Group Claims First Cloned Human Born

[Steve Machol]

Group Claims First Cloned Human Born

HOLLYWOOD, Florida (CNN) -- A company founded by a religious group that believes humans were created by extraterrestrials said Friday that it has created the first human clone -- a 7-pound baby girl it dubbed "Eve."
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Assuming these people aren't just delusional (not an easy assumption to make based on their beliefs), what are your thoughts on the whole issue of human cloning?

[Laurie]

I think it is a little wacky....

[Cindy Hamlin]

It is all of the quirks of nature that make us individuals. I fear, that with cloning, they will keep perfecting it until they have made the perfect human. That is what scares me about it-losing the individuals we all know and love.

[dpaul]

Think of the person you consider to be the worlds greatest waste of space and oxygen. Now, think of thousands (or millions) of copies of said individual.

I call on all villagers to break out the torches!:angry:

[Night Train]

I think we are only opening a door to find about 1 million other doors. Everyone is going to be disappointed at the results.

[John R]

but my ultimate goal is to give humanity eternal life through cloning."

Thats the worring bit....Who gives them the right to say wether we want to die or live....
Death maybe painfull to some but its a blessed release to many.

[Jubilee]

OF course this is the same Chemist that claimed claimes aliens visited him in the 70's and told him that all life on earth was created by said aliens. Clonaid is a division of Realiens..a company set up on supposed technology that was given to this select group of scientist by the visitors...

Or has anyone else read that story...all the news reports here have a bit or two about the connection in it...

Cassandra

[John R]

Night Train said:
Everyone is going to be disappointed at the results.

Yea, some more than others.....There are a few people i can think of that cloning would not be a good idea......One is bad enough let alone hundreds more.......

I think this is just a quack idea. Just what they going to do, stop us re-producing as the world would soon be filled to over flowing if we never died.....

[yzf-r1]

but my ultimate goal is to give humanity eternal life through cloning

Why dont they look at the current elderly generation. Humans are simply not designed to last forever. The involutional changes that take place make life more of a misery than anything else.

Cloning has got to be properly regulated. It is too murky to be left alone. Here in the UK therapeutic cloning is allowed by licenced 'operators', and that is where i would like things to stop, no more no less.

It has been said before, and i will say it again. How is the alleged baby expected to address her mother, who biologically is her twin sister?

[Jubilee]

Anyone remember that movie Multiplicity? Where Michael Keaton gets cloned and each one is a bit different than the original to the point where the third clone is a complete idiot..

I know the movie was a comedy, but it had some merit to it. A copy isn't the same as the original and a copy of that copy is even farther from it. Especially if it is an angular semi-rimless frame and the 3rd set of lens replacements!!

Who is to say that this girl will have the same health and intelligence and personality that her mom did? If there are errors in the genetic code, some fraility in the process they used to make the embryo, then this child can be susceptible to many different forms of cancer, and who knows what other diseases. She maybe sterile. As the copy gets older, the code may start to break and then who knows what may happen to her.

As my favorite biology teacher stated to us. We know what the chemical composition of humans are. What percentage of water, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and the list goes on. We can combine all those ingredients together in a big pot, some machine, a mold, what have you. We can even do this specific so it can be in teh shape of our bodies and the organs thereof. But if you go through all that, you still can not create human life, there is something more to it.

So we cracked the genetic code, and was able to duplicate mitosis and all of those other wonderful cell duplicating processes. It doesn't mean that we have it right, nor does it mean that we ought to be playing with it.

Even if we did have it right, what about nature vs nurture. I firmly believe that one's genetic code isn't the only factor that decides who a person really is. Yeah I may the the daughter of Charles and Chere but that isn't all of who I am. I know that I get my workaholic tendencies from my dad, who until recently always had two jobs, whether we needed the extra income or not. Not form some gene that tells me work comes before family, but from listening to him take pride in a job well done. Always wanting to be counted on in a pinch. Being known as the man to get the job done. The man who provides for his family so they can have not only the needs, but some of the wants as well. I may not have understood when I was small, but I sure do understand now that he was trying to show his love by providing for the familiy. And now I am negotiating that path for myself in how much can I give up in work time w/o it actually being negative for my family in the end.

I have certain events that fundamentally changed how I viewed life. My favorite aunt died of cancer on her 40th birthday. I was 10 years old. I will never forget the night my dad came crying into my room to tell me. Because of the devestation I felt both for the loss of my aunt and the way it affected my father, I decided I never wanted to smoke. Smoking for 20years killed her. It started in her lungs, spread to her breasts, then up to her brain. Diagnosed too late..I am very adament about self exams, and I do take care in the sun, etc. My best friend in college died at 22 from leukemia. But while she battled the disease that eventually took her life, she remained upbeat, laughed whenever she could and did everything possible to help other people. She told me she didn't have time for tears. If she could face all the adversity in her life, and still be such a positive person, then I should count myself lucky and stop getting upset over the miniscule things that have stumbled onto my path...

It isn't just genetics that make up our personality or even what physical illnesses or ailments that we may have to endure. Our environment has a lot to do with that and our interpretation of what happens in said environment.

I find it reprehensible that some one can think that an individual is a mere object to be cloned. But I do find it admirable that they want to help humanity. I must admit that the humanitarian and scientist in me (my original major was genetics in college) loves the idea of being able to clone organs to take care of all those who die while awaiting a transplant or for whom the transplant did not work. But as we well know, organs aren't a one size fits all thing, and the complexities to bring such a thing about is going into some very dark areas I don't think we should go into. Same goes for stem cell research. I was all for it till I became aware of how some agencies are purposely creating embryos just for this research. I have a hard enough time dealing with the abortion issue, but if we have to have it legal, then at least let some good come from it. But to PURPOSELY create a human embryo to destroy it...is to me just diabolical...

I will stand down from my soap box pulpit while wishing there was someway to get to the noble end without going through the nightmarish means...

Cassandra

[Pete Hanlin]

I fear, that with cloning, they will keep perfecting it until they have made the perfect human.
Hmmm, perfect by whose standards? I think there would be some debate concerning just what would constitute a perfect human. The Third Reich certainly had some ideas on the matter... Point being, I don't think we have to worry about a "perfect" human. Given our fallen nature, we are all inherently flawed- regardless of our genetic make-up (but far be it from me to interject theology into our scientific discussion).
:)
Anyone remember that movie Multiplicity?
Actually, the movie that came to my mind was one called Gattaca (Uma Thurmon actually manages to look good in this movie, and it definitely merits a "Pete's Recommended" rating for anyone looking for a New Year's Eve movie). For those of you who haven't seen it, the setting is the future- and procreation is basically being controlled by the government. Since the technology exists to foretell (and weed out) any defects, couples go to clinics to have their eggs-sperm preselected for the desired results. Meanwhile, a "love child" so to speak (born without the regulated screenings) struggles to overcome his own genetics. Very insightful movie...

[chip anderson]

Can I put my order in for a Meg Ryan and a Rachel Blakeney?

[Jeff Trail]

I'm going to have to do some digging through my files at home but I did a little "research" of my own when all this stuff started coming out and was really surprised by a lot of the things that tend to be "left out" by scientist and researchers as well as the "news" people..
A basic common genetic bonding (peptides) are shared by most things on earth and I was really surprised by the "shared" amount of the genetics across the board..we actually share 50% with a BANANA ..a mouse is closer to an apes than an ape to a human..Weird you never see any of this mentioned isn't?
Of course we being the "dumb" push it to the limit race we are we want to "clone" the whole thing .. I still think that as a base it is not that bad of a thing..say in growth of replacement organs, skin, etc., etc....
In the "story" (notice story not a published research article) that Steve posted you need to consider the source. A group of people who think we are created by little guys from outer space .. wonder if the clone has a couple of antenna's? :-)
People who think that having a clone would make them live forever have seen one to many Speilberg movies.. the basic genetic make up is just that..basic (physically) the influx of environment as just as important to growth and molding..sort of a two edged sword in my opinion, a lot depending on the ethics of the people doing the research and how they put to use the knowledge gained .. I'm not all that interested in increasing the "quantity" of life if you don't or can't do anything about the "quality" ..so I get to live to be a 170.. and the last 70 a drooling vegetative state..oh boy how great..

Jeff "if I copy it from one paper it is plagiarism, two than it's research" Trail

[optispares]

Expert: Twins more identical than clones
Monday, December 30, 2002 Posted: 1:32 AM EST (0632 GMT)



Ten-year-old twins Holly, left, and Noel Adcock have identical genes, but they're not completely alike.








NEW YORK (AP) -- The idea of cloning a person brings up fantastic notions, not all of them scary.

Imagine a team of Michael Jordan clones on the basketball court, or a clone of Mozart taking up where the original genius left off, just some of the ideas that could spring up following Friday's still-unproven claim of the birth of the first human clone.

But if you want a reality check, look into the Hutchinson, Kansas, home of Holly and Noel Adcock.

They're 10-year-old identical twins. So, just like a clone and its progenitor, they have identical genes.

They do look alike; even teachers mix them up. But Noel is about five pounds lighter than Holly. Noel has pierced ears; Holly isn't interested.

Noel is the more mechanically minded and "definitely more of a go-getter," says their mother, Mary. Holly is "more laid-back, she's more the peacemaker."

Identical twins are strikingly similar in many ways, but Noel, Holly and a bundle of research shows that even they aren't completely alike. And scientists who study how genes shape us say that's an important lesson for trying to predict how much a human clone will resemble its progenitor.

The bottom line: Don't expect a replica.

If the claim made last week by Clonaid is proven, baby "Eve" -- as the company calls her -- will not be a carbon copy of her mother, the woman from whom she allegedly was cloned.

For all their differences, "identical twins are more identical than clones will ever be," says Robert Plomin of the Institute of Psychiatry in London.

As a group, identical twins are in fact more similar to each other in personality than ordinary siblings or fraternal twins, who develop from two separate eggs. That's true even when the identical twins are reared apart, says Nancy L. Segal, director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton.

That shows a clear influence of genes, she says.

But even identical twins are influenced by nongenetic factors -- starting with the womb and extending to parents, friends, opportunities in life, chance occurrences -- that influence who we are.

Since a clone and its progenitor would be born into different families at different times, these nongenetic factors could be expected to be more powerful.

And in the case of identical twins, there are also some genetic differences that are surprising. Schizophrenia is clearly influenced by genes, for example. But if one identical twin has schizophrenia, the chance that the other also has it is only about 45 percent to 50 percent.

Not even physical traits like height and weight are perfectly duplicated between pairs of identical twins, Plomin said. Height is among the most heavily influenced by genes, but "you get identical twins who differ by four inches," he added.

Studies show that, in general, the correlation between identical twins is strong for height, less strong for IQ, lesser still for weight and then personality, Plomin said.

Studies show that sexual and religious attitudes exhibit the same level of genetic influence as personality, while attitudes on taxes and politics appear less influenced by genes, said Segal, author of "Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior."

Segal cautions that these findings are only population averages and can't predict anything about similarities between individual clones and their progenitors.

But it could be that the degree of similarity for various traits will roughly follow the pattern seen in identical twins, she said.

"You're not going to get a perfect replica," she said.

"The idea we're going to take Michael Jordan and make a fantastic sports team ... it's just not reasonable at all."

so even if it's true they won't be identical.

[EyeManFla]

Resistance is futile! We shall all become one with the Borg!

But can you clone the soul? A clone is just a copy and like all copies, just a poorer imitation of the original.

BUT, if were to clone the perfect optician, who would it be?