From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Feb 16 2002 - 09:50:20 MST
[Kirk] All this "successful cloning news" is just noise to help keep the
funding alive. NO ONE has yet to come up with the way to get passed the
Hayflick Limit. No body. So, no matter how many successes these places rack
up, we still have not found the fountain of youth, silver bullet, for ANY of
the proposed uses of cloning.
[Kirk] Find me a meiotic replication of telomeres on the chromatids PRIOR to
the cloning process! Then I'll mail in my donations to 1-900-CLONEME.
[hr]
[Hermit] Refer [url]http://sciencematters.com/cloned/52.html[/url] and
[url]http://www.sciencenews.org/20000429/fob6.asp[/url]
Refer also "Extension of cell life-span and telomere length in animals
cloned from senescent somatic cells." Lanza, R.P., Lansdorp P.M., et al.
2000. Science 288(April 28):665.
[Hermit] They are waiting for your donation :-)
[Hermit] I would note that the arguments on human reproductive cloning are,
temporarily not a major issue (as it will not be wide-spread for a while, if
ever), and that while cloned reproduction to produce transportable organs
and T-cells may have some near-term viability (and I have no problems with
this as a solution to finding T-cell/marrow sources for e.g. AML patients
(and interestingly, I have discussed this with about 10 ladies - all of whom
indicated that they would not have an ethical problem doing this for friends
or family)), I suspect that in the end, we will eventually use host animals
engineered for tissue compatibility and rapid growth, to avoid offending
those too stupid to realize that a cluster of cells is not a human, even
though ancephalic fetii (very easy to produce) should suppress ethical
questions, and would be much simply to produce, but suspect that even the
suggestion would probably create more public outcry - which should serve as
proof positive that the objections are unreasoned and based in religious
roots. [Hermit wonders whether the aforegoing qualifies as the ultimate
definitional example of a run-on sentence used on the CoV to date?).
[Hermit] I would suggest that the larger question is whether the proponents
of the "cloning is unethical" perspective should be arguing (I would suggest
in the absence of evidence and history), that hereditary mechanisms and
random chance will [i]always[/i] be superior to cloning, which is what it
would take to make their position scientifically supportable. I think that
this issue is incredibly important when determining what is ethically
appropriate and what is not. I would argue strongly that "natural" human
reproduction is demonstrably) very inefficient and wasteful, even haphazard.
Most fertilized ova contain defects which lead to "silent abortions" in the
first month, and a very large number of zygotes that survive to become
adults suffer from serious life-limiting genetic problems. This is proof
that the natural process is flawed and suggests to me, that as in most areas
of life, modern medicine and the scientific method can do a far better job
than the roulette wheel of chance. Thus any interference in the development
of a body of science regarding human cloning is highly counterproductive
and, I suggest, arguably more unethical than any possible reasons for
attempting to prevent its occurrence. The science is not complex and, in the
long term, will become routine.
Kind Regards
Hermit
Suggested reading:
[url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0847687821/thehermit0d]"Who's
Afraid of Human Cloning?", Gregory E. Pence, Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd Ed,
1998[/url]
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