December 27, 2002
Maybe it's me
CNN.com - Raelian leader says cloning first step to immortality - Dec. 27, 2002
In the TV coverage I've seen, the news folks have downplayed the fact that the group making this claim is a nutjob flying saucer/reincarnation cult.
Meanwhile the Christian Coalition seems to think that this alleged clone is going to be experimented on, which is an overreaction. Still, for once they're right. I hate being on the same side as the CC, but cloning humans when we don't know the long-term outlook for cloned organisms is just crazy.
Posted by Mac Thomason at December 27, 2002 11:43 PM
Comments
I was just discussing this with a friend of mine. He pointed out that Dolly died in four years due to excessive aging, and that is also a problem in any other cloning technique. Which is part of the reason why humans haven't been cloned.
Of course, I think the Raellian cloning experiment is a load of crap, as they refuse to offer any kind of evidence whatsoever, but talking with my bud--who is so smart he makes me feel like Bart Simpson sometimes--made me a bit bummed. Here I was thinking that, yeah, my biological clock is ticking, but hey, they're getting closer to cloning! I can have a clone! Hire someone to carry it for me.
Except she'd die in like, 10-20 years. Nope. No thanks.
Posted by: Meryl Yourish at December 28, 2002 12:59 AM
And we've no idea why Dolly died like that. Or rather, we know that the cells are programmed that way, we just don't know the mechanism. And doing that to a human being is sick. Doing it to a sheep is bad enough.
The good part is that if they use therapeutic cloning properly, you could live for several hundred years. But that part is getting screwed up by people like the flying saucer nuts.
Posted by: Mac Thomason at December 28, 2002 03:33 AM
Actually we do. Aging is a result of the gradual signal degradation in our DNA as it divides and replicates itself god-knows-how-many-trillions of times, in every cell in our body, throughout our lives. Clones are saddled with DNA that has already gone through a significant amount of aging, and the result is a clone with a drastically shortened life span. So much for immortality through cloning.
As to why the same thing doesn't happen when sperm and egg meet... damned if I know. There's a lot about the reproductive cycles that's a complete mystery, even to the biologists who invented cloning. Cloning itself, at least the method we've developed, is the result of simple brute-force experimenting. We just kept trying different ways to make a clone, until we found one that (sort of) worked.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian at December 28, 2002 03:54 AM
I believe cloning anything, especially humans, is a crime against nature.
Posted by: Steve Plonk at December 28, 2002 10:08 AM
So is selective breeding, which we've been doing for thousands of years.
Posted by: Meryl Yourish at December 28, 2002 01:59 PM
Since when did Dolly die? I haven't heard about it.
Posted by: Susan Nunes at December 28, 2002 02:30 PM
cloning, so hot right now, cloning
Posted by: Mugatu at March 11, 2004 04:51 PM