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sobriqueI heard on the radio this morning, that there's been the first request for human embryo cloning.
The research project is to try and develop cloned insulin producing cells.
I'm still a little confused as to what the big arguments against cloning are. I mean, as far as I can tell, the ability to re-grow organs, tissues etc. would make an awfully big difference to quality of life around the world.
No more people permanantly blinded.
Heart disease becomes fixable.
Lung cancer repairable.
I can see there's sort of arguments that 'things man wasn't meant to know' but I really don't think there's many places where that line could or should be drawn.
I've heard vague fears of people cloning themselves. And I don't see the problem with that either. I mean, it's not like you can grow a clone and do a brain transplant. That just doesn't work AFAIK. So what you've _effectively_ got is a x year younger identical twin.
It's certainly settle the 'nature vs. nurture' argument.
So would anyone care to enlighten me? Why would be cloning be 'wrong'?
The research project is to try and develop cloned insulin producing cells.
I'm still a little confused as to what the big arguments against cloning are. I mean, as far as I can tell, the ability to re-grow organs, tissues etc. would make an awfully big difference to quality of life around the world.
No more people permanantly blinded.
Heart disease becomes fixable.
Lung cancer repairable.
I can see there's sort of arguments that 'things man wasn't meant to know' but I really don't think there's many places where that line could or should be drawn.
I've heard vague fears of people cloning themselves. And I don't see the problem with that either. I mean, it's not like you can grow a clone and do a brain transplant. That just doesn't work AFAIK. So what you've _effectively_ got is a x year younger identical twin.
It's certainly settle the 'nature vs. nurture' argument.
So would anyone care to enlighten me? Why would be cloning be 'wrong'?
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identical twin
Date: 2004-06-16 03:31 pm (UTC)Actually, not quite identical. Reproductive cloning only uses nuclear DNA (i.e. not mitochondrial DNA). So you could clone a fertile woman identically but not a man nor a woman who couldn't produce viable egg cells.
This is tangential to the BBC report though; embryo cloning (AKA therapeutic cloning) is something else again, and refers to stem cells (i.e. cells that haven't yet differentiated into muscle, nerve, etc) being extract from an embryo.
I'm certainly in favour of therapeutic cloning. It has the potential to do us a lot of good in the long term. Reproductive cloning I'm less sure about, but more in an undecided sort of way than a drifting-towards-opposition sort of way, IYSWIM.