Human clone.

[Pete Younger]

It seems only a couple of years ago that so called experts were saying that Human clones were at least twenty years away, so what do we make of this report?

 

[Mattattattatt]

Have you not read my status recently? And that was in the late 70s with a turkey baster, a nit comb and a home brew wine kit...

 

[kiel_d]

From what i've been hearing this morning nothing is verified yet.
The scientist at the center of all this has said nothing himself, and others are very sceptical as to whether he could have done this.

Untill its all down in black and white with a recipe, (take one cell and whisk until firm.....) i'm very dubious.

after all "they" anounced they mapped the full human genome a while back, but forgot to mention all those huge gaps that they hadn't got round to yet............

 

[Anonymous]

I dont see why people need to clone a human, they have proved they can do it with animals so the chances of doing it with a human are strong but i dont feel that they have to be explored. What possible benefits can we gain from cloaning either ourselves or others? Its not like we could clone einstien and then we would suddenly have an amazing mind back on our plant to solve more of the mysteries of the universe, for all we know his clone could be thick and not have a clue. I think cloning humans is something we should just leave to sciencefiction writers to dream about and spend the money trying to bring back estinct creatures due to human intervention, i.e do-do and thylacine.

 

[harlequin2005]

One potential benefit of human cloning is for transplant surgery... and for that you don't need to clone the whole organism, just the part, in some cases, simply the right tissue. The technologyfor supporting individual organs is not well developed, but is there...

8¬)

 

[Anonymous]

that i do agree with harley, growing limbs or organs to order for specific people would be extremely benificial and would reduce the chance of the body rejecting the new limb or organ. However if people where growing live humans then disecting them for their spare parts i would consider this murder. I doubt that this would ever be the case but u never know.

 

[harlequin2005]

True, the morality of cloning for harvest would be abhorrent. Cloning tissue is actually quite easy, unless you are trying to clone, say, liver tissue from the cells that come from muscle or vice versa. The DNA contains the information, but alterting or turning off the 'diversity' supression is the tricky bit... Which has been the obstacle to whole organism cloning to date.

8¬)

 

[Anonymous]

Im not as up to date with all this as you seem to be harley but wouldnt stem cells illiminate the needs of organ cloning? I read somewhere they made a major breakthru in stemcell research and found that they could get the cells from grown humans instead of the controversial unborn child method which people where having problems with.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Feb. 8, 2005, 9:41AM

Dolly the Sheep creator gets license for human cloning

Associated Press

LONDON -- The British government today gave the creator of Dolly the Sheep a license to clone human embryos for medical research into the cause of motor neuron disease.

Ian Wilmut, who led the team that created Dolly at Scotland's Roslin Institute in 1996, and motor neuron expert Christopher Shaw of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, plan to clone embyros to study how nerve cells go awry to cause the disease. The experiments do not involve creating cloned babies.

It is the second such license approved since Britain became the first country to legalize research cloning in 2001. The first was granted in August to a team that hopes to use cloning to create insulin-producing cells that could be transplanted into diabetics.

Dr. Brian Dickie, director of research at the London-based Motor Neuron Disease Association, said the latest decision by the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority means "we are a step closer to medical research that has the potential to revolutionize the future treatment of neuron disease," an incurable muscle-wasting condition that afflicts about 350,000 people and kills some 100,000 each year.

While the latest project would not use the stem cells to correct the disease, the study of the cells is expected to help scientists develop future treatments, according to the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which regulates such research and approved the license.

Stem cells are the master cells of the body. They appear when embryos are just a few days old and go on to develop into every type of cell and tissue in the body. Scientists hope to be able to extract the stem cells from embryos when they are in their blank state and direct them to form any desired cell type to treat a variety of diseases, ranging from Parkinson's to diabetes.

Getting the cells from an embryo that is cloned from a sick patient could allow scientists to track how diseases develop and provide genetically matched cell transplants that do not cause the immune systems to reject the transplant.

Such work, called therapeutic cloning because it does not result in a baby, is opposed by abortion foes and other biological conservatives because researchers must destroy human embryos to harvest the cells.

Cloning opponents decried the license Tuesday, saying the technique is dangerous, undesirable and unnecessary.

"What a sad and extraordinary volte face (turnaround) for the pioneer of animal cloning," said the London-based Comment on Reproductive Ethics. "Wilmut has always been the loudest voice in recent years warning of the dangers of mammalian cloning. And we remember how in the years following the birth of Dolly the Sheep, he assured the world he would never go near human cloning."

Wilmut has repeatedly condemned the idea of human cloning to create babies, but not so-called therapeutic cloning.

"We recognize that motor neuron disease is a serious congenital condition," said Angela McNab, chief of Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority. "Following careful review of the medical, scientific, legal and ethical aspects of this application, we felt it was appropriate to grant the Roslin Institute a one-year license for this research into the disease."

Wilmut and Shaw plan to clone cells from patients with the incurable muscle-wasting disease, derive blank-slate stem cells from the cloned embryo, make them develop into nerve cells, and compare their development to nerve cells derived from healthy embryos.

The technique, called cell nuclear replacement, is the same as that used to create Dolly.

The mechanism behind motor neuron disease is poorly understood because the nerves are inaccessible in the brain and central nervous system and cannot be removed from patients.

"This is potentially a big step forward for (motor neuron disease) research," Shaw said. "We have spent 20 years looking for genes that cause (motor neuron disease) and to date we have come up with just one gene. We believe that the use of cell nuclear replacement will greatly advance our understanding of why motor neurons degenerate in this disease, without having to hunt down the gene defect."

Genetics expert Peter Braude of King's College, London, who is not involved with the work, said that studying how nerves go wrong in motor neuron disease and how it can be cured is particularly difficult and that cloning is the only way to produce the cells necessary to answer such questions.

Source

 

[Rubyait]

Well wether its possible or not at the present is debatable.I think that if its possible then its been done, but no scientist is going to come out and admit it, not yet anyway.Personally i feel that cloning Humans is wrong on so many levels.To use the technology to reproduce organs and limbs etc would IMO be acceptable but it where would the line be drawn?

 

[elffriend]

The whole subject of cloning, for any reason, fills me with horror. Whilst creating spare sparts for transplant can be seen as good, especially by those who need one or know a loved one who needs one, but I don't trust the morals of those who have the knowledge to do cloning. As sjoh9 says, where is the line drawn? And there is always someone who will cross that line.

 

[Rubyait]

UN abandons legal ban on human cloning

The United Nations has given up its attempt to introduce a worldwide legal ban on some or all types of human cloning. On Tuesday its deeply divided general assembly voted to adopt a watered-down "declaration" that condemns all forms of human cloning but is not legally binding.

The declaration, which was passed by 84 votes to 34, with 37 abstentions, prohibits "all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life". But it has been widely criticised for being imprecise and meaningless.

"It lacks precision, it lacks clarity and it is certainly not a guide," says Bernard Siegel, head of the Genetic Policy Institute in Coral Gables, Florida, US, which has lobbied the UN in favour using human cloning to develop new medical therapies. "It masks the ultimate failure of the UN to produce a document with legal teeth."

The declaration follows four years of fruitless discussion, the postponement of several proposed blanket bans on all forms of human cloning and a decision to abandon a legally-binding ban in November 2004.

Cloned babies
The core of the issue was member states' inability to agree on whether a ban should cover just reproductive cloning - producing cloned babies - or therapeutic cloning as well. Both involve the creation of an early embryo by transferring the genetic material from the nucleus of a cell into an egg from which the nucleus has been removed.

Reproductive cloning is condemned by critics for ethical reasons and because of the predicted risks to the health of the clone. In contrast therapeutic cloning, where the embryo is only grown for a few days or weeks in order to harvest stem cells, is believed to have great medical potential. Cloned stem cells would not be rejected after implantation into the original donor.

However, for many people the destruction of an embryo for any scientific purpose is unacceptable. As a result 84 nations, including those like the US that wanted a ban on both types of cloning, voted in favour of the declaration.

"I applaud the strong vote of the United Nations General Assembly today," said US President George W Bush, in a statement released by the White House. "Human life must not be created for the purpose of destroying it."

Distressing diseases
But many industrialised nations, including the UK, France, Norway, Japan, China and South Korea, voted against the declaration because it does not explicitly allow therapeutic cloning.

"We regret that the UN seems unable to distinguish between these two very different forms of human cloning and has voted to ban research designed to find treatments for some of the world's most distressing diseases," says Arne Sunde of the University Hospital of Trondheim in Norway.

The UN declaration carries no legal clout, and so the countries that voted against the ban, as well as many scientists within the US who are working for privately funded institutes, will continue with their human cloning research. However, many scientists are frustrated because they had hoped that the UN would use its influence to ban reproductive cloning, which no nation advocates.

Emyr Jones Parry, the UK representative at the UN, blames the "intransigence" of some member states for this failure. And Siegel adds that the UN is unlikely to redress the issue.


http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7120

 

[sebastianp1]

Religious scruples raise their ugly heads - yet again!

Get over it you turkeys!!!!! :x

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

UK breakthrough as human embryo cloned

British and Korean scientists lead revolution in stem cell technology

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday May 20, 2005
The Guardian

Scientists in Newcastle have successfully cloned a human embryo, a breakthrough that places Britain at the forefront of the cutting edge but highly controversial field of embryonic stem cell technology.

The clone was created as part of the Newcastle group's research into new treatments for diabetes. The team, lead by Miodrag Stojkovic at Newcastle University and Alison Murdoch at the Newcastle NHS Fertility Centre, was the first in Europe to be given the go-ahead to clone embryos for research last year, after being granted a licence by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

Only one other group in the world, lead by scientists in South Korea, has perfected the technique to clone human embryos. That team, lead by Woo Suk Hwang at Seoul University today announced going one step further than the Newcastle researchers by creating stem cells tailored to patients with specific medical conditions.

Dr Hwang took skin cells from patients suffering from spinal cord injuries or a variety of genetic disorders and used the cloning process to produce stem cells matched to each. Because the stem cells were cloned from the patients' own skin cells, they would not be rejected by the body if used in any future therapy. Their study appears in the US journal Science.

The Newcastle team's work was praised by scientists who believe embryonic stem cells, which can be extracted from cloned embryos, will pave the way to cure some of the most intractable medical conditions, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's disease and even paralysis. But the development has reignited the debate over the ethics of creating early-stage embryos for research, with critics accusing the scientists of trivialising life.

Britain is one of a handful of countries to permit the cloning of human embryos for research, or therapeutic cloning. Several countries throughout Europe have introduced bans or severe restrictions on cloning research and the UN is pushing for a global ban.

To create the clone, the team collected 36 surplus eggs donated from 11 women under going IVF treatment. Each egg had its nucleus replaced by a whole human embryonic stem cell from a batch held at the UK stem cell bank. The eggs were then given a brief electrical shock to kickstart the growth process.

From 10 of the eggs, the researchers were able to create three very early stage embryos, with one developing into a blastocyst, a ball of cells no bigger than the head of a pin. Attempts to extract stem cells from the blastocyst failed, however, because the clone did not survive beyond five days. The experiment was done as a proof of principle, to see if eggs collected from women undergoing IVF treatment would be healthy enough to produce clones. The research has been submitted for publication in the journal Reproductive BioMedicine Online.

The team has gained permission from the HFEA to create more clones from cells taken from patients with Type 1 diabetes. The stem cells from those clones will carry the genetic defect that causes diabetes and will enable scientists to study the disease in far greater detail than ever before. "With these stem cells we will be able to study the very roots of the disease," said Dr Stojkovic.

The group has also been granted permission from an ethics committee to seek eggs from women who produce too many after IVF treatment. During the experiment the team found that only fresh eggs used within an hour after being collected were good enough to produce clones.

"We know from our analysis of IVF data that if a woman has 20 eggs, her chance of getting pregnant is no higher than if she has 18, so on that basis we can be very confident that the women who donate would not significantly decrease their chances of having a baby," said Prof Murdoch.

Dr Stojkovic emphasised it was a technique to get stem cells. "We're not doing this to clone human beings," he said.

Stephen Minger, director of the stem cell biology laboratory at King's College, London, said the Newcastle work was important because it confirmed that other labs are capable of repeating the South Koreans' success.

Pro-life groups criticised the work as unethical. "This work trivialises life. An embryo, no matter how small, no matter how it is created, is a human life. We must respect that," said Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics.

The HFEA's right to grant permission for the work is being tested in the high court after lawyers for Christian Fellowship won a judicial review of its decision.

Source

 

[ramonmercado]

Clone 'would feel individuality'

Human reproductive cloning is currently not allowed in the UK
A cloned human would probably consider themselves to be an individual, a study suggests.
Scientists drew their conclusions after interviewing identical twins about their experiences of sharing exactly the same genes with somebody else.

The team said the twins believed their genes played a limited role in shaping their identity.

The UK/Austrian research will shortly be published in the journal of Social Science and Medicine.

Co-author Dr Barbara Prainsack, from the University of Vienna, Austria, who worked with Professor Tim Spector, from the Twins Research Unit, St Thomas' Hospital, London, said: "The birth of Dolly the sheep triggered many questions about what it would be like to be a clone.

"We don't have clones we can interview - but we do have identical twins."

This interesting study reveals how we should not have any prejudiced feelings about the idea of genetically identical individuals living amongst us

Professor Lovell-Badge

Identical twins are created when a single egg, fertilised by a single sperm, splits into two separate, but genetically identical, embryos.

The researchers said because twins - like potential clones - share the same genes, they offer the only existing method of studying the feelings a clone might experience.

But they also emphasized twins would differ from clones because they are born at the same time, whereas clones would differ in age.

One of a pair?

The scientists carried out 17 interviews of identical, non-identical and non-twin siblings.

The identical twins said being a twin did not compromise their individuality - although they pointed out that people often had preconceptions that they were one of a pair rather than individuals.

Those interviewed viewed being an identical twin as a blessing, and said they would not rather be a non-identical twin or a "singleton".

They also said they believed their genes had no great bearing on their relationship with their twin and their identity.

The twins felt factors such as being brought up in the same environment, having spent a large part of their lives together, and being treated in a similar way by their parents were more important.

One interviewee said: "We spent 20 years together, and so that was a close experience. And that hasn't changed all of these years we've been apart. So I don't feel that genetics made any difference."

From these findings the scientists said they could assume a clone would probably not feel their individuality was compromised by sharing genes with someone else; that their relationship with their co-clone was a blessing; and their uniqueness was not a negative thing.

Dr Prainsack said: "According to the genetically identical people in our study, the problem would not be genetic sameness, but more the motives with which somebody would determine somebody else's genome.

"The cloning debate would benefit from shifting away its focus from genetic sameness to looking more at social reasons for why the deliberate creation of human beings with a certain genetic make-up could hurt society."

Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, a geneticist from the Medical Research Council's National Institute for Medical Research, London, said: "Human reproductive cloning is not safe and should not be attempted with current knowledge.

"In my opinion, there are no strong reasons for even attempting it.

"But this interesting study and, although small, reveals how we should not have any prejudiced feelings about the idea of genetically identical individuals living amongst us."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5187990.stm

 

[TheQuixote]

UK breakthrough as human embryo cloned

British and Korean scientists lead revolution in stem cell technology

*snip*

Only one other group in the world, lead by scientists in South Korea, has perfected the technique to clone human embryos. That team, lead by Woo Suk Hwang at Seoul University today announced going one step further than the Newcastle researchers by creating stem cells tailored to patients with specific medical conditions. *snip*

It should be pointed out that the Korean team's announcements have since been discredited

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-Suk

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-p ... 554704.stm

 

[TheQuixote]

Ha! In a nice piece of synchronicity, while I was taking time to find the evidence for that post, this was posted on the Scientific Fraud thread.