Is Human Cloning Easier Than Thought?

The Angry Clam writes "Yahoo has this story about how human beings might be easier to clone than sheep like the (in)famous Dolly. Since most of the "cloning is unethical" arguments hinge upon the high rate of defectives produced during attempts to create Dolly, I wonder what this will mean for things like the Cloning Ban, that Italian doctor, and so forth."

Re:Thoughts on Cloning

[Kronus]

I'd like to address your points: 1. While I will grant you that a fetus does not have the rights of a human (at least in America), that doesn't lessen the immorality of a procedure that is as risky as cloning. For every healthy baby born, you'll get dozens of babies with birth defects, and scores of miscarriages. Perfect the techniques with animals first, than try it on humans. 2. You may not want to define a fetus as a person, but once it's born it certainly will be. Regardless of whether the DNA came from one person or two (parents, sex, that whole thing) a baby, once born, is a person, with the same rights as any other person. After all, just because it has the same DNA as you doesn't mean it is you. It will have it's own memories, personality, etc. 3. On this point I agree with you in principle. However, we shouldn't follow the quest for knowledge blindly. Many scientific findings have moral reprocutions, which must be examined. If we find that, as a people, we aren't mature enough to handle the responsibility that comes with progress, then we need to slow down a bit. Cloning is a perfect example. That Italian doctor is so caught up in the "gee whiz!" aspect of cloning he seems to have forgoten that his 200 volunteers will result in a dozen kids going through life with horrible birth defects. That is too high a price to pay for the mere quest of knowledge.

I wasn't too impressed

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

The article said that this may be a solution to one of the many problems they've had cloning different animals, and even if it were the only problem, humans don't have that much of an advantage :

``It's like an airplane with two jet engines. You see two nice jet engines and you like it,'' Jirtle said. ``Why? Because you feel comfortable that there's redundancy. In mice and rats, you only have one engine. If it blows, you're done.''

For example, Killian said that only one in 300 cloned sheep embryos takes hold, and up to half of these embryos experience large offspring syndrome.

Basically they're saying that because sheep have "one engine", they're harder to clone. But they're losing half of them! I'm hardly willing to accept that "two engines", each with a fifty percent chance of failure is a significant improvement.

After he or she is born...

[Roanna]

I think after the cloned baby is born it will be a baby. Just because she is the sibling (most likely it will be a she in the US since there is a preference for daughters among mothers) of one of her relatives, doesn't change things. She will have all the other rights that a much younger baby sister would have.

I think it is interesting reading the way you males discuss cloning. When I think of human cloning I think of it as a fertility treatment. If a woman can't produce her own eggs, the treatments available to her are rather messy. To harvest eggs from a donor requires pumping the poor woman up with hormones. To take cells to be cloned requires a quick biopsy. Producing a child via cloning does not put an egg donor's health at risk.

I am all for human cloning. This is a therapy that when it becomes safe enough will be one more choice for couples that can't reproduce. Clones will be wanted children. What's not to like?

Humans easier to clone than cloneing news stories.

[mordorian]

This is nice in theory but they still haven't come up with a good reason to clone a human. Besides the purly novel(have a best friend), or completely unethical(organ factory). Maybe they should have more research into "Why would anybody want to be cloned??"