Japan to Allow Human-Nonhuman Mixed Cloning 659
Sara Chan writes: "Japan has decided to allow combined human-animal embryos to be produced through cloning, which could result in mixed-species creatures. The intended purpose is to permit transplant organs to be produced in specially-bred animals. The original story is in a Japanese newspaper, but you can get an English summary here."
My first reaction (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean.. (Score:4, Funny)
This just smells bad.
It has to be said... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It has to be said... (Score:2, Redundant)
Pika-PikaCHUUUUU!!!
Groan...
(From the '40s) They crossed a cow with a duck... (Score:2)
Re:It has to be said... (Score:5, Funny)
vagina, sheep.
Hellooooooooo, Dolly!
They Need to (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They Need to (Score:2)
Kewl (Score:2, Interesting)
Mother In Laws?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mother In Laws?? (Score:3, Funny)
*grunt* Yes, *snort* I agree *squeal*
Pig Organs: squeal when you say that.
You know what the first thing they are going to do (Score:2, Insightful)
Mix a human with an octopus.
Perverted tenticle fetish!
Gigantic moral issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this a step forward for mankind, or a step backward?
Moral? (Score:2)
Re:Gigantic moral issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Religious belief doesn't deserve a special category, and should not be confused with ethics. I can think of several ethical objections to this type of research, and none of them involve a belief in God(s) or ensoulment.
Moreover, as an advanced society, do we really wish to combine our gene pool with that of an animal?
As we are animals, this question could almost be considered facetious, but I doubt that was your intent. The question should perhaps be:
As a society, advanced or otherwise, should we engage in research which mixes human and non-human gene pools?
My ethics ascribe nothing special to the state of being human (or nothing which would be pertinent to this debate), so the question, for me, becomes:
Should we engage in research which involves the mixing of interspecies gene pools?
Yes, we should, or at least we should not restrict ourselves from such research without solid, logical reasons. This reasons may also be ethical reasons, as logic and ethics are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Re:Gigantic moral issues (Score:2, Funny)
Didn't Calvin say this to Hobbes, at some point?
A good question (Score:2, Interesting)
That is a good question. I guess the only way to figure it out is if we try it and see what happens. The scientific method demands experiments! There is no other way to know.
It does sound scary and rather gross, but it will definitely answer a lot of questions we have about nature and human life. Plus if it turns out that intelligence is inherited [slashdot.org] then we will have quite the future ahead of us. Can anybody say Uplift [davidbrin.com]?
Re:Gigantic moral issues (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gigantic moral issues (Score:2)
Actually, we sort of are dealing with human-non-human hybrids and chimeras in this situation. Because there is NO legal guideline regarding the mixing of human and non-human DNA in Japan right now, it is legal to both create an animal expressing a human protein or two AND a full hybrid/chimera. Without any sort of guideline AT ALL, this legalizes both of those things, and personally, I don't have a problem with that. I like Japan's hands-off approach to technology. So far, it has worked. And while the idea of derivative species of humanity may seem strange to us, science might actually find a useful application for them that we may not even be able to consider right now.
I'm with Japan on this one. I believe in actually achieving a scientific breakthrough, and then seeing if the result of the breakthrough is wrong, rather than just making ignorant and stupid decisions. They could always make it illegal after the breakthrough takes place if it turns out to be a horrible, horrible thing, but until it occurs, we won't really know what could be.
Re:Gigantic moral issues (Score:4, Troll)
We can only hope the scientists in Japan are as cautious. Adding carefully selected human genes to replace closely related animal counterparts could result in a source of transplantable organs, and a huge supply of failed test subjects. However, reckless experimentation could create monsters. We wouldn't see catgirls, we'd see the sort of deformed, unrecognizable things I'm sure a few of the trolls are going to link to. (Don't worry, I'm going to spare you the sources for all of these) A pig with one and a half heads, a calf with organs on the outside of its body, and retarded mice with skulls too thin to protect their brains from being damaged by wind have all been documented in nature, but they are extrememely rare and immediately culled by natural selection. A laboratory environment makes these disasters very likely, and allows for propagation of their genetic lines.
Even if we put aside the moral implications of creating and sustaining these creatures, there are practical dangers. Such organisms would likely possess immune systems too weak to defend against the sort of pathogens normal organisms never notice. Look at what happens to late stage AIDS patients-they often contract rare diseases doctors have never seen before. They fall prey to bacteria assumed to be harmless, or fungal infections that have never been observed growing in living things before. These diseases could use a large supply of debilitated mutants as incubators to develop until natural selection produces strains capable of surviving in healthy organisms. We could see the emergence of a virus as unexpected and deadly as ebola. This is only one of the dangers posed by genetic experimentation. However, the potential benefits are too good to resist. There is no choice but to experiment, and we can only hope the experiments are done responsibly.
Re:Gigantic moral issues (Score:2)
Re:Gigantic moral issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether this is scientifically feasible is a trivial question compared to the ethics of such an endeavor. If one believes that humans are different from animals in that we contain a spirit and an awareness of God, then should a cross between a human and an animal be considered an animal or a spiritual being?
Sounds like a good way to find out. Create one and ask it.
That sound you hear... (Score:2, Funny)
- A.P.
Feh! (Score:2)
Being paralysed in fear, unable to progress because of some fucking superstition is stupid. I'm not calling for the wholesale abandonment of ethics but we should never take the next step because it might offend some creature that may or may not even exist.
Besides which, humanity is just an evolutionary step to a silicon based interstellar intelligence. Anything us meat monkeys do up until that point doesn't really matter.
Re:Repeat after me... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is one of the hardest verses in the gospels to interpret. Various views exist for what generation means.
Some take it as meaning "race" and thus as an assurance that the Jewish race (nation) will not pass away. But it is very questionable that the Greek term geneav (genea) can have this meaning.
Two other options are possible:
Generation might mean "this type of generation" and refer to the generation of wicked humanity. Then the point is that humanity will not perish, because God will redeem it.
Or generation may refer to "the generation that sees the signs of the end" (vv. 25-26), who will also see the end itself. In other words, once the movement to the return of Christ starts, all the events connected with it happen very quickly, in rapid succession.
All of the above commentary was taken from Bible.org [bible.org].
Re:Repeat after me... (Score:2)
Differences in American and Japanese cultures (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Differences in American and Japanese cultures (Score:5, Interesting)
The next worldwide industrial boom will be Bioengineering. If people are willing to pay $1000 for a CPU upgrade, imagine what they would pay for blue eyes. Or broad shoulders. Or a high IQ. Or thick hair that will never fall out. Or straight teeth. The list goes on and on.
We need to be positioned well in this industry.
Knunov
Re:Differences in American and Japanese cultures (Score:2)
And it will be one of the last vain human-centric booms too.
In about 25 years $1000 will buy you (and especially cost-cutting corporations, who are increasingly autonomous themselves) a "computer" capable of human-level thought which will replace more intellectual jobs than the efficient agriculture "boom" displaced farmers' labor jobs. No amount of grey-matter enhancement would do your kids much good, since even if they were born today with a "+100 IQ boost", they'd be obsolete by the time real AI sped past them in adulthood.
Also in about 25 years, robotics will have finally come into its own (as will have serious spacedev & nanotech); the current bipedal Honda bots are model-T's in comparison. These bots will be superior in most ways to any physical genetic modification you could make to your body. Flesh is simply too weak and too vulnerablem especially longterm.
Anyway... I guess my longwinded point is that the bioengineering boom, already in its infancy, will be pretty short-lived when compared to others. Ultimately, it's only really useful outcome will be as playing a part in the engineering of the wetware mind->machine bridge. Without that bridge we could only look on as our "Mind Children" (as Hans Moravec calls them) replaced us. With the bridge, we can join 'em... sort of.
(references intentionally left blank because this post turned out to be mostly mental masturbation) :-)
Re:Differences in American and Japanese cultures (Score:4, Interesting)
So those who make up the left hand edge of the IQ spectrum, or are below average in strength, and maybe other arbitrary categories should live with their disadvantages - but we raise the bar for "normal" 20/20 eyesight, immunity against diseases, and other categories?
What do you think happens when we eliminate those on the low side of the average, we all become above average?
Besides, who died and made you God?
Re:Differences in American and Japanese cultures (Score:2)
The same thing that happens when someone who applies to a job and has had their heart disease probability dropped and causes the guy who didn't not to be hired. Yet this would be fixing a "defect" and not helping someone who would have to try much harder to learn, or make it in their school Phys Ed class?
Sorry, you're making distinctions without a difference based on your personal opinions. Of course "fixing defects" is as much or as little playing God as choosing your offspring to be "at least normal" intelligence, strength, height, whatever. You end up having to play God whether play him and you decide to, or play him and decide not to despite having the option.
Re:Differences in American and Japanese cultures (Score:2)
"Fixing defects" IS playing God. People were born with certain characteristics for a reason, be they "normalities" or "defects". Changing them is playing God, no matter whether you feel you are doing it for the good or bad of humanity. Maybe "humanity" means something else to you, but I think "humanity" would be an awfully cold concept if everyone had everything "fixed" and no one had any differences or "defects".
Re:Differences in American and Japanese cultures (Score:2)
another
It's not even clear that fixing a defect is always a good thing to do, since many of these defects may be the downside of an evolutionary compromise that also has a significant upside. For example, the same mutation that causes sickle cell anemia also makes the affected person much more resistant to malaria.
On the other hand, horrible historical abuses aside, what is so intrinsically wrong about trying to improve the health and abilities of the human race?
Re:Differences in American and Japanese cultures (Score:2)
The list really could go on and on and on and on, but then I'd sound like one of those useless, lazy, good-for-nothing loud-mouthed Americans, right?
Stupid fuck. If you're going to be a self-hating American, at least hate yourself for legitimate reasons.
Knunov
Read the artical (Score:2)
Read the article, they are banning outright 'normal' human cloning. So obviously they share the same fears that people here do.
Re:Religious Right (slightly OT) (Score:2)
Where does this unnatural -> degraded implication come from? It's certainly not the case in my experience--if anything, the lesbian couples I know are much more loving and thoughtful in the upbringing of their children than many of the heterosexual couples I know. (I suspect this is due to several things: First, it's currently much harder to legally become a parent if you are in a gay couple, so only the truly dedicated gay couples become parents... contrast that to the situation amongst heterosexual couples, where being thoughtless and unmotivated makes it more likely you will become a parent. Also, gay couples tend to be more open-minded about allowing their child to be him/herself and not forcing any predetermined societal roles on him/her... for obvious reasons)
In any case, as far as I can tell a lot of people arguing this fact have never taken an honest look at gay families compared to traditional ones. Gay couples certainly aren't perfect, but life in the traditional family can be pretty damn disfunctional as well, even if it is more "natural".
BTW, pain is how you grow stronger, ask any athlete, ask any mature person.
I did, and they all agreed that exercise and hard work is the way to grow stronger. Pain (chronic or above moderate levels) is an indicator that something is wrong, not that you are growing stronger.
When asked in an interview why most of the evidence for creationism
Why did God hide all those fake dinosaur bones anyway? What a joker, that guy... ;^)
Wow, that's a hell of a step. (Score:5, Interesting)
Or am I misunderstanding what's actually going on. Are they simply doing things like creating human hearts in monkeys and the like? As with the tobacco plants we rigged up to create hemoglobin or insulin or whatever? I don't really see a problem with that, I guess.
I do see that they plan to ban 'regular' cloning, so I guess they don't want the whole 'mad scientist' thing going on. If it could really be used to ultimately cure sick people and make people more healthy then really (imo) it would be unethical to disallow it.
Re:Wow, that's a hell of a step. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just worried that all this new life-prolonging technology will belong the wealthy alone. As it is now, it is already difficult enough to transcend one's class. What will happen when the wealthy really are smarter than average folk? I worry that children born without the technology won't be able to compete.
Assuming they maintain their stand, does this mean Christians and other moral types will one day live shorter lives and be less intelligent than people without such scruples?
Just a thought.
Re:Wow, that's a hell of a step. (Score:2)
That's already true. The wealthy tend to be better-nourished, which encourages brain development, and tend to be better-educated, which develops the facilties inherent in every meaningful definition of intelligence.
The only way to "fix" this "problem" would be to outlaw good food and school. Then everybody'd be equally stupid. I don't see that as a good end.
Technology has been improving man since we invented writing and agriculture. Anybody who wants to reverse that trend for themselves is welcome to retreat to a pastoral life in the woods, but leave the rest of us out of your Luddism.
Re:Wow, that's a hell of a step. (Score:2)
All technologies start out this way. Then the wealthy people realize they will make more money selling it to the masses (as there are more people in the masses), and then economics of scale kick in.
As it is now, it is already difficult enough to transcend one's class.
I don't know what you are implying with this statement, but historically now is the easiest time in history to transcend class
What will happen when the wealthy really are smarter than average folk? I worry that children born without the technology won't be able to compete.
Shhh... don't tell anyone, but the wealthy are already smarter. Not necessarily more intelligent, but smarter. They are better educated. But again, the education system today is better balanced than ever before in history (for the most part). So the gap is slowly becoming a gap between the motivated learners and the lazy saps. But who cares... more soylent green for the
Assuming they maintain their stand, does this mean Christians and other moral types will one day live shorter lives and be less intelligent than people without such scruples?
Yes, if they don't adapt. Natural selection will then kick in (odd... natural selection through artificial enhancement), but you're looking at black and white in the distant future.
I believe the human race is doing well at the moment, so cheer up little camper. People are pretty damn adaptable!
Re:Wow, that's a hell of a step. (Score:2)
Every example I know of and gave was of people who established their wealth before 1990. Real life is like that. For every failed dream, I'd say a good 1 out of 10 was "bad luck" every other was because of that person. It is not hard to get wealthy. I'll say it again, and I mean it. Getting wealthy requires only three things: Ambition, Knowledge, and Intuition.
Any body who has a failed dream has no one to blame but themselves. If you don't believe wealth is easy to obtain you don't deserve it; and you wont receive it. Simple as that.
Re:Wow, that's a hell of a step. (Score:2)
though not inheritance rights if not explicitly given
Hmm. Why not inheritance rights? Just curious. (IMHO, the clone should be considered the legal heir of the original, since (presumably/hopefully) the original was the one who decided to allow the clone to be created)
This puts a new twist.. (Score:2, Funny)
Cat Girls (Score:5, Interesting)
The most dangerous animal (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course it's the giant brain, opposble thumb and social cooperation that makes man really formidable, but it's hard to imagine a chimera that takes full advantage of human and, say lion capabilities. Can you have the lion's formidable claws and still keep dexterity? Or its powerful killing jaws and a mouth capable of articulating language?
Even some characteristics that at first seem like liabilities aren't. Our lack fur, scales, and general light build for example. On one hand, it leaves us relatively defenseless. On the other hand, it makes us offensively more formidable. A well trained runner can chase most game animals until they collapse of heat prostration.
Re:Cat Girls (Score:2)
I wonder... (Score:2)
Re:I wonder... (Score:2)
Racism? (Score:2)
IANAgeneticist, but what if these animal-halves that you start creating are sentient?
Re:Racism? (Score:2, Funny)
Easy. We grant them citizenship, explain to them they are victims, then give them money until the day they die.
We also give Ron Jeremy a go at it. He'll screw anything.
Knunov
Re:Racism? (Score:2)
Easy. We grant them citizenship, explain to them they are victims, then give them money until the day they die.
And let them open casinos and hunt whales, of course.
English Edition (Score:2, Informative)
Aren't they doing this already? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Aren't they doing this already? (Score:5, Informative)
In the near future, the most likely thing that is going to happen is the cloning of pigs with exact copies of human immunospecific proteins for the human who needs an organ transplant. Then the donor animal will have an exact match immunologically with the human patient, and the human patient will not have to be subjected to an arduous immunosuppressent regimin. So you'll have a chimeric pig expressing the patient's immunological markers, and won't have to wait for a compatible human donor to die or sign consent forms.
Beyond that is mere conjecture, but I don't expect we'll be seeing anything resembling the mythical chimeras of olde, as a work like that would involve a gargantuan effort and (in my mind at least) would have little to no scientific validity and usefullness.
Xenotransplantation already happening in US and UK (Score:3, Informative)
Organ Farm [pbs.org]
Human to human transplants are taboo in Japan. (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan's first transplant procedure in 1968 resulted with the doctor being charged with murder because it wasn't clear if the donor was brain dead.
Aparently the taboo has something to do with Japan's Shinto and Buddhist beliefs. Here's a link: Japan Legalized Organ Transplants from Brain-dead [ncc.go.jp].
Bad reporting (Score:5, Interesting)
Superficial reading of the Ananova article [ananova.com] would give one the impression that they are talking about a partly human chimera [washington.edu] (it is hard to read "combined human-animal embryos" any other way); which would be a horribly unethical monstrosity.
What they're undoubtedly talking about (though I can't verify it since I can't read Japanese) are transgenic animals which express human proteins which is nothing new and posses no real ethical challenges (other than those involving the safety issues of xenotransplantation such as the real posibility for introducing various pathogens into the human population).
Limited change in cloning regulations (Score:3, Insightful)
From the article:
The hope is that human organs could be grown in other species and later transplanted into humans.
However, some said the decision opens the door to the risk of creating mixed-species organs, or possibly even creatures.
The article is about the publication of guidelines on research into human cloning. While allowing the cloning of aggregate embryos, the Wednesday announcement bars all other embryo cloning, citing insufficient debate about the ramifications of such cloning.
The research hasn't even begun yet. Maybe its possible to grow aggregate embryos, maybe its not. Maybe it will result in mixed-species, maybe not.
Whatever created us wants us to do this (Score:3, Interesting)
You see, Whatever created us gave us the ability to create life, and gave us the abilities we have by evolving us.
So anyone here who believes in god but isnt blinded by the bibles description of god, can understand that.
If we program a computer to do something the computer does what its created to do, whatever created us obviously created us to create and to destroy.
Thats basically our job.I belive theres supposed to be a balance in creation and destruction but right now we destroy more than we create due to greed.
Nekomimi Complex... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Catgirls, a.k.a. "Nekomimi", are a popular fetish amongst Otaku. If you hadn't noticed, of course.)
Dragonball (Score:2)
in related news (Score:3, Funny)
Human-animal work has been going on for years (Score:3, Informative)
Transgenic animals have already been created in many countries. Pigs with human genes to prevent rejection of heart valves come to mind.
In my opinion, the article was poorly translated and the initial post was misleading. People are having images of werewolves and such. At this point in time it would be impossible to successfully create a hybrid of this type. In 10 or 20 years this might actually be a problem. Until then, it's science fiction.
the yomuri is bilingual.... (Score:2)
Geez. It's been bilingual as long as I can remember. Here's the link to the english artcle: Here
Re:the yomuri is bilingual (/. ate the url)l.... (Score:2)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20011130wo72.htm
Now I need to moved to Japan (Score:2)
...to create my four-assed baboon [akamai.net].
grumble.
About time... (Score:2)
now not only will she get one, but she'll get shipped to japan since it's the only place it'll be legal. Everybody wins
Do We Really Need Cloning To Achieve Chimeras? (Score:2)
Japan Rules (Score:3, Informative)
Bansai Anime Pleasure Drones.
I bet there's some species of animal where the female copulates and then leaves immediately. (without killing the mate, if you please)
Once again, I'm looking to the porn industry to lead the way into this new technological realm.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:3, Offtopic)
Should not be allowed to? Don't you think it is remotely possible that opposition to a given technology may be based on ignorance and superstition? A great example of this might be your mentioning Three Mile Island. You may not be aware of this, but Three Mile Island was not a disaster. The safety systems worked as designed, and very little radiation was leaked. The Chernobyl accident has been shown to have been caused by incompetency on the parts of the plant operators. This is far from any "intrinsic" danger in nuclear power. In fact, nuclear power is economical. It is also the most environmentally clean power source in places where space limitations prevent things like hydroelectric and wind power. Further, the irrational fear of nuclear-anything means that most Americans miss out on some important technologies: for example, all of the E coli outbreaks of the last decade could have been prevented through irradiation. Restaurants could serve medium rare burgers again.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:5, Informative)
I have a PhD in Nuclear physics and I am a chartered engineer.
Three mile island came within seconds of a melt down. It demonstrates conclusively that the nuclear industry was nowhere near as safe as it had claimed. I don't accept the spin from the PR flaks of the nuclear industry that we have to trust them until they kill 5,000 people for real.
If the dice had rolled only slightly differently, the operators at Cherobyl might have succeeded in shutting down the reactor, had the three mile island operators not been lucky the reactor might have gone. The design flaw at Chernobyl was one that could not have been predicted with the design tools available in the USSR or the US when the plants were built. It was an area of positive feedback in the control regime that could only be detected using 3d modelling. That did not become possible until the introduction of the first CRAY series - and even then it took quite a long time for the simulation software to appear.
Moreover, the placement of any potentially hazardous industrial complex on three mile island should never have been allowed, let alone a nuclear plant. The bridges to the island simply cannot support an evacuation in an acceptable time. Building a nuclear plant that close to manhattan was gross negligence.
I used the term 'intrinsicaly safe' in a technical sense, no light water design is intrinsically safe, there is a critical mass that is damped down to prevent runnaway. If the safety systems fail and do not fail safe as planned you get a heck of a bang.
The Canadian CANDU heavy water system is intrinsically safe. It employs heavy water as the moderator, if there is a failure of the pressure vessel etc, etc the glass containers shatter and the moderator drains away shutting down the reaction. In pebble bed each fuel element is encapsulated in a moderator shell, again no critical mass, no chance of a big bang.
Do not assume that because there are some ignorant critics of nuclear power that all critics are ignorant. If the nuclear industry had not told so many blatant and deliberate lies in the 60s and 70s there might have been fewer ignorant critics today.
Jim Cramer (The Street.com) has a rule - financial irregularities means sell. Basically when ypou have been lied to by the management of a company it is time to take the exit door (e.g. Enron). In the UK the Thatcher govt. discovered during their privatization of the electricity industry that far from being low cost, the nuclear stations were barely economic on an operating basis - there was no possibility of paying of the original capital costs or eventual decommissioning costs. As a result a government that started ideologically committed to nuclear power discovered that the books had been cooked and they could not sell the plants to anyone at any price.
Further, the irrational fear of nuclear-anything means that most Americans miss out on some important technologies: for example, all of the E coli outbreaks of the last decade could have been prevented through irradiation.
Irradiation is banned for good reason. If you irradiate food you kill off the bugs but not the toxins they create. If technology allows food that is unfit for human consumption to be passed of as fresh you can be 100% sure that it will happen in the US.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:2)
Re:Terrible idea (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe it has before and the conditions were not right for it to spread. You jump to conclusions without considering a simple possibility.
These issues are vastly more complex than the glib statements made by the genetics industry would have people believe.
They're also far more complex than your child like treatment of them.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Apocryphal.
HIV is a chimpanzee virus, well established in wild populations, and one which apparently causes them little trouble, Well adaped to its wild hosts, it spreads among them easily while maintaining a balance between surviving in their bodies and not damaging the host which are its natural home; this is why chimpanzees experimentally infected with HIV do not develop AIDS.
The most credible theory for transfer of the virus to humans involves a person hunting chimpanzees for food who had a cut or sore which came in contact with the blood of an infected chimp they killed.
Of course, this does nevertheless support your conclusion.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:2)
As I said in the original post, people have been hunting and eating chimps for millenia. If there was the potential for the virus jumping species why did it wait until the 1950s to do so?
Of course, this does nevertheless support your conclusion.
If we accept the cut hunter theory then the probability of diseases jumping speies is very high. But it does have the advantage of shifting blame from the intervention of western medicine to the ignorance of native hunters.
My biggest concern over the 'cut hunter' theory is that when the theory was the behavior of the field when the theory was challenged. There were calls to have the proponents dismissed from their posts, their research grants terminated, people tried to link them to the loony who is still trying to prove HIV does not cause AIDS. In short a witch hunt, not a discourse.
I am not a geneticist. However I have worked in enough academic disciplines to be able to use a certain degree of meta-logic. If you see a discipline that responds to criticism with certain tactics you can make a pretty good guess as to the quality of their work. Science is a process, Engineering is a profession. Problems tend to arise when scientists start trying to do engineering and end up following the principles of neither field.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:2)
HIV is a not-easily transmitted disease, but mutates quickly. You might as well ask, since the Chinese have been raising ducks and pigs in close proximity for centuries, why the bird/mammal flu combination that apparently took place in swine took place in swine "waited" until the time of the 1918 influenza pandemic. As it happened, it didn't.
I am not a geneticist. However I have worked in enough academic disciplines to be able to use a certain degree of meta-logic.[...]
Bing!
Self-styled expert on everything outside his field alarm just went off...
Sorry, I've seen that too many times when, to support their oddball theories, someone combines their lack of technical knowledge, use of speculative and proven-false statistics (like your "vaccines correspond to the spread of HIV" - if you continue to believe early 1990's claims of African governments that it doesn't exist in their countries...), disbelief in the Law of large numbers and other simple concepts of probability, etc, etc...
Sorry, I'm tired of reading anti-atomic energy diatribes packed with technical nonsense written by PhD's in "Education", and of petitions to ignore global warming where most of the scientific "Dr."s who signed turn out to be medical doctors, with a few veternarians thrown in, et cetra. Yeah, a little learning can be a dangerous thing.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:3, Troll)
Developing and testing vaccinations in animals is and has been a very common practice in medical research. It also has absolutely nothing to do with cloning.
All nuclear reactors in the US were built with negative temperature coefficients. They are the safest reactor designs in the world. Chernobyl had a positive temperature coeffecient, this is true, but the meltdown was due to operator error, not poor reactor design. And the US reactors, even with their failsafe designs are not completely immune to accidents.
It is also important to note that it is cheaper to build reactors with positive temperature coefficients. Reactors are built this way because of politics, not because scientists don't know what they are doing. BTW, there was plenty of anti-nuke propaganda in the 50's and 60's.
As for the bit about geneticists not knowing what they are doing... how do you think science works? Pop culture tends to lead people to believe that scientists sit around blackboards with nonsense mathematical equations surrounding them until they come to some epiphany and boom, we have a warp drive. That is not how science works people! Science is a lot of experimentation, trial-and-error, and guesswork. A lot of things are discovered by accident. Mapping of the human genome doesn't suddenly mean that we know everything about human genetics. There is a lot of stuff we don't know, and we are only going to be able to further our knowledge if we experiment and try new things.
You say that opposition should not be allowed to be disregarded as ignorance and superstition. Well, all I have to say is that maybe the opposition should come up with some intelligent and coherent arguments. It is easy to be disregarded as reactionary if you don't sound like you know what you are talking about.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:2)
Um, if a reactor can melt down to operator error, then it is a poor design. There are designs that cannot melt down without violating the laws of physics (IE excess heat causes the reaction to stop working).
Depending on an operator, fallible by the fact of being human, in a situation where many human lives may be at stake, is a horrendous design flaw.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:2)
Well nobody would build a nuclear reactor if they thought it had a positive temperature coefficients. The Russians discovered that they had not the hard way.
I wrote some of the basic simulation packages that are used to model chemical and nuclear processes. Until the 1980s the computing power did not exist to model any of the reactor designs in sufficient detail to discover the particular bug in the Chernobyl design.
The Russian designers performed a 2d model and used standard techniques to extrapolate to 3d using experimental results on test reactors. They simply did not have the option of doing 3d modelling because the none of the computer systems in existence at the time were capable of that.
Science is a lot of experimentation, trial-and-error, and guesswork. A lot of things are discovered by accident
Oh dear we have just accidentally created a black hole, awfully bad luck, see you in future lives.
Accidental discoveries are one thing, unintended consequences of an intentional act are another. There are plenty of medical experiments that are rejected as being too dangerous to risk trying.
Re:Terrible idea (Score:2)
Here is one link [aegis.com] that discusses it. At the end of this article there is reference to work being done on earlier AIDS cases. I even recall reading something that said this had been done, but I could be wrong.
The point about Nuclear Energy is interesting, however presumably there has also been concern about the creation of huge electronic brains that would rule the earth. What if people had banned research on computers because of these fears ?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Terrible idea (Score:2)
Re:Take that back! (Score:2)
You assume that we allow everything until it is proven to be dangerous.
US medical ethics assumes the opposite, it is the duty and responsibility of the researchers to prove that their plan is safe and that there is no possibility of unexpected side effects.
For your information, transgenic implantation is prohibited in the US for precisely the reasons I stated. The risk of viruses moving from one species to another is not considered to be acceptable.
My original point was that the people who shriek 'science' tend not to be scientists, equally those who invite people to talk to statistics teachers tend not to know what statistics can and cannot tell you.
Re:Nuclear mismanagement. (Score:2)
Well the pebble bed reactor starts off with the fuel already encased in an inert moderator so you can simply mix the balls up in cement and drop them down a mine shaft.
However the chances of getting pebble bed off the ground are small to none, this is largely because of the lies told by the established nuclear industry, both then and now. Few politicians are going to risk their careers for the sake of an industry that lied to them and to the people.
The biggest risk of premature Xenotransplants is that any failure will give the religious reich an excuse to close down theraputic cloning to allow organs to be grown for transplantation.
Re:This is good for religion (Score:2, Flamebait)
If a being "receives" its soul independent of sexual conception (clearly this would have to be true, since sex is proven to not be required in the making of a child), then it is possible that these home-made creatures would receive their sould by the same process.
And the inability to create sentient creatures could be due to errors in the science, not due to a "soul" -- You couldn't take a failure here and say, "Well, it must be because of God." It proves nothing at all.
Re:This is good for religion (Score:2)
Re:This is good for religion (Score:2)
Sure is a perquisit, tho'.
Geez. I want to conceive my kids the old fasioned way.
Re:This is good for religion (Score:2)
I'm not aware of any major religious leaders who argue this point in the first place, so you're just knocking down a straw man. To argue this position would be to argue that babies conceived through in-vitro fertilization - already a common practice - do not have souls. I'm not aware of any major religious leaders having argued this.
In addition, producing "human-like creatures" is not akin to producing humans. If the hypothesis is that humans have souls and animals do not, the mere fact that you are able to produce a human-like creature does not refute this hypothesis - it is entirely possible that this human-like creature has no soul, while "real" humans do have souls (and thus the "human-like" - the similarity being only physical).
Mind you, I don't believe in the existence of souls, human or otherwise, but I don't see how this research could disprove their existence.
Re:This is good for religion (Score:2, Insightful)
Whats even more interesting is that your posts are modded up and left there for an extended period, just to draw them in. Very much like nighttime catfishing with floodlights that I've done in East Texas.
I stand in admiration of your ability to say exactly what a worried and angry population wants to hear, and reply to in frustration, or sometimes even anger. You demonstrate excellent rhetorical prowess.
Now, with all that said, will you please stop? Your intellect is clearly beyond this type of crap. You should be over in Science right now with the rest of your NASA buddies, not here making NASA look like, well, trolls.
Please don't mix cells and animals! (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea behind Medicinal Human Cloning (MHC) is to clone human cells at the cellular level, before cell differentiation [visembryo.com]. Cell differentiation occurs 2 weeks into the life of an embryo, when all the cells in the embryo stop being homogenous and, all at once, establish their own identities. Some become hand cells, some feet cells, some brain cells, some blood cells. This "magic" event is the point at which human life begins. MHC is the process of cloning human cells before this event.
The point of being able to harvest unlimited quantities of undifferentiated human cells is that these cells can become any cell in the body; they are "undecided", yet genetically matched to the recipient. The applications here are as numerous as you can imagine: tissue replacement, skin replacement for burn victims, manufactured organs custom-matched to the recipient. This is the promise we are debating; the lives of millions who could be saved by this procedure [advancedcell.com], from burn victims to heart attack victims.
This advance promises to revolutionize medicine. Not just technically, but from a societal perspective as well. If we understand anything about MHC, it is that it will be prohibitively expensive to apply to an entire population. An order of magnitude costlier than even heart transplantation, we are dealing with sums of millions of dollars per regenerated organ. And unlike transplantation, this technique will be able to prolong the life of anyone, indefinitely. As a society, we will soon be in the position of deciding the lifespan(s) of each of our citizens. Not because we control death; not euthenasia, but because we control life.
We've already seen this paradigm emerge with the "list" for heart transplants. The pathetic attempt at a "meritocracy" for deciding who receives a new heart has been a total failure, as evidenced by the case of David Crosby [advancedcell.com]. The system is weighted in favor of the rich, against the poor. Will this paradigm dominate the field of Medicinal Human Cloning? Will only the rich live forever? Will money become the force of life? Not if we can help it. We will need to act decisively as events are set in motion.
We must establish a true meritocracy for the Immortality Revolution ushered in by advances in Medicinal Human Cloning. Like the Slashdot Moderation system, we could create a system of random "Moderators", if you will, who are picked secretly and randomly and given the ability to tag their fellow citizens as deserving or undeserving of the scarce asset of Organ Regeneration, financed by the state. You could rate your neighbor (-1 Stupid) for abusing his spouse, or your coworker (+1 Insightful) for fixing your printer connection. Those with the highest scores would receive the greatest medical benefit: Immortality.
Imagine a world where we never lost an Einstein, never killed a Bohr. Where great leaders like George Bush could advise us forever; where people like Noam Chomsky were but a temporary nuisance. This is the promise of cloning: not reproducing the husks of people but giving the gift of life to the greatest among us.
We must act swiftly when the time comes.
Re:This is good for religion (Score:2)
If the experiments are able to produce human-like creatures without coitus and traditional conception, the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that the "soul" does not exist, and that humans are no more sophisticated than the most advanced carbon-based machine we can invent.
If the experiments are not able to produce creatures that demonstrate free will, emotions and feelings, and other characteristically human qualities, the inevitable conclusion will be that a soul does exist in each of us, and the religious will most likely be able to use this as a rationale for banning abortion, stem cell research, and other procedures that involve the sacrifice of young human life.
I have some problems with what you just said. Things like free will, emotions, and feelings are not sufficient proof of a soul. My dog has all of these, but I can't prove or disprove the existence of his (let alone my) soul. IMO, there's really no way to prove or disprove a soul exists. It's really an issue of faith, which is why so many people have a problem with it.
Re:A Wake-up Call for America (Score:2)
Like the mosquitoes they're trying to develop that have a malarial protein in their saliva, naturally immunizing those they bite instead of spreading the disease?
Yeh, and (Score:3, Informative)
The most telling line is this one though: Hooper argues that that theory lacks scientific proof and that no one has as yet produced scientific evidence to contradict his theory
In other words, "no one can disprove this, so it must be true!", or, in other words "It's total crap!". No legitimate scientist would ever say that, Its the same kind of crap spouted by people who don't believe in evolution or global warming.
Re:won't fly in the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
A country has the guts (and yes, I'm not surprised it's Japan), to go about ignoring the stupid religious morals set by the US in regard to cloning animals/humans with the specific end of using them for organ harvesting.
I'm one step closer to being able to have a genetically perfect pancreas transplant, which means I'm a step closer to being able cease these stupid insulin injections 4-8 times a day.
DM (Score:2, Informative)
it's unfortunate that religion must so often stand in the way of actually helping people in the name of ethics, seems a bit of an oxymoron to me...
Re:This is so obvious! (Score:2)
Hilary Rosen!
Re:The genome (Score:2)
Shrug.
You wouldn't have to genetically manipulate a pig, or for that matter most mammals, to create someting which to the naked eye, intelligence tests, et cetra could not be distinguished from a (genetic) human being. Merely subject the embryo involved to substances that would that would link up with the homeobox genes and cause them to be expressed in the same way as a human's are, and you'd have an ersatz human.
Of course, if two of them tried to have children they would need the same treatments, or would end up with an ordinary piglet or whatever as an offspring.
Re:Ethical Experts! (Score:2)
So are they "cold hearted" because they're not religious or because they're coming up with new ways to save lives?
-Legion
Re:Next Slashdot poll (Score:2)
I will never look at the words "CowboyNeal" quite the same way again....
Re:Centaurs? (Score:2)