Scientists To Open Mass-Cloning Factory in China This Year To Clone Cows, Pets, Humans (express.co.uk) 201
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists in China are planning to open a mass-cloning factory by the end of the year. The ambitious and futuristic facility hopes to be mass-producing one million cows every 12 months by 2020. Not only will it clone cattle, but the factory, which will be located in the northern Chinese port of Tianjin, will also cater to more specific needs by genetically engineering police dogs and thoroughbred race horses. It is part of a $21m plan which is backed by the Boyalife group in collaboration with South Korean company Sooam Biotech Research Foundation.
Signed (Score:2)
April fools... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:April fools... (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Be more credulous about what China is willing to do, medically.
This is not some joke or corporate PR to gain attention just for cloned pets. This is about food production. And they will also be doing pets for rich people to fund it. And human tests. They don't have the same ethical restrictions. If they think it will help good people, then whatever harm or sacrifice is required from others is also seen as good.
They're executing Falun Gong practitioners on demand to provide organs. Human cloning for organ harvest isn't even going to be controversial in China.
You were all thinking it (Score:2)
I guess these clones will all look the same?
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How can we tell they're clones?
Re:You were all thinking it (Score:5, Funny)
How can we tell they're clones?
You ask about their mother. If they promise to tell you about their mother and pull out a shotgun, it's a clone.
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How can we tell they're clones?
Ask it what it's name is. If it says "TK426" shoot it.
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When they wear white armor and can't hit a barn with their rifle, you know they are a clone.
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Not necessarily.
There have been many examples of cloned animals having very different color patterns on their genetically identical bodies.
Google "cloned cats look different"
Korral bit it from Lucille and The Comedian (Score:5, Funny)
> factory to clone...humans
Because if there's one thing the Chinese are bad at, it's producing more humans.
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They do not plan on cloning humans.
Nonsense. Chinese families want a perfect son. They will happily sell their daughter into sexual slavery to afford a perfect son cloned from the father.
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Are you done spouting racist nonsense?
Nope. Just citing an aspect of Chinese society preferring sons over daughters that goes back centuries.
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Yeah. Good thing mistreatment of women is a problem that's only ever occurred in China. Makes it so much easier to stereotype.
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Makes it so much easier to stereotype.
Is the stereotype wrong when its based on facts?
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It can be, in the context of omission. By singling out one specific people, there's an implicit assumption that the stereotype doesn't equally apply to other peoples.
Its basically a quirk of our language and the (not always correct) assumptions we make based on how a phrase or thought it worded, but its the way things are.
In this case, while the one child rule and associated penalties may have made the practice more drastic, history provides no shortage of cases where female children were considered inferi
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Where did you hear this?
Are you not familiar with Chinese society?
China's preference for sons stretches back for centuries. Infanticide, the abandonment of girl babies and favourable treatment of boys in terms of food and health has long produced a surplus of men. In the past two decades, the gap at birth has soared: the advent of ultrasound scans has allowed people to abort female foetuses, even though sex-selective abortion is illegal.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/02/chinas-great-gender-crisis/ [theguardian.com]
Re:Korral bit it from Lucille and The Comedian (Score:5, Insightful)
China might not experience the same problems or those problems in exactly the same way due to other aspects of their culture, but having a large part of the population being potentially unable to satisfy some of their most basic human desires seems like a recipe for problems down the road.
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Because woosh maybe woosh he was looking to buy woosh
God, it is windy in here...
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Burying the (non-)lead (Score:5, Informative)
It gets a brief mention in the title and then the body focuses on cows, dogs, and horses rather than the part about cloning humans???
Actually checking TFA, it says:
"There are currently no plans in the pipeline to clone and produce humans in a bid to eradicate disease, but Xiaochun has said that this can change if people become more open to the idea of it."
So it sounds like the cloning humans is just a "hey, we could do this at some point" thing, and not part of the initial plan of operation?
In any case, i'm not sure why this is a good solution to a demand for more meat. In the long run (and possibly even the short run) doing a little more research and building a cultured meat [wikipedia.org] factory would probably be a lot more cost effective than cloning the entire cow.
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Ugh. /s
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The Book "Fallen Dragon" by Peter F. Hamilton has a great scene where the protagonist is mislead into eating organic beef. Society had developed to eating synthetic meat to the point that he was so repulsed when he found out that we was actually sick. I may be paraphrasing as I can't find a quote online handy, but he said, horrified "You fed me meat from a dead animal?!"
Now that brings back memories... (Score:2)
SMACX come alive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGCaACqy1Ro [youtube.com]
Should have voiced it with Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Can't see the point (Score:2)
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Artificial insemination works well enough
No, it doesn't. At least not for what Boyalife intends. When you actually read the story you learn they intend to produce "prime" grade beef. Only 2.9% of of carcasses grade as prime using existing techniques (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef [wikipedia.org]), and these fetch premium prices. Obviously they intend to use cloning to get control over the variables and produce a reliable supply of prime beef.
Misleading Headline (what's new) (Score:5, Informative)
There are currently no plans in the pipeline to clone and produce humans in a bid to eradicate disease, but Xiaochun has said that this can change if people become more open to the idea of it.
given up on improvement (Score:2)
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If they ever do a horse Indycar they'll have to breed them with shorter legs on one side.
Cloning Pets (Score:2)
I feel for those grieving the loss of a pet, but cloning won't bring their pet back. Cloning just creates a genetically identical (except mt-DNA) copy. Remember that individuals come with individual personalities, and even this will diverge based on individual experiences. There is no known way to clone a soul (for lack of a better term).
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Re:Cloning Pets (Score:4, Interesting)
The pet's personality is based on how it is treated when it is raised. simply repeat the same treatment and you will get pretty close to the same thing. I had a full breed collie for 14 years, she died of old age and we got a fresh puppy to replace her. now at a year old there are a LOT of identical behaviors in the new puppy as I am raising it the same way I raised the other. You train in the desired traits, and train out the undesired ones. It's all just dog training, you just need to be consistent.
Now natural breeding adds in randomness. I am sure there is genetic memory that is passed down, as well as training the pup gets from it's mother for the first 10 weeks that you can not influence.
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There is no sole, that's hogwash. There is the nature vs nurture argument. DNA vs how you treat it. Then there are viruses that alter brain chemistry and operation, random mutation. Cloning won't bring back a pet because cloning only focuses on DNA.
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There are several. They go in alphabetical sequence. You come right after the q-sole.
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There is no sole, that's hogwash. There is the nature vs nurture argument. DNA vs how you treat it. Then there are viruses that alter brain chemistry and operation, random mutation. Cloning won't bring back a pet because cloning only focuses on DNA.
Even if you aren't religious, you must admit that soles exist; I bet the shoes you wear even have them. As for soul, I am religious and spiritual. I used a religious term to encompass the non-physical essence of the individual. Identical twins raised in the same household have different personality traits despite identical DNA and near identical nurture.
In any case, my point is that you won't get your pet back; at most you'll get a twin of it.
Start pumping out Elvis clones (Score:2)
Kidneys, lungs, livers. (Score:2)
1) A human can live after donating a kidney, lung, pancreas, bone marrow, or liver.
2) There are a lot of diseases that slowly affect those organs. A prime example is IgA Nepropathy can take 27 years from first affecting your kidneys, till you need a transplant.
3) Imagine you discover that your 10 year old child has IgA Nepropahty and that they will need a new kidney sometime in 10-30 years. You can clone them today, ensuring a healthy kidney without any immune suppression drugs,, or wait and hope they
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http://www.adultswim.com/video... [adultswim.com]
Here is your blueprint....
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Damn right you will clone her.
That's where the problem comes in. If the "clone" is just a meatsack with working organs then great. But that's unlikely since they're being cloned from non-meatsacks.
So now what you have is two daughters, not much different from identical twins other than the time delay, rather than a daughter and a meatsack. Are you OK with sacrificing one daughter for the sake of the other?
And if during the cloning process the company can correct that defective gene.. why would you sacrifice the healthy daughter for t
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1) This is a disease, not a genetic issue. Make no sense at all to 'clone' someone to deal with a genetic issue.
2) Note the long term lines I declared. That means the clones get to decide, not anyone else. It's all voluntary, by adults.
3) As I clearly stated, this was to deal with situations where neither clone should die. Yes, there is a small (3% chance of dying from donating a kidney, liver, pancreas, etc.)
Yes, you can bring up evil ideas for some douchebag to do. I fully admit it is possible to a
Just one question: why? (Score:4, Informative)
Is a specific cow, or pet that special? And if so, why on *earth* would you think a cloned one would act the same?
And people... there are these people called "twins", or "triplets", etc, and they all turn out differently. What would you expect to get by cloning someone?
And it's a long term thing, if you're cloning your favorite movie star, or politician...
mark
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Think about fruit trees. Just about any fruit you buy at a grocery store will have come from clonally propagated (grafted) tree. Every Fuji apple comes from a clone of the original Fuji tree and so on.
Suppose that a specific cow has beautifully marbled meat or really high milk production. You could breed that cow, and hope that its offspring has the same trait, or you can clone that cow and virtually guarantee it.
Twin studies don't disprove the importance of genetics when it comes to outcomes, they prove it
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Practice On Critters Before Cloning A Super Army (Score:2)
Yoda called it (Score:2)
Begun the clone war has.
Guard Dogs (Score:2)
Would we get these [youtube.com]?
Comment removed (Score:3)
RTFA (Score:2)
Another lousy headline, including the headline on TFA. Deeper in the article it says that there are no current plans to clone humans. I also love the picture in TFA, which has a caption about cloning cows but shows a line of people.
Come to think of it ...
I'm glad it's China that is doing this (Score:2)
The flat-earthers can't touch a project when it's built in China. The new AP-1000s are going in there. This is where the Thirty Meter telescope should be built.
Attack of the clones (Score:2)
Has anyone seen Temuera Morrison recently?
All the burgers will taste EXACTLY the same! (Score:2)
Sixth Day (Score:2)
The headline is misleading; from the article: "There are currently no plans in the pipeline to clone and produce humans in a bid to eradicate disease, but Xiaochun has said that this can change if people become more open to the idea of it." Time for a Sixth Day law.
BTW, there's a possibly more reputable article (from Dec 2015, but basically same content) here: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-c... [phys.org]
Gives new meaning to the phrase... (Score:2)
Re:Is it just me...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't muddy the waters (Score:5, Insightful)
Selective breeding is analogous to using mother nature's tools, within mother nature's workshop, to guide the otherwise natural course of evolution. That's precisely why human beings have been able to do it for ages: because it relies on nothing more than mother nature.
Genetic engineering is something entirely different. Clearly, genetic engineering does NOT use mother nature's tools, but rather a toolkit which isn't found anywhere in nature. And clearly, genetic engineering does NOT work within the rules of mother nature's workshop, but rather outside of them completely. This is precisely why human beings have not been able to do this until very recently in the course of our technical evolution: because it requires much more than mother nature's toolkit and workshop.
The two procedures aren't even remotely comparable, even if they do attempt to achieve a similar goal. Note that I haven't actually spoken out against genetic engineering here. I've only laid out a common-sense argument why genetic engineering isn't comparable to selective breeding.
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You can't go into the weeds or your argument loses meaning. It can only be defended at the very top level as an artificial distinction. Trying to claim a real difference breaks down quickly.
Like lets say a new insect evolves that eats a type of tree. Now the tree is being selected for different traits than before, entirely due to external pressures. Ants even conduct farming, and maintain herds of aphids that they "milk" for sugar. There are lots and lots of examples of an external selection pressure being
Re:Don't muddy the waters (Score:5, Insightful)
Selective breeding is analogous to using mother nature's tools
The tools of genetic engineering, such as CRISPR/CAS [wikipedia.org], come from bacteria, which are also part of "Mother Nature".
Genetic engineering is something entirely different.
No it isn't. It is just another point on a continuum.
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Mother nature is a socially constructed concept:
http://www.abstrusegoose.com/215
We have been slowly altering our world for centuries. We've bread sweeter fruits, starchier corn, turkeys that cannot reproduce on their own, cows with unregulated muscle growth, white tigers (not a species, a trait sought after so most of them are inbred), etc. The rice we eat today has been entirely cultivated and most likely would not survive on its own in the wild without modern agriculture.
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Genetic engineering is something entirely different.
No, it's not. You can, given time, obtain the same results with GE that you can with selective selection. In the end it's about nucleotide sequences and getting them to line up how you want them to. Selective selection just takes a more time and resources.
Genetic engineering is something entirely different. Clearly, genetic engineering does NOT use mother nature's tools, but rather a toolkit which isn't found anywhere in nature.
And this, Mr anonymous, is a complete load of uneducated horse shit. "Natural" gene splicing has been around practically forever in the form of viruses. In fact, the human genome has some 100,000 DNA sequences inserted into it from exactly that. Some of th
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I can cross-breed a goat and a spider?
Really? [phys.org] Because that would be cool as hell.
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I can cross-breed a goat and a spider?
First of all, even in that example they didn't cross breed anything. That's a lateral gene transfer, something that viruses have done practically forever. The human placenta is the result of one such gene transfer.
Second of all, yes, given time and resources (in this case, lots of it) you could pull that off with selective selection.
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Mitocondria is also an example like that. Mitocondria are a beneficial parasite that we picked up way back when. They increase our energy production, but are entirely a foreign body.
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"Genetic engineering is something entirely different. Clearly, genetic engineering does NOT use mother nature's tools, but rather a toolkit which isn't found anywhere in nature. "
Oh look, another one who hasn't heard that transgenic processes have now been found in nature.
http://arstechnica.com/science... [arstechnica.com]
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...in a very limited form.
Although the main reasons to turn your back on this sort of stuff is that it is UNECESSARY and also has consequences that go a bit beyond "but science". That's the problem with the "but science" crowd. They're trying to drown out the nuance of the situation and engaging in the usual scientific vanity.
Vanity genetics is probably another area that will run afoul of the patent laws.
Beyond that, the Frankenstein stuff should not be let out into the wild where it can run amok on it's ow
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Re: Don't muddy the waters (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, yes, but that's a definition of "natural order" that really just means "whatever the limits of physics are".
Thus far, our actions work on a pretty damned small scale. A maniac in a story who wants to "destroy the universe" usually does so with some power that has no real world equivalent- magic, a dark god, etc. More realistic stories that still feature cartoon villains who want to "destroy the Earth" usually do so with something that could, in theory, be a risk- nuclear technology being heavily abused, a self replicating agent (gray goo, virus, bacteria, fungus), or something that could realistically exist.
This is because our experiences show that stuff that happens on the human scale mostly stays on the human scale, and we are worried it can hit the planetary scale accidentally. We can wipe out all the bugs and mice in our house (and we want to!), but probably not the world (and we don't want to!). But we have NO reasons to believe that this observation, which has been true until this point, is actually real in the general case. The truth is, we don't know how easy it would be to "destroy the universe", and we don't understand a hell of a lot of low level physics that could point in that direction. Our best reasoning for it not being easy is that it hasn't happened yet, but this would be a much more potent observation if we could observe hundreds of hyper-advanced civilizations, all standing tribute to it being difficult to accidentally (or on purpose) blow up everything.
Anyway, just because we are at no risk of that RIGHT NOW doesn't mean that we should continue making that assumption going forward. Existential risk from our own actions will not always be benign.
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Even destroying all life on Earth would be a monumentally difficult challenge. Destroying all of a specific species (possibly our own) would be more realistic and we've done that many times over in the course of the past 10-20 thousand years..
But destroying "all" life would require damaging the Earth so badly that even viruses and bacteria can't adapt fast enough to survive. And they have mutation rates on the scale of hours. Tremendously challenging.. would require something along the line of pushing th
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I'll tell you the problem with what you've done here, you did not earn this. What you call process, I call the rape of the natural world. (Boom - totally from memory. Homage to late great Michael Crichton)
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I evolved naturally you insensitive clod!
Like my wife said, "I'd rather be a primate than a therapsid."
Tools were also evolved naturally. Funny story, one night I was walking home through the park at 3am and there was a raccoon couple mating in a tree. Raccoons usually ignore humans at that time, but this guy wanted some privacy; he started throwing acorns out of the tree at me! I hadn't even stopped or anything, I just looked at him while I walked by and he started yelling and throwing things.
Crows have no
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We do genetic engineering because without it millions will starve.
But you know what, we as a species can do more than one thing at a time. Biologists aren't really great working with robotics, instead with have roboticists for that.
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Or are we taking a completely natural world and ruining it with artificial selection?
You mean something like corn?
Corn as we know it today would not exist if it weren't for the humans that cultivated and developed it. It is a human invention, a plant that does not exist naturally in the wild. It can only survive if planted and protected by humans.
http://campsilos.org/mod3/students/c_history.shtml [campsilos.org]
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It's not just corn either, basically everything you can buy at a grocery store came from thousands of years of selective breeding. This is one reason I make fun of people who say "natural is better" and have never eaten a natural vegetable in their life.
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It also nicely demonstrates that transgenics that deprive me of my rights as a farmer are entirely unnecessary.
Transgenics are like losing your house because Cheney's dog got loose and decided to take a dump in your yard.
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So your saying that the genetic diseases that we have from natural selection are better than the life we could have had without them?
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So are you saying that the population-level resistance to extinction from a single disease (or single bad personality trait / aptitude) that we get from natural genetic diversity is not useful?
Hint: Ask an Irish descendant what it was like to rely for staple food on a single variety of potato.
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Hint2: Ask Chiquita how it's future is looking with the current banana fungus TR4. We have already lost the Gros Michel, and now the Cavendish is threatened.
This is completely unavoidable because nobody would eat a banana that has seeds in it. They're not like watermelon seeds that you can just chew or swallow; they're actually harder than your teeth.
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Lesson: "Don't put all your eggs in one basket".
Re:Is it just me...? (Score:4, Interesting)
There were no potatoes in Ireland prior to 1589, yet there were plenty of Irish.
Nope. Ireland was sparsely populated prior to the introduction of potatoes. Staple crops like wheat grow poorly in their cold wet climate. Potatoes had a huge effect on European history, enabling northern lands to increase in population, devote fewer workers to growing food, and invest more in commerce and military force. Power shifted from the Mediterranean to Germany, Britain, Sweden and Russia. The Reformation likely would have failed without this power shift. Nothing did more to destroy the Spanish Empire than that sack of potatoes that they brought back from Peru.
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No not at all.
Sorry It's hard to be clear without it being overly long and even then.
I was not intending to support 1:1 cloning even though the problem you point out is very significant even without the use of modern cloning.
We have plenty of debilitating diseases that could be fixed beforehand that are very hard to treat after the fact.
This probably falls into the category of "designer babies" But I really think that what we should be striving for is a high quality of life.
Someday we may even be able to ma
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I think a good example would be the resistance against malaria shown by people with sickle cell anemia.
We have already managed to map out a lot of known bad combinations.
And even knowing that sickle cell anemia helps against malaria It is still probably better to use anti malarial drugs on the chance that they catch malaria at some point than it is to guarantee a lifetime of sickle cell anemia.
Everyone shouldn't be made to be identical but when we find out that gene 232wxyz causes a 99.7% incidence of havin
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No usually it's the least qualified by knowledge and most qualified by responsibility that gets to make such choices: the parents.
I think they should be doing whatever they think will give their child the best quality of life. Of course that also implies that they ought to be making informed decisions.
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We've started interfering with natural selection since when we didn't leave the sick and weak be torn apart by the wolves, but when we invented medicine and helped people to survive despite of their sickness. With all the methods medicine has, we've stopped natural selection. This is nothing bad though, as evolution is a very cruel process. We've gained humanity, and more diversity. And from an evolutionary standpoint that's in fact even better, as a more diverse population can adapt to problems much better
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Or are we taking a completely natural world and ruining it with artificial selection?
1) There is lots of cloning taking place in nature. Where do you think we're learning it from?!
2) Clones are not as robust as the source. They will only survive where cared for; for example, growing in a tank to provide transplant organs. A cloned cow might have tasty meat, but it wouldn't have a long lifespan. Doesn't matter if you're eating it as soon as it gets big enough, of course. But it isn't going to escape and displace a natural selection process.
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Perhaps the "Angry Samoans" can answer this:
They saved Hitler's cock, They hid it under a rock.
discovered it, last night. I couldn't even, believe my eyes.
If Hitler's cock could start to talk, it would say: To kill today.
If Hitler's cock could choose it's mate, it would ask, for Sharon Tate!
They saved Hitler's cock. They stuffed it in Mengele's sock.
They saved Hitler's cock, and now it wants to talk.
Now it's starting to get hard, I found it in my backyard.
Every night it kills a dog, and now it want
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On there other hand it does't matter if we die more often if we just resume living from our Gold Cross backup clone.
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Oh, wait, multiply by five to take into account that it's done by non-US scientists and engineers.
I think your factor of five is very low. There is no thicket of TLA's to navigate in China — OSHA, NLRB, EPA, FDA, etc. — just grease the right palms and hit the go button. Even more than that you have to consider the legal risk; anyone involved with this in a developed Western nation would find themselves in front of congressional committees or parliaments and subject to a barrage of legal challenges by who knows how many pressure groups. Individual scientists would be demonized by academe.