Give us your opinion on cloning.

I think saving a DNA bank of all endangered plant and animal species is an excellent idea. There are problems with cloning though, in that the animal cloned may have health problems due to aging of the original. In other words, if I took a DNA sample from someone in their 30s and grew a baby clone, that baby would have certain degradations from aging a “traditional” baby would not have. I believe the major factor (and I have no problems having someone clarify or correct this), is telomere degradation. Basically the ends of our chromosomes gradually degrade with age, and cloning someone who has already experienced some of this degradation will be passed on to the baby.

In light of this, it is selfish to raise a child that will probably have health problems because I want a loved one back. Perhaps taking and preserving a DNA sample at birth or a young age to keep around “just in case” might be wise. I don’t have an ethical problem with that.

More interestingly though, our understanding of the genetic code is rapidly increasing. As our knowledge becomes more complete, we’ll have the ability to design whatever the hell kind of organism we want. Is that ethical? It depends on what we design and what its intended use will be.

I wrote an article about cloning extinct animals when I lived in New Zealand. It got picked up by CNN. Here it is….
http://articles.cnn.com/1999-07-20/nature/9907_20_cloning.enn_1_maori-scientists-cells?_s=PM:NATURE

I’m on the fence, between, what could be seen as beneficial, and, the dark side of playing ‘God.’ as in, messing with the natural order of things.

I’d love to see a Wooley Mammoth, or Mastodon, or a T-Rex for that matter, alive and in person, but, my selfish curiosity doesn’t trump concern for the being, that is being cloned.

I don’t believe in condoning suffering of life forms for mankinds monolithic egoic need to be the ultimate super power.

@cockswain I did not know that about DNA. I thought it was unchanging, and would provide a perfect, brand-new replica of the original. So, what kind of problems would it cause to take the DNA of a long-dead adult being and cloning it as a baby again? Your DNA doesn’t change with age, does it??

Thanks for the link, @cazzie . If they are successful, that would be so exciting! I would like to see them try to clone a dodo bird.

The ends of the chromosomes (which are just very long strands of DNA), degrade with age. I don’t know the base-specific nature of this degradation (mutations, deletions, insertions), but they “degrade.” I just looked at the wiki page on subtelomeres to refresh my memory. Essentially the telomeres are proteins that protect the ends of your chromosomes from said degradation or even chromosomal fusing (fyi, there is a fused chromosome that separates us from apes, among other things. Interesting stuff). As you age, the telomeres don’t function as well, the result being what we see as aging. So if you took a sample of something that died of old-age, you are going to probably have some telomere degradation of the clone already at birth. I’m not an expert, but this leads to signs of more rapid aging or other defects you wouldn’t see in someone with “more youthful” telomeric function.

If you look up problems they had with Dolly the sheep (the first successful mammalian clone I believe), they learned a lot about these problems due to the health issues Dolly had.

Telomerases are enzymes that preserve the telomeres. There is a lot of research going on in this field for obvious reasons.

@cockswain is absolutely correct, interesting thing about Telomerase and the research we’re putting into it as well as other genetic factors will probably result in us being able to control aging by 2050. In other words, “immortality,” to an extent.

I am opposed to cloning. We don’t know enough about genetics yet. The DNA can easily get screwed up in the process.

I usually come down on the sde of being against cloning. It just seems very odd to me. Recreate someone who died? Or, create more of the same person or animal? Of course, they are never exactly the same person, because environment matters.

@cockswain @king_pariah from what I understand we can get a blood test to see where our telomeres are at, and supposedly help us predict how close to death we are I guess? I say that a little tongue and cheek. So, if someone lost a 2 year old in a car crash, God forbid, that toddler’s DNA might have more success? Or, from the placenta or something like that?

Do older eggs produce children who have less healthy telomeres? I always wondered about that. If children born late in a woman’s fertility show more signs of some sort of genetic degradation.

@marinelife But what if the process was perfect?

Soon or later this highly paced economic world will allow cloning even though many people think it’s not morally right. I only say this related to bringing economic extinct animals back to life. We may need to domesticate and harvest the wool from wooly mammoths,eggs from dodos,meat from aurochs,etc if they have better quality and have more economic purposes. And if it’s for human… just think about it if we can revive Albert Einstein and get him the same lifestyle he had as kid our society would be highly developed in knowledge.

Totally unethical. So smart right?

@JLeslie Those are great questions and I don’t know the answer about the blood test. I don’t know how much I’d want that info, since we know it’s just degrading steadily and might be nothing more than a bummer at best or alarming at worst. Regarding the toddler clone, yes, I would assume that the younger the person the less degradation of the DNA. I don’t know anything about rates or amount of degradation and it’s negative consequences. In other words, is a 12 year old’s DNA still “healthy” enough for a great clone? Is the age 18? 4? I don’t know. Nor do I know the answer about the eggs, but that is also a great question. My guess would be older eggs are less healthy, and might be tied into why birth defects rise after 35. But I’m just guessing.

@cockswain @JLeslie how it more or less works, is that you get a 2 year old’s DNA, there’s about 2 years worth of degradation of the telomeres, 12 years old = 12 years of degradation of the telomeres, etc. That would roughly translate to that many fewer years of that persons natural lifespan. However, with telomerase, you can rebuild the telomere section of our DNA chain repeatedly so they constantly remain at their peak lengths overriding the years cut off of your life and easily putting on even more.

@Skaggfacemutt they’ll never clone a dodo bird. There’s absolutely no tissue cells left to clone. The Moa cells they were working with came from the thighbone that was found in a bog. It had deteriorated quite a bit, though. The did, how ever (and I mentioned this in my first draft of the article, but it got edited… CNN LOVES to edit the shit out of stuff and dumb it down, btw) isolate the gene in the Moa DNA that defined the size of the birds. I made some pithy comment like, ‘Wouldn’t the bosses at KFC think that news was finger licking good.’ or some such wry comment. Of course it was cut.

When I discussed with Professor Diana the issues involving bird cloning as opposed to mammals, she wasn’t discouraged at all. She said, give enough money and resources, she was should they could solve the problems.

Here’s a weird thought: what if KFC could grow chicken breasts (or any chicken meat), but no brain. Sort of a meat plant. Would that be more ethical, since the animal wouldn’t suffer? What about a steak plant? Sounds super gross, but would alleviate animal cruelty.

@King_Pariah Wait, I am confused. Is telomerase a natural process that we are trying to scienifically boost? Or, if it something totally manufactured in our labs? Something we are devloping? If it is a natural process, what how they found so far that positiviely impacts it? Or, negatively for that matter?

@cockswain Can’t we already do similar? Grow bladders or something? I think I once saw a human ear growing on the back of a mouse on some show, which I am completely against.

@JLeslie Telomerase does occur naturally, just not so much in a healthy human body (except in a fetus really). BUT, the reason why cancer cells keep growing and growing without aging is telomerase, making cancer cells technically immortal like the HeLa cells. We do indeed develop and produce it in labs as well though most samples are obtained from cancer cells. Pretty much it does keep a cell in its prime, but it’s also one of the reasons why cancer tends to be so resilient.

@King_Pariah You know, all drugs that tout they cause growth, like some lasers for collagen growth, make me nervous that they will cause cancer. But, is that a completely different mechanism? I think there was some drug to help produce red blood cells for breast cancer patients that wound up showing more patients getting a reoccurance of cancer. I thik also with that growing cells might have grown cells, cells notintended for growth. I know back in the day one of the problems with cancer research, and I would assume still, is that you might discover something to kill the cancer, but it kills too many other things in the body too. I think it works on the flip side, grow certain cells in the body, possibly grow unintended cancer.

@cockswain Actually I heard a long time ago that KFC was doing that already.

I am interested in cloning because I have a curious streak. It would be SO COOL to bring an extinct species back to life, or to bring a loved one back, such as a deceased child. I know it’s kind of freaky and morbid, I guess, but it’s my curiosity that makes me hope that they will be able to do it someday soon.

@JLeslie funny thing is with telomerase, if put into a healthy human being, the risk for cancer growths goes down. It’s only risky when cancer is already present. It’s on a similar track as why drinking red wine and eating peanuts is good for you when your healthy, but if you have cancer it’s best to stay the hell away from them.

@King_Pariah Interesting.

I’m off topic, but why anyone devotes themselves to religion instead of the pursuit of fields such as this is beyond me.

@cockswain Most of those people don’t even know this type of information exists I guess? Did you see my question way back basically asking if you are against embryonic stem cell research, but science develops cures, if you or a loved one became ill, would you use the cure? I had asked it on facebook also. Pretty much everyone against quickly said yes they would use the cure. WTF? Many didn’t understand why I was flabbergasted by that response. I don’t even think they know what it really is, many think it is cells from aborted babies.