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Category: Cloning
Germline modification isn't useful or needed as therapy. It makes sense for those who want to live in a GATTACA-like world of designer babies and genetic castes.
Posted by Marcy Darnovsky at 7:20 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
With all the imaginative potential of new technologies like cloning (and stem cell research), there are some questions that seem mostly to fall out of the conversation. In the event that enough of the technical details were worked out that cloning's potential could be realized, the questions that haven't been getting the most attention may end up being the most important ones to face -- at least if we want cloning to be ethical. Let's start with the most speculative edge: reproductive cloning of humans, therapeutic cloning (or "cloning for spare parts") for humans, and the use of SCNT to...
Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 2:44 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cloning
This post was written by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei. 1. There are three main types of cloning - recombinant DNA technology aka DNA cloning, reproductive cloning, and therapeutic cloning. 2. The tadpole was the first animal to be cloned in 1952. Approximately 20 animals have been successfully cloned including sheep, goats, cows, mice, pigs, cats, rabbits, carp, and dogs. 3. Cloned animals suffer from a number of problems. The Human Genome Project cloning fact sheet mentions immune system deficiencies, greater susceptibility to infection, tumors, premature death, abnormal size or growth, abnormal gene expression. A 2006 Time article by Alice Park looks...
Posted by Erin Johnson at 1:37 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cloning
Cloning has attracted an UFO cult, a former beauty queen who kidnapped a Mormon as a sex slave, and a scientific hero who turned out to be a fraud. Still, it's a mistake to dismiss the cloning endeavor as nothing but a freak show.
Posted by Marcy Darnovsky at 5:25 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cloning
A little over a century ago, in 1903, Herbert J. Webber, a plant breeder at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was frustrated that he didn't have a word to describe "those plants that are propagated vegetatively by buds, grafts, cuttings, suckers, runners, slips, bulbs, tubers, etc." (Webber, 1903, p. 502). Given rapid developments in plant breeding, spurred by the expansion of large-scale crop agriculture, Webber saw an urgent need for a neologism. Although he was generally opposed to deriving terms from Greek and Latin, a practice he believed burdened words with heavy philological baggage, Webber chose "clon." From a Greek...
Posted by Alexandra Stern at 4:48 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cloning
The scientific and medical justifications for SCNT are getting weaker, and the social and ethical problems it raises aren't going away.
Posted by Marcy Darnovsky at 4:03 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cloning
Missing your late dog Fido? Feel that your aged cat Boots is your true soul mate? For the last decade or so, people with financial resources and deep, some might say excessive, love of their animals have tried pet cloning. Unfortunately, for most of them, the tens of thousands of dollars they have spent hasn't produced their desired results. First, the rate of successful cloning has been very low. For example, Cyagra, Inc., of Worcester, Massachusetts, which specializes in cloning calves for dairy and beef farmers, reports a replication rate of only 15 percent. As mentioned in the introductory post...
Posted by Alexandra Stern at 3:38 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The reasons to worry about reproductive cloning might not be what you think.
Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 1:32 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cloning
Don't underestimate the power of the naturalist fallacy, in combination with an ick factor.
Posted by Mike at 10:16 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cloning
This week on What's New in Life Science Research, we're taking on the subject of cloning.
Posted by Erin Johnson at 12:52 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
