The World's Fair

(RE: The new "Ask a Scienceblogger") If asked whether I think cloning has developed the way I thought it would, I think I'd have have a couple comments on that.

First, I would say that yes I am surprised in the sense that with molecular biology essentially taking such enormous leaps and bounds, I might have thought that mammalian cloning techniques would have come along a lot further then they have. I mean sure, we have cats, monkeys, cows, and the such, but it's still very much an immature game (although I guess it's all relative - you can after all already get gift certificates to go towards cat cloning)

On the other hand, there's certainly an element of "knew it would be slow all along." I think this has more to do with my own familiarity with the moelcular aspects of cloning. I mean seriously, the procedure is basically a nighmarish exercise in delicacy. Take DNA out of oocytes, inject back in DNA from an adult source? Now that's tricky.

People tend to get stuck on DNA being this nice simple posterize looking entity, but its not at all like that. Maybe, graphically we can draw that sentiment like this:

Instead, it's a lot more like this:

In other words, genomic DNA is busy busy messy messy ever ever so intricate. Now try imagining moving this stuff around with an insy teensy weeny weeny needle, without leaving any behind or inadvertantly breaking any of the stuff, and you can hopefully appreciate the magnitude of the task at hand. Anyway in that context, no surprise.

Of course, we can also look at this question from the regulatory side of things. Admittedly, ten years ago I didn't have had a clue. But in light of following this sort of stuff for a few years now, it's laughable how predictable government can be (there's a decent quickie overview here).

Now who wants to make some wagers for the next ten years?