Scientists Move Closer to Human Therapeutic Cloning 136
"Human therapeutic cloning has moved a step closer after U.S. researchers said they had successfully created embryonic stem cells from monkey embryos. Scientists told a stem cell research conference in Cairns this week that they had successfully created two batches of embryonic stem cells from cloned rhesus monkey embryos."
Which is worse (Score:2, Funny)
A) Human stem cells taken from humans
B) Human stem cells taken from cloned monkeys
C) Yes
I'm guessing that they're going to go with C
Mostly because I can't imagine they'll like cloned monkeys
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for the love of satan, PLEASE!
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Of course, they'll likely decide this is the work of satan because it could maybe lend credence to "evilution".
The *real* problem here is religion.
"There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven."- Robert Green Ingersoll
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Pun intended.
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People call that "organized religion" and some think of it the same way they think of organized crime, really and truly it's just as bad as declaring a corporation as one entity instead of a collection of parts.
I believe that churches are political and therefore evil, but they are filled with good people who have been misled into furthering the causes of hate, intolerance
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Re:Which is worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, that is not the case. It's the destruction of a blastocyst, which is a compilation of 70-150 cells. These are often thrown out/discarded in fertility clinics. They are definitely not human. Here's a picture of one,
http://www.iscr.ed.ac.uk/outreach/images/Human-bl
Re:Which is worse (Score:4, Funny)
That little glob could be the next OJ Simpson, or Professor Snape!
If that is a human, than I think I may have just picked a human out of my nose this morning. Now I am going to find it, and call it Freddie.
Every sperm is sacred! Save me Jebus!
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Based upon your logic, I was also in the food my mom murdered by eating it to create the cells/energy that weas used to create me. Just because something needs to exist in order for the next thing to exist, does not mean they are one and the same.
And what if another one of these globs could save your life today? What about one of your kids lives? What would you say then?
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Sorry, I disagree. What defines "me" is a character and a personality and a memory. These things do not exist with this glob.
Regardless of what your opinion is, you did in fact exist as a blastocyst at one point in your existence. You would be unique in history if you did not. Also, most newborns don't really have a character, personality or memory. Does that make them any less human?
Based upon your logic, I was also in the food my mom murdered by eating it to create the cells/energy that weas used to create me. Just because something needs to exist in order for the next thing to exist, does not mean they are one and the same.
You must have some sort of arcane knowledge that others don't possess. At what point does the collection of cells become a human?
And what if another one of these globs could save your life today? What about one of your kids lives? What would you say then?
I wouldn't kill a person for their organs for a transplant for myself or my kids, why should I kill a person for the s
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Sorry, this is incorrect.....I assume you don't have children then. Newborns are born with a vast memory and personality. Many studies have shown that memory develops quite a while before birth.
"At what point does the collection of cells become a human?"
Exactly the issue. I admit to not knowing exactly, and am not an expert on mammalian embryo development. It has human DNA, but so do my toenails (yet they are not being debated as b
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The logical form you're using would mean that an acorn is an oak tree. In California, we have laws against cutting down or killing oak trees. If I crush a bunch of acorns, am I violating the law? A seed is not the same thing as the grown organism.
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And using the exact same logic, there is no point in time scientifically where you can say that a fertilized egg is a human being
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Making human beings is a bloody business. Lots of people die along the way and that does not mean that mom is a murderer. Murder implies intent. It doesn't even equate to manslaughter or involuntary homicide. It
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While technically correct, I think he does have a point, after all if the blastocyst that was destined to become you were destroyed YOU would have never existed. I don't think exactly that you (after the fact) would want someone to go back in time and effect change such that your mother aborted you in retrospect, it's all too easy to dismiss pro-lifers as "irrational" but I think it's not the case
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Since most of us are complex beings that can see more than what is directly in front of us, I can think of few reasons. The first to come to mind is for arguably ethical reasons: such as "I don't want to bring another life into this horrible world." I say "arguably" because if one believes such a thing, they should stop screwing, but that's something else entirely... So I guess that reason would b
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Aaaw, ain't he a cute little guy!?!?!? I'm gonna call him Frank!
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At a time when you have high academics seriously discussing the legalization of infanticide, I'm all for pushing the definition as wide as possible just to be on the safe side. Unique genetic code and the potential to develop are a fit bul
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Well, I don't think anyone has a problem with condemned prisoners being organ donors...
The diffence between prisoners and street urchins and whoever (PVS patients are a whole different issue that I really don't want to go into) and a embryo is that people have thoughts and feelings (and can feel pain) while embryos do not. An embryo at the stage where they can harvest stem cells is about as sentient as a skin cell. It also doesn't even have the potential
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There is a medical condition that prevents some people from feeling pai
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I never really thought about condemned prisoners being organ donors.
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The embryonic potential to develop into an independent adult does not depend on any future series of events actually happening. I recruit an infertile couple to become parents to a "snowflake baby" and a thawed emb
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Keep in mind (Score:5, Informative)
Cell workings differ slightly between species. Different proteins may be present, etc.
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They have used 'emptied' egg cells and injected 'adult' nuclei. The young, messed-up embryos that resulted were dissected (split clump of cells into individual cells) and they were able to recover viable 'embryonic' stem cell lines which have totipotency and near immortality, in terms of continued cell division.
The importance of this is important because (a) it is the first primate example and (b) it is from an adult nucleus. In the former, p
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Therapeutic? (Score:3, Funny)
WTF is that supposed to mean?
You're cloning yourself... to feel better?
If you don't feel good, why clone yourself?
Re:Therapeutic? (Score:5, Funny)
To have someone to share the misery with?
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's cheaper than therapeutic cloning, I'd imagine.
Therapeutic.. (Score:2, Interesting)
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a.k.a. marriage??
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Re:Therapeutic? (Score:4, Insightful)
In real life there are more issues (not withstanding the moral issues if the clone is allowed to develop a brain). For instance, we are not purely a product of our genes. Otherwise identical twins would look identical until the moment they both suffered a heart attack and died. If you need a solid organ, it needs to be grown in a viable host. It's likely impossible using current (or near-future) technology to create a viable host that does not have brain activity.
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Mad Scientist: "Damn that jock who always picked on me in high school. If only he were here to see me now..."
Mad Scientist: "That's it! I'll grow a clone from the DNA on this spitwad!"
Mad Scientist: "It's ALIVE!!!"
Mad Scientist: *Beats the clone to death with a tire iron.*
Mad Scientist: "Whew, I feel so much better now."
Sadly, the monkey clone cells (Score:2, Funny)
can only be used by Monkey boy Steve Ballmer [google.com].
It may one day be possible to do this with human beings. Until then animal testing is in order.
No WONDER they were having trouble! (Score:4, Insightful)
So for years the scientists have been finding the chromosomes to transplant by:
- Flooding the donor cell with a fluorescent dye that bonds to DNA, then
- Shining ultraviolet light (i.e. ionizing radiation) on the cell, causing the dye to fluoresce (and also dump enough energy into the DNA molecule to break molecular bonds and produce free radicals in the nearby area).
And then they wondered why, after they transplanted this DNA into the denucleated egg, the resulting cell didn't work right.
Good grief!
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modern society are a bit like machine, each individual have a very specific task to perform and are groomed for that task from a very early age. if everyone with knowhow about said ta
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Or, let us try a more reasonable theory:
This technique sucks, but it works better than the known alternatives when it was developed. Science, particularly in its appl
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For some reason this reminds me of many incorrect scientific conclusions of the past: spontaneous generation, flat earth, perfect geometry, etc...
They all seemed to suffer from the same problem, bad methodology.
Spontaneous generation, to detail one, was based on the extremely valuable scientific principle of observation. Unfortunately the lack of rigorous methods to perform a useful study meant that further understanding of life was not forthcoming for centuries.
Ummm, I guess it would b
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Which brings up the question of how they get rid of ALL the DNA-binding die. In addition to the havoc it could wreak on the rest of the cellular machin
Just Wait till It Becomes Profitable (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all going to start when someone figures out how to clone men but with giant penises, for easy transplant. Why compete over cars, houses, plots of land and computer upgrades when you can just go buy the real deal? In America, EVERY MAN will be a porn star. There will be billions of dollars made there.
From there, we'll get on to using human skin and hair for clothing, and human bones as a proxy for ivory. At first, it will be a status symbol. You really could have a lampshade made out of human skin, or even a football for junior or a jacket for the mrs. But soon, with enough venture capital, human clones will be mass produced and harvested like so many sheep, and even more billions will be made.
Eventually, there will be, within the USA alone, a 200 billion dollar a year industry dedicated to the production, harvest, and manufacturing goods based on harvested clones. At that point, just as you once saw liberals hail the progress of animal antibiotics and industrial farming and then turn to an imaginary better day of all natural organic everything, you'll see liberals lamenting the devaluation of the human body, whereas, conservatives will merely say they are free and supporting consumer demand. Then liberals will eventually say the masses are stupid for supporting a human cloning industry and demand federal action to slow it down or stop it, write thousands of books decrying it, and support an endlessly array of Democratic candidates that promise to reform it but never really do. In the meantime, conservatives will argue the cloning is natural, its our right to do so, and its part of God's plan anyway, and to support their position, they will dredge up every last salamder that can regrow its own tail, every asexually produced thing in nature, and every supporting phrase in the bible. Oh yes, Jesus was very much in favor of harvesting clones, if you know which 4 passages to read.
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What did my therapist tell me to do?
Oh, yeah, where's my clone?
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Cloning for parts will not be done by growing a whole new organism and hacking off whatever the originator wants. That would be an abomination that anyone of any political orientation could recognize. What will be done is that (non-embrionic) cells will be encouraged to grow the appropriate tissues or organs, without developing a nervous system. With this sort of technology, only some of the religious nut cases will still insist that a being w
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As for the porn star penis. Personally I'll stick with mine, I don't need some 12 foot dick only good for breaking coconuts in half with, any guy who isn't a complete ignorant fuck knows t
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Re: Your pitch (Score:1)
Some notes:
- Change "Right now" to "In a world where".
- I'm hearing Lawrence Fishburne for the voice-over.
- Got a villain in mind? Can the f/x guys do a fetus monster?
I think we can get 200 mill from Paramount to get started.
Thanks babe.
$$$$tem $ell$ (Score:3, Interesting)
But seriously, most people are superficial, and once stem cells show the ability outperform Botox, plastic surgery, RetinA, monoxidil, Oil of Olay, l'Oreal cosmetics, Ben Gay, etc, then you won't be able to beat the customers off with a stick. (Or even with a big penis to slap them with)
Women are more insecure about their looks than men. They will kill to get that youthful teenage wrinkle-free skin. They will go to back-alley a
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Embryonic stem cells don't come from abortions, let alone back-alley ones. Scientists harvest them from a few day old zygotes, and you can't perform an abortion only a couple of days after conception. Stem cells come from embryos made in a lab, either specifically for that purpose or excess from fertility treatments that would otherwise be thrown away.
Embryonic stem cell research has nothing to do with abortion. T
Let's get serious, (Score:4, Informative)
Granted, most of these links are preliminary- check those deep databases, like over at PubMed Central, for those detailed reviews of the state of the art. And just for kicks, one last link [bioinformatics.org] which (still) impresses me.
Bush's Braincells (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, he'll get any he wants, from some other country if that's necessary.
an even better current quote (Score:4, Insightful)
President Bush has used his veto to kill another bill that would have lifted some of the restrictions on research using human embryonic stem cells.
The news has been greeted with dismay, but not surprise, by the scientific community.
In announcing his use of the veto, Bush told reporters: "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."
Um, hello George...presumably it's OK if it's for oil?
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http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/0 6/1924232 [slashdot.org]
The summary says they can't be safely used for transplant, but then, the day before they discovered that, they thought it couldn't be done at all. Given time, we'll we creating stem cells as-needed from patients in surgery, and in a short time later, use them to replace the damaged area. Skin grafts will become amazingly easy, and replacing a
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Bush won't approve any stemcells, because he's pandering to superstitious people like you. Really to the superstitious people like you who are still Republicans, and don't know words like "
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So let me help you out: you could say "why didn't Congress just override the veto?" if you want to talk meaningfully (without strawmen like whether presidents have a veto right) about the political mechanics.
The answer is that Bush has Congress stymied with his nominal minority of one chamber, Senate Republicans. It takes 60 senators, therefore 11 Republicans (counting fake independent Lieberman), which is 22% of them, to undo Bush's
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You protest just a bit too much about straw men, having raised quite a few in your preceding post.
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Let me remind you that "anti-Clinton hysteria" has remained the #1 product of the Bush administration and its apologists, whose motto is "But Clinton...".
And let me further remind you that Bush Jr's signing statements have already been documented to have set policy for probably at least 30% of the laws he's subverted with them to be violated by the agencies he controls [washingtonpost.com].
And under Bush, we're looking at our country is the worst shape since Vietnam & Watergate, and pro
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About the stem cell stuff, you're just dead wrong. The embryonic stem cell people have been misrepresenting adult cell progress as embryonic cell progress, minimizing the utility of adult stem cells, and flat out lying about the progress that they've been making. No research program ever has "enough money". There's always demand for more and the embryonic camp has gone about getting their funds
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That gets you steamed. But Bush's hideous reality you find boring, too boring to even bother explicitly disagreeing.
You are a classic Republican piece of shit with your projections and demented sense of proportion and value.
Your protests are meaningless
Whew!! (Score:4, Funny)
When the Labcoats attack you, prepare to fling the poo,
Monkey see...Monkey do(doo)!
Therapeutic? I want a lover! (Score:3, Funny)
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y-chromosome changed to X
And when it is grown
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.
(Chorus)
Clone, clone of my own,
With your Y-Chromosome changed to X
And when I'm alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.
Now can anyone accelerate the aging process? By the time she's 18 I could be dead.
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Talk about inbreeding.
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Fun Video (Score:1)
Don't know why they call it therapeutic... (Score:1)
"Oh, that sucks. Here, have a clone." - Therapist
"Oh, I feel all better now! Thanks, Doc!" - Man
Maybe not...
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Once larger clusters (large meaning about 50,000 cells, which you could barley see with the naked eye) of stem cells are formed, they are either frozen, or implanted into a new host to "take on" roles in the host's body.
The reason it's called Therapeutic cloning is because the only use for the cells is physical therapy. No actual human is being grown, just the building block ce
Oh Great (Score:1)
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Posts like the one above always make me laugh because the poster always assumes they are part of the strong, smart, or whatever desired characteristic. Take your timeline back 1000 years, maybe your current traits would have been selected against.
Have you ever gotten sick and taken an antibiotic, required stitches, or maybe have a broken bone
Therapeutic.....? (Score:2, Funny)
Now *THAT* would be therapeutic!
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Humans from Apes ? (Score:2)
I see this as an area of decreasing concern (Score:2, Interesting)
I have also found it interesting that embryonic stem cells, apparently, can be taken from umbilical cords and placental cells. Why is this ignored in research (or is it a case of a percentage of resear
Stretch of an obligatory Futurama reference. (Score:2)
Which would you prefer? (Score:2, Interesting)
OR
Some on rejecting the right to create life for the entire purpose of destroying it, and some doctors doing it anyways?
Either way, creating life for the sake of destroying it is not moral, in my opinion. I'm not religious in any case, as I'm not a "believer", but as a father of two boys, and a person with respect to choice as well as life, I couldn't give something like this the go-ahead.
A woman getting pregnant and choosing
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Parasites? Other life..etc.
because there's no wrong way... (Score:2, Funny)
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How do you ask a blastocyst to be the last one to die for stem cell research? Oh, wait, that's right--they can't hear you. Never mind.
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