (the nucleus donor).
  2. Without fertilization, the oocyte probably would have died.
  3. If it would not have died, it would have sooner or later turned into either a skin cell or some weird tumor.

Only if you make that oocyte "believe" it has been fertilized, it will develope into a human, which is a clone. That's the key point. Just exchanging nuclei has been done before. --Magnus Manske

Please don't consider this as edit conflict. I agree with number 1. Number 2 is problematic. The scientists claim that 3 of the cells started embryonic development without fertilization (this information comes from the portuguese newspaper, not from the abstract). So, maybe number 3 is correct. But how do you know that the embryo from Advanced Cell Technology is a true embryo. It only divided 2 or 3 times and then stopped. That may be an indication that something was wrong. Advanced Cell Technology was not the first to produce an embryo, but the first to produce a weird tumor calling it an embryo. The following is a comment from a Science article about the Advanced Cell Technology announcement:
The fact that the embryos died so early in development suggests that the inserted nucleus wasn't working properly, says developmental biologist John Eppig of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. In normal human embryos, the nucleus begins to express its genes between the four- and eight-cell stage. The embryos' failure to survive to eight cells "strongly suggests that you're not getting gene activation" in the transferred nucleus, he says. "And if you're not getting that, what have you got? Nothing."
-Joao

First, I was referring to the "technical" edit conflict, with someone saving a change here while I was typing! Now, I was just trying to answer the question wether the [2] experiment could have possible resulted in a clone, which IMO it did not. I don't know anything more about the ACT experiment than I know from the news (shame on me!), but they actually tried to make a clone and failed. That makes it even more likely that the three oocytes from the prior experiment weren't clones either.

Whatever ACT made there, it is not too unlikely that they made the clone die after some divisions, just in case the publicity gets too bad...anyway, if they (or others) continue on that path, we'll see if it works (which it probably does, we're not so different from sheep, especially in herds;) --Magnus Manske

Thanks for clarifying Magnus, I should have originally quoted what you said. This technique doesn't really then belong on the human cloning page because it produces embryos with genetic material from the father as well as the mother. It would be relevant under somatic cell nuclear transfer. I should have read the abstract properly, I assumed I would misunderstand it though with my limited AS-level biology :) -- sodium

[edit] Legality of reproductive cloning

I believe this is incorrect:

Reproductive cloning is currently illegal in the US also.
Current in-vitro fecondation success in animals is about 40%. In humans, 15%.

Argument of biological nature against reproductive cloning : calling into question genetic mixing. It would imply a reduction in genetic diversity (ethnic diversity). It would damage the human genome as a common heritage.

Also, introducing asexual reproduction (i.e. not-gametic) would undermine the genetic lottery of which the unpredictability would have an intrinsic value for the individual, helping unicity and freedom. The children would not be "given" any more, but selected. It would lead to an instrumentalisation of a human being (the clone) by others which created it for them. Many refer to Kant, for who a human being should never only be used as a means but be an end in itself. The clone itself could suffer from feeling a negation of its autonomy, of its self-determination (by knowing he is a copy of another). Plus incertainties in terms of filiation. -Unknown

Is no one as disturbed by this as I am? Pellaken 06:49, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'm not. Anyway, I'm already attempting to choose my offsprings' DNA, by dating brunettes, preferably on the taller side. --Charles A. L. 16:17, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)
You're attempting to influence your offspring's DNA, which is not the same as controlling it. I too am worried about all this -- put me down firmly in the Fukuyama/Joy/Kass camp!

This is not a place to discuss whether or not we approve of human cloning. There are many other forums for that. It is a place to discuss how to improve the factual content of the article. As for the question, my understanding is that there is still no federal law in the US that prohibits any form of human cloning. Some (perhaps many) states have such laws, but not all of them. If I am right about that - and I'm reasonably confident that my knowledge is still up to date - it cannot generally be said that human cloning is illegal in the US, though it may be true that it is illegal in some or many US states. Metamagician3000 02:42, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV additions by 198.94.182.12

198.94.182.12 has just added some (worthwhile) content but a large amount of it is POV and the grammar isn't particularly good. I'm not wanting to revert it because of the positive contributions but there is now some text I don't think belongs here. Other opinions? violet/riga 22:55, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I assume you mean this part:
The Whitehead team, however, conclude that reproductive human cloning is not a good idea but they are not telling us why is not a gooid idea. They did suggest, though, that therapeutic cloning of organs should be safer, without offering a good rational. according to their beliefs, this is because the imprinting experienced during culture is less important when cells specialize and start to grow in to specific tissues, which may not be very convincing argument.
Do we have a link to this report to know whether this is even factually true? For example, does the report offer any reason for suggesting that human reproductive cloning is not a good idea. If it actually does, we can resolve this as a factual question. --Rikurzhen 00:20, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Ethic rot

I was going to mention this in my section below, but realised the rot was further spread than Ethics and there was a Talk section here. I'd include the following gems in our newcomer's list of POV accomplishments (I'll highlight his additions, probably in bold; forgive me if I mess up a few punctuation marks).

Wilmut quoted the low survival rate of cloned animals, which has nothing to do about humans, as evidence that human cloning would be dangerous.
Don Wolf, a researcher at Oregon Regional Primate Research Centre and who knows little about the subject of cloning and screening procedures, disagrees.
This is disputed by scientists who say that large-offspring syndrome is just one of many problems that result from cloning. Controlling this gene would not prevent many other genetic disorders which have yet to be fully understood or discovered.However, as one realizes, there is nothing to be said about the safety of cloning that could please the opponents of cloning since their opposition has nothing to do with the technique and the science but rather their religious, political or personal beliefs.
Zavos points out that reproductive science is actually more advanced in humans due to the widespread use of treatments such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF), and therefore cloning in humans is not such a large step as animal cloning was and remains as such today. Professor Zavos has been involved in human reproduction for the last 26 years and has been a true pioneer for a number of new technologies and products in that area.
Dr. Panos Zavos being the most reliable and capable scientist from all of the scientists working on cloning today, claimed on January 17, 2004 to have successfully produced a four-cell stage embryo and transfered it into a 35 year old woman. ... He, since then submitted his findings from this case for publication in a very highly reputable journal for their publication.
Some religious groups defend their anti-cloning stand by saying that it is taking reproduction out of the hands of God. However, Professor Zavos founder of the Zavos Organization (www.zavos.org), claims and very rightfully so, that God never has instructed us to use one mode or another (natural coital method vs IVF)to reproduce. "God gave us the god-given gifts and abilities to think and explore the universe to use them to reproduce and proliferate and make this a better World for all of us" he claims.
Professor Zavos, Director of the Adrology Institute of America, thinks that the world can never agree on banning cloning because no one agrees of the relegious and political definition of cloning and its incredible potential that it has that can change the World, itself.

I've reverted the whole lot. There's too much rubbish (both POV and spelling-punctuation-grammar) in there: if any of it is good stuff, hard cheese. People should learn to write sensible editions, or risk getting the whole lot reverted. If you take a peek at his other contributions, you'll see that he's gone round making highly POV edits elsewhere (like on the page about Zanos, for instance). We have, by my deductions, a nationalistic Greek Cypriot on our hands. He's in no fit state to edit controversial topics where there's national pride and ethics at stake. Wooster 15:27, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC) (Can you tell I'm rather annoyed?)

[edit] Ethics: can we have a look?

It's gonna seem an odd question, but is this really the way the debate progresses (taken from the Ethics section)?

An argument given by 'pro-life' groups is that because they believe embryos are already human, destroying them is tantamount to murder. Most scientists protest that this is irrelevant - sperm also have the potential to become human, but millions die during intercourse.

It makes the scientists sound as though they (a) didn't listen to the argument being put forward and (b) don't understand it anyway. Perhaps it's just me being a bit sensitive to how things sound (actually, I come from the pro-life side on this, so "go figure") but the scientists' alleged protests are pointless because pro-lifers claim that embryos are human, sperm merely have the potential. So pro-lifers will agree that sperm have the potential, but will make a distinction of quality between sperm and an embryo. The person who added this either doesn't understand the ethical issues, doesn't understand ethical reasoning or is attempting to construct a straw scientist.

And then these straw scientists claim that because millions of sperm "die" (not the right word, but hey...) it's all right to go an slaughter a few embryos. Are they stupid and heartless? Even I don't believe that. I think most scientists involved in cloning protest that it simply isn't their belief that embryos are already human (if it were their belief, they'd have to arrest themselves for murder). Wooster 15:13, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sperm cells and unfertilized egg cells are alive and do die. "Die" certainally is the right word. The claim made is that life doesn't begin at conception, it already was present. A fertilized egg cell is a human cell, the issue isn't whether that cell is human, but whether or not it constitutes a human being.--RLent 17:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Right-ho. The Ethics section was deleted by someone else, so there's no real need to continue this, er, lack of discussion.  : D Wooster 19:22, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Strangely the idea that clones are essentially Monozygotic Twins (but for the mitochondrial genome) was not absorbed in discussions by ethisists and scientists until nearly a year after Dolly's birth. I've put in a citation which essentially put a stop to the prexisting misconceptions. which might be better moved to the references--Daedelus 10:07, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC). Its worth noting these as we probably still labour under other misconceptions in the field which - when pointed out will become so obvious that we will all say "but I know that all along".

--Daedelus 10:07, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Nobody denies that a human embryo is "human" in the sense of having DNA belonging to the species Homo sapiens. They deny that human embryos have such characteristics as sentience, rationality, self-consciousness, etc., and that they are yet part of any community into which they have been born. In these ways, it is said, embryos are not in any way like human adults, children or babies. They are not the kind of thing that fears death, or that we can feel sorry for (they can't suffer, feel grief or frustration etc) or whose killing disturbs the peace or causes severe parental grief as does killing someone's baby. People who put such arguments say that our concept of murder does not relate to the killing of just anything that belongs genetically to the species Homo sapiens. (In fact, abortion has never been considered murder at common law.) A good way to understand this way of thinking is to do a thought experiment and consider the position of a sentient, intelligent, self-conscious alien that has become part of our community. Presumably if someone killed it, that would be murder. If someone kills one of the X-Men mutants it is murder even though they supposedly have different DNA. If we lived in a community made up of more than one kind of intelligent species, killing individuals of either species would breach the peace, arouse our fears for our own lives, etc, and would have to be considered by the law to be an act of murder. It is not DNA-based species membership that matters but something's actual properties (such as sentience, rationality etc) and social relationships. I'm not (here) arguing for or against this position. But the position should at least be understood by anyone writing about it. Metamagician3000 02:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reproductive cloning to separate article?

This article is a mess, a collection of random bits and pieces. We need to leave here only a brief summary of reproductive cloning and move the details over to a separate article. Paranoid 11:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • It sounds reasonable that the stub-article reproductive cloning be expanded and siphon off some of the weight from this article. I just re-stubbed that article to "medical treatments" from "generic stub". Courtland 14:02, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)

[edit] Something missing?

Hey, im sure there is a lot to say about the ethics of human cloning. There needs to be an entire section dedicated to it, or at least a link to a separate article on it. Bananaclaw 09:38, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See above. I dunno who did it (can't be bothered running through the history) but someone deleted the ethics section. A shame, because, as you say, there should be recognition in the article that this is a controversial area; but nevertheless, until there's someone who's sufficiently up on the issues to write a decent section, I don't think it'll happen. It's simply too heated a debate to live and let live. Wooster 11:20, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Just why is cloning wrong?

Could someone explain to me why cloning is wrong and prohibited by law? like paranoid pointed out, this article is really random and hard to understand. Xunflash 01:55, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

This is all fake guys -Unknown

Well, there's all sorts of ethical dissagreements with cloning. I guess alot of people think it's unfair to the clone to exist without the diversity we have. Most likely, the government just made human cloning illegal to avoid the riots and stuff that'll come with it.

[edit] Alleged identical twin telepathy

I think it behooves the user who brought up the somewhat dubious concept of telepathy between identical twins to provide something more in terms of cites and studies. I dont think cloning is wrong to a exstint what is wrong with it is we dont know what will happen what kind of defects it will have i mean we are playing God when we start fooling with a human life i simply dont belive that we have reached our time to conduct such experiments i think for now we should leave cloning to God untill we are more advanced. -John Locke

God has a cloning laboratory? - The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake {Prophesize) 05:32, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fiction

There's a lot more to be said here, though it musn't be allowed to eat up the rest of the article. I've slightly elaborated and cleaned up this section. Metamagician3000 02:17, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Recombinant DNA technology

It is simply not true to say that, "The third type of cloning is called Recombinant DNA technology. This is when parts of or a whole DNA molecule is created with the purpose of eliminating genetic faults in a human." This might be a purpose to which cloning is put, but it is not a third technique of cloning. A third technique that is not mentioned here (though it is the simplest technique) is embryo splitting. It creates a number of identical embryos that can be implanted. What it can't do is create an embryo genetically identical to an existing adult. Metamagician3000 06:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] can we combine Hwang Woo-Suk with the other claims?

Is there any reason this must be a seperate section? --Jonmedeiros 22:18, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


Nobody said anything so I did it. --Jonmedeiros 01:03, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


12.144.50.221 This is absolutely right. "Recombinant DNA technology" is the process of using a plasmid or virus to add something new to the genome. It is not the same as cloning.

[edit] Females only?

"Thirdly the process of cloning can only be used to females of the species being cloned."

Is this true? I mean, of course parthenogenesis only works for females, but somatic cell nucleus transfer should work for males too, right? —Keenan Pepper 03:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. You put a male cell nucleus complete with Y chromosome into an enucleated ovum. Metamagician3000 03:02, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion

I have deleted the following: "Consider that the chimpanzee genome is more than 98% identical to the human genome, only a 2% difference. A 0.3% difference could potentially lead to much more divergence from the DNA donor's genotype than one may at first believe. It could also spell problems for therapeutic cloning, where compatibility is essential because of the risk of rejection." This is original research and probably inaccurate. The last sentence could possibly be restored if an attribution can be found for the claim. However, the first bit is quite misleading. You cannot compare the 98% figure with the the 99.7% figure. They are measuring different things. Metamagician3000 02:20, 30 July 2006 (UTC)


12.144.50.194 The reason for the confusion is that Dolly was cloned by taking a somatic cell from mammary tissue.



Additional Deletion:

Animal cloning can be a good thing. It can produce more milk, eggs and meat for many people. It can also help the endangered animals not be endangered anymore. Scientists have reaserched animal cloning is a smart productive thing. "I believe we should all be open to animal cloning but not human cloning, animal cloning can help all of us in our own way."- Dr. Wert, Trenton NJ, 2003.

Inappropriate to the section (limits of cloning) and also is not in the same format as the rest of the page. -RebelWithoutASauce

[edit] 2006

Has there been anything newsworthy about this topic since the beginning of this year? If so, would it be informative enough to place it on the page?--Thumbtax 19:52, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Why do countries ban human cloning?

The article does a service by listing the countries which have banned human cloning. A further service it can make is to say state here why these countries have banned it. Thank you. Lafem 03:01, 4 October 2006 (UTC)yes

The trouble is that many arguments have been put forward and it is difficult to know which ones have swayed particular legislatures. Metamagician3000 15:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Less developed nations?

"Organizations devoted to cloning humans, such as the Raelians' Las Vegas-based Clonaid, as well as Antinori and Zavos, are very hard to control. Many think these groups would shift their operations to other countries should mainstream legislation impede their operations, as many less developed nations have no such ban on cloning, so human cloning experiments could (theoretically) be easily shifted to more viable areas." -- I de-linked "less developed nations" here. It was linked to Least Developed Countries, however, Developing country may be more appropriate. Since I don't know what the actual legal situation is in various countries, I think we need to verify this before including it in the article. -- Writtenonsand 05:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

These sentences have an air of original research in any event. Now that they are on the talk page where anyone can find them if a source can ever be found, I am half minded to delete them from the article. However, I'll await comments. Metamagician3000 12:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Also, the phrasing is biased. Written as it is, it implies that the level of developement of a country can be gauged by whether they allow cloning or not. I don't see any connection between the two. If the claim is ever reinserted, I'd suggest a neutral "shift to countries where clonning is not banned". TomorrowTime 00:27, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I've deleted this sentence: Some think these groups would shift their operations to other countries should mainstream legislation impede their operations, as many less developed nations have no such ban on cloning, so human cloning experiments could (theoretically) be easily shifted to more viable areas. Metamagician3000 06:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
On reflection, I've deleted the whole lot. I.e. I've now also deleted: Organizations devoted to cloning humans, such as the Raelians' Las Vegas-based Clonaid, as well as Antinori and Zavos, are very hard to regulate. All this should be sourced and I also tend to agree with TomorrowTime's point if a version is ever reinstated with proper attribution. Metamagician3000 06:34, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why do some consider human cloning to be morally wrong?

Could an overview of the most common reasons (preferably, divided into those that apply to reproductive and therapeutic cloning, those that only apply to the former, and those that only apply to the latter) for people to object to cloning be inserted into the article? I knew both before and after I read it that some people - individuals and entire organisations - object to it on moral or religious grounds, but I still don't know why. CameoAppearance orate 05:58, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This site is a good source for issues like that: http://www.religioustolerance.org/cloning.htm
To the best of my understanding, conservatives object to therapeutic cloning (creation of replacement tissues, such as cloning just a liver or just a heart) because it uses up a whole embryo, which they believe would otherwise develop into a whole human being. It is my understanding that they object to reproductive cloning (the creation of a new organism, such as Dolly, a cloned racehorse, or a cloned baby) because of the risks. Creating Dolly required the use of hundreds of fertilized ova, didn't it? Creating a human clone, even one that the parents intend to raise like any other child, would involve the loss of as many or more human embryos. In other words, I think that conservatives object to reproductive cloning for the same reason that they object to fertility clinics: they don't like how many embryos go down the drain.
Of course, it would be better if an actual conservative were to answer the question... Any takers?Darkfrog24 18:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] brain implantation

The comment about the limitations of human cloning saying that if a brain were to be implanted into a cloned body it would continue to age and suffer from degenerate disorders like Alzheimer's disease sounds scientifically logical but surely the entire concept of implanting a human brain into a cloned body is science-fiction and non-sense! If anyone knows of any sources for such a procedure i would greatly welcome your insight. User:ednus 20:10, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Science fiction it may be (at least in the sense that we aren't presently capable of accomplishing such a brain transfer), but I don't see how it's nonsense. Speculation, perhaps, but not nonsense. CameoAppearance orate 22:11, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that growing a full human clone of yourself to maturity and removing its brain to insert yours is limited only because your brain would continue to age. Aside from this idea being patently ridiculous surely speculation of this kind has no place in an encyclopaedia. User:ednus 16:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I think Cameo is suggesting that, as a metaphor, it does a good job of debunking the idea of cloning as a vehicle toward immortality. I think that the word "hypothetically" does a decent job of telling the reader that the passage is a thought experiment. However, if you feel that it isn't clear enough, we could always rephrase it as, "Even if it were possible to transfer a brain from an old body to a new one." Darkfrog24 17:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ethics of cloning: Presidential Council in Bioethics

It seems that there have been a number of requests on this.

I suggest somebody summarizes the points listed here: [3]. It is quite extensive and worthy of an encyclopedic treatment.

Some key points: The ethics of research on human subjects suggest three sorts of problems that would arise in cloning-to-produce-children: (1) problems of safety; (2) a special problem of consent; and (3) problems of exploitation of women and the just distribution of risk.

Procreation as traditionally understood invites acceptance, rather than reshaping, engineering, or designing the next generation. It invites us to accept limits to our control over the next generation. It invites us even – to put the point most strongly – to think of the child as one who is not simply our own, our possession. Certainly, it invites us to remember that the child does not exist simply for the happiness or fulfillment of the parents.

Keeping in mind our general observations about procreation, we proceed to examine a series of specific ethical issues and objections to cloning human children: (1) problems of identity and individuality; (2) concerns regarding manufacture; (3) the prospect of a new eugenics; (4) troubled family relations; and (5) effects on society.

  • Marax 08:38, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
If anyone wants to get into this, I can provide a bibliography. The most forthright defences of human cloning against such claims are probably those of John Harris, a British bioethicist, who has written a couple of books on the subject (I'm surprised he does not have a Wikipedia article as he is a very important figure in current bioethics). His American counterpart Gregory Pence is similarly forthright and has also written a couple of books about it. In addition, there is a huge body of material in the bioethical literature. Nicholas Agar's book Perfectcopy contains a balanced analysis (which does not mean he is correct, of course; the truth is not always in the middle). Metamagician3000 06:29, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "a pattern of lies and fraud"

This clause in Claims of Success Beyond the Embryo Stage seriously violates NPOV; in addition, that section does not cite its references or sources. 166.113.54.102 21:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't cite its sources but nor is it controversial. Still, I've slapped a tag on it. Metamagician3000 08:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Categorization

Shouldn't this article be in Category:Cloning rather than Category:Biotechnology? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 19:48, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Positions of sub-national entities on human cloning

[edit] First Paragraph Destruction/Creation

I think we may have been stealth-edited. Cloning is the creation of a new being, not the destruction of one.Darkfrog24 15:17, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act of 2005

Should this be mentioned? It was a US bill, and I can't find any other page where it's mentioned, nor a better place to do so. I might be completely off, but then that's the results of a twenty minute search to see if it went anywhere. A draft of the bill can be found here, if anyone's interested. -- Maethon (talk) 17:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proof

Is there any REAL proof that humans have been cloned? 67.72.98.114 04:49, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Horrible section "Claims of success in human cloning beyond the embryo stage"

This section is an outrage to Wikipedia. It has absolutely NO sources and contains blatant unencyclopedic material ("pattern of lies and fraud by Hwang Woo-Suk came to light," who the hell wrote that?!). I am proposing to make this section invisible until someone can come up with some CREDIBLE proof (third party) that ALL of the statements in that section are true. --Soakologist 03:37, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Imprinting and other problems

It seems to me that most people believe that human cloning is possible with today's technology, only that we haven't dared do it yet. The truth is that we can't

For example, genetic imprinting decides which genes are turned on and which are turned off. Which actually to some degree decides how a person/animal will develope. During the cloningprocess, this imprinting is messed up, which is also the reason why cloned animals don't live very long.

Also, the technique used to clone animals, like dolly, won't work with humans. The reason is that the human egg cell can't take that kind of abuse. It might be possible to find an alternative method, but this probably lies far into to the future. Or it would require a heavy amount of rescourses. Maybe the koreans have done, but I seriously doubt it.

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