So much for stem cell research aye???

[Mountain_Mover]

A couple trying to become the parents of the world's first human clone, using the same process that produced Dolly the sheep, have spoken for the first time ... to the Sunday Herald.
Bill, a high school teacher, and Kathy, a sales representative -- they do not want their last name revealed -- are one of six couples who will participate in a cloning experiment later this year led by American fertility expert Dr Panos Zavos.

The couple, from northeast America, have agreed to a clone of Kathy and are awaiting a call to tell them to fly out to a secret destination where the historic attempt will take place.

They insist they only turned to the radical procedure because they have no other way of producing their own child. Bill and Kathy have been trying to have children for the past nine years. After a series of gruelling IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatments, fertility doctors told Kathy, who is in her mid-40s, that they could do no more for her.

Bill, in his mid-50s, said: 'If we could clone a child this would be our own child. We don't really regard this as cloning. To us this is an advanced IVF process.
'We are religious people and have searched deep into ourselves about this. We do not believe it should be used randomly. We think that this is something that should only be done for infertile couples.

'I have a huge family with brothers and sisters and they all have children. It is very important for us to have our own genetically-related children.'

Kathy added: 'My father was a very brilliant man, as were my uncles on my mother's side of the family. I have strong genes in my background, as does my husband. I come from a very warm, loving family and I hope that we can bring a child into this world that has that warmth and intelligence.'

Using the process that created Dolly the sheep at the Roslyn Institute in Midlothian, the embryo will be made up almost entirely of Kathy's DNA. It will contain an an insignificant number of genes from the donor egg but none of Bill's genetic material.

A clone of Kathy is not their child, it's Kathy, cloned. I am interested in seeing the outcome of this. I bet you they'll discard 5 dis-figured clone attempts and then Kathy's clone will probably live for a few months. Imagine, hundreds of thousands of orphans out there waiting to be adopted and Kathy and Bill don't want any of those babies or children because they really like Kathy's family genetic history, isn't that ordering your own options? You see, I doubt that this family even exists. Scientist have probably successfully cloned a few kids already and now they want to open the market up to start raking in the trillions. We're religious folk??? I've never heard real Christians say " we're religious people" maybe catholics. This coupled sounds like an all around american family, but what the article is really saying is that any middle to upper class family can afford this process so fill out your applications now and forget about adopting an already existing child.

[Kolya]

Adoption often involves a lot of bureaucratic hassle from the government and years wasted in waiting.

Probably it is a lot less hassle to clone yourself, and have a child this way.

My only concern is that scientists don't yet have a lot of experience in cloning people, and something can go wrong with the child.

But nature is not perfect either. There are many abnormal children being born through natural conception.

Perhaps if cloning abnormalities don't exceed natural abnromalities, then most ethical people would be satisfied that this is a good way of having children for infertile couples.

[Mountain_Mover]

"then most ethical people would be satisfied that this is a good way of having children for infertile couples." by Kolya.

It's to my understanding that most are in disagreement with this method both Christian and secular folk. They're are thousands of children waiting to have a foster home too, now that process isn't that hard. And adopting can take a while but to me, if you aren't able to have children by natural means, then it would be better for those to adopt an existing child. It would balance things out better and it would help the statistics for those living in orphanages which isn't the greatest. Thats not to mention children over seas, they are really worse off.
Kolya you speak of time...government making it difficult to adopt. But you know what, I am almost sure it would not have taken seven years and thousands and thousands of dollars which is what Bill and Kathy have spent. Bottom line is; it's your own decision of what you want, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt if doctors would just help counsel the couples and explain why it would be much greater for them to adopt then we would not only help reduce the amount of children in orphanages but I think it would also reduce abortions in a general way plus help stabilze a growing population. Is it going to happen? I don't think so, too much money involved to much profit to be gained. One day, these medical scientist, fuel giants and politicians are going to destroy millions of people on such a mass scale, all to gain a buck. When/if America falls to far to recover and the people once again take charge, I'm sure the greedy folk who ran us all into the ground will be the first to be thrown into prison for what will be called humanity crimes that led to the destruction of our economy and civilization as we know it. Far fetched? Just watch the news. How many more major corporation bankruptcies and stock crashes will it take for us to say it is done? Of course this is worse case senerio.

[Traper]

"Probably it is a lot less hassle to clone yourself, and have a child this way. "

I really wonder what may happen with that child. Do you know why sexual contacts between relatives are forbidden?
The science researches show that the more distant (in genetic aspect) are the parents the more possible is that the child will be healthy, pretty and brilliant. Fact that parents are close relatives leads to high risk of deformation or other illness.
Do you know that the cloned sheep Dolly became older much faster then the normal ones? What if the same happens with the child?
And it won't be their child, but simply the next Kathy.

[rikbe]

Originally posted by Traper
"Probably it is a lot less hassle to clone yourself, and have a child this way. "

I really wonder what may happen with that child. Do you know why sexual contacts between relatives are forbidden?
The science researches show that the more distant (in genetic aspect) are the parents the more possible is that the child will be healthy, pretty and brilliant. Fact that parents are close relatives leads to high risk of deformation or other illness.
Do you know that the cloned sheep Dolly became older much faster then the normal ones? What if the same happens with the child?
And it won't be their child, but simply the next Kathy.

Cloning is not "sexual contact". It is not having sex with yourself.
With natural procreation the genes of two parents are involved, with cloning only of one, so the dangers of inbreed do not exist.

[Lilly]

There are several strings started about the same subject.


I dont know what the effects of this will be but I know this: This little kid coming out will be doomed to the most miserable lab rat existance imaginable. IMO it is the work of an irresponsible scienetist whose prime concern is publicity.

Stem cell research and cloning will not be stopped despite missteps along the way. Ethicists will attempt to get laws passed that forbid the aforementioned.
Nevertheless, this kind of scientific research will carry on - somewhere...If that child follows into the footsteps of Dolly the sheep and her siblings it will suffer from athritis before aged 20 - if it is lucky....




Cloning pregnancy claim prompts outrage

NewScientist.com news service

A woman taking part in a controversial human cloning programme is eight weeks pregnant, claims Severino Antinori, one of the two controversial fertility specialists leading the effort.

"One woman among thousands of infertile couples in the programme is eight weeks pregnant," Antinori is reported as saying at a meeting in the United Arab Emirates. If true, this would represent the first human cloning pregnancy.

Antinori's colleague, Panos Zavos at the Andrology Institute of America in Lexington, Kentucky, had previously announced that the pair planned to clone a baby by the end of 2001. Both Zavos's office and Antinori's office in Rome refuse to confirm or deny the report to New Scientist.

Antinori refused to reveal the nationality of the woman or her location at the meeting, according to the Gulf News. Almost 5000 couples are now involved in the programme, he said.

If confirmed, the pregnancy will cause uproar. Many countries have banned reproductive cloning and most prominent scientists have warned of the high risk of severe birth defects, as well as very high rates of miscarriage. The technology is also opposed by many on ethical grounds.

Richard Gardner, an expert on early mammalian embryo development who also chaired the UK Royal Society's working group on therapeutic cloning told New Scientist that such a pregnancy would be "grossly irresponsible given the current state of knowledge, even aside from any ethical issues".


Embryo screening


Antinori claims to be able to screen the embryos to reduce the risk of abnormalities but Gardner says: "There's no way you can do it - you could only spot gross changes in chromosomes or in the number of chromosomes." There can be single gene defects, he adds, and problems with imprinting - the latter do not just relate to malformation but are also linked to cancer.

Rudolf Jaenisch, a cloning expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: "I am appalled that these people are attempting to produce cloned humans. This is irresponsible and repugnant and ignores the overwhelming scientific evidence from seven mammalian species cloned so far.

"All evidence indicates that most clones die early - the lucky ones - and the rare survivors may have serious abnormalities which may become apparent only later," he says. "Antinori seems to use humans as guinea pigs to advance his questionable agenda. He needs to be stopped."

Donald Bruce, of the Church of Scotland's Science, Religion and Technology project, says: "Antinori is conducting experiments on people, playing on their vulnerability. His cavalier attitude to the significance of the animal cloning experiments and the risks involved puts him beyond the pale of responsible scientists."

Bruce says human reproductive cloning is ethically unacceptable in any circumstances as people have a right not to have another's DNA forced upon them.


Inevitable birth


Richard Nicholson, editor of the UK-based Bulletin of Medical Ethics, says the report of the pregnancy strengthens the need for international legislation to ban reproductive cloning. Although the practice is banned in some countries, such as the UK, it is still legal in many - including the US, where the Senate is currently debating cloning legislation.

But, he adds: "So long as there are Antinoris around, it probably is inevitable that there will be a live human clone birth. But that clone will probably have a very brief and sad life," he says.

In November 2001, biotech company Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts, published a much-criticised study detailing the creation of three cloned human embryos of just six cells each. Chinese scientists have also claimed to have created early human clones. The purpose of this research is to produce early clones for the extraction of stem cells, for medical treatments. The cloned embryos would be destroyed after a few weeks.

[Lilly]

http://www.russia.com/forums/showthr...?threadid=7821

http://www.russia.com/forums/showthr...?threadid=8087