First official cloned human embryos

What are your thoughts on stem cell research, is it the answer to cure a multitude of diseases or Pandora’s box to human clones?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/h...480921.stm


sexed up the title edit
[This message was edited Thu Feb 12 7:08:52 PST 2004 by PREDOMINANT]

Phew! I thought this was going to be another thread for Althom bashing!!

It's a bit too early for that kind of statements.
the whole cloning thing is not yet ready for either complete cloning or for curing (lots of) deseases !

I think a debate and some laws are needed first !

I personaly would not support total cloning, for it's bound to give major problems esp. in human-cloning. Biological we might sucseed but we have no clue what happens mentaly to a clone.
Try to imagine identical twins being born 20 years after eachother, would they be a like under different sircomstances and without being in eachothers company ?
Then learn to cope with the fact that you're geneticly the same as someone else !! Hmmm, not good !

But for organs and stuf, I would gladly volunteer !!

Fhunkin said:

Phew at last someone answered seriously, thanks Fhunkin. It is amazing how much crap we can spout on this site but STFU when a real question is asked.

I am still undecided on the whole thing. You are right about the legislation, something need to be implemented pretty fast. It is not that far off either. These embryos are sitting in someones freezer, all they need is a host uterus and they will become a fully fleged cloned human being. Scary shit!!
[This message was edited Thu Feb 12 7:03:38 PST 2004 by PREDOMINANT]

This whole area makes me instinctively think .

However, when you read the article it's clear this is nothing like that lunatic Zavon or whoever he was or the Raelians (who all actually claimed to have / intended to create a cloned baby).

These guys are looking at cloning solely at an embryological level, for studying stem cells from what I can see. And I have less of a moral problem with that than progression to birth. But if you believe that life begins at fertilization, then I can see why you'd have a real problem with this.

As far as I am aware, if you implanted these in a womb it would be very likely to either fail or result in deformities, so i think there is a while yet before some titanic tosspot with a tiny penis manages to clone a human. Which will be a huge fuck up.

TheFrog said:

As far as I know there is no reason why these embryos, if implaneted would grow normally. Sure due to the early stages of research they "might" not but that is one hell of a "might". I am guessing that they could have been told to destroy the embryos after they were cultured. My freezer line was just meant to stimulate discussion.

Unfortunately the full grown human clone is probably easier than the organ/tissue culture.

PREDOMINANT said:

Sure thing - no offence meant. When i said there was a way to go, I was just regurgitating what some govt. scientist said on the news a few weeks ago when that wacko doc was claiming (again) to have implanted an embryo.

sorry if it came across as an aggressive reaction to your post.

TheFrog said:

Not at all, I was just discussing. That wacko doc is mad, true, but scary.

I depends how much faith we are willing to put into scientists to utilize cloning for the advancement of medicine and improve the quality of life for some. However, I dont doubt for a second that there will be some that will clone human beings as soon as the technology permits.. I find that troubling.


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[This message was edited Thu Feb 12 12:43:47 PST 2004 by Lleena]